Chautauqua Theater Company Conservatory Actor Amara Leonard — portraying Alice, at right — ties an apron onto Guest Artist Ceci Fernández, portraying Alice’s daughter Ernestine, during the final dress rehearsal for Birthday Candles July 5 in Bratton Theater.
Growing up surrounded by bolts of fabric and collections of clothing from her mother and aunt’s boutique, Afsaneh Aayani developed a love for design and expressing her creativity at a young age.
“I was always making and designing clothes, and it was just something that I grew up with and I always loved it so much,” she said. “I have always been surrounded by art.”
Originally from Iran, Aayani is an experienced scenic designer, costume designer, puppeteer, puppet maker and voice actress who earned her bachelor’s degree in puppetry from the Art University of Tehran. There, she learned everything from designing and building puppets to crafting their costumes, and she cultivated a deeper passion for scenic and costume design.
The theater and puppetry scene in Iran is entirely different from the scene in the United States, Aayani said. For one, she said, there’s aren’t enough shows here in general, and most are intended only for younger audiences.
She moved to America about 12 years ago; she currently resides in Houston and has her own puppet shop. After taking a break from school, she decided to pursue an MFA in scenic design from the University of Houston in 2020, where she developed her skills even further.
Now, she mostly specializes in scenic design for theater, but she said she designs costumes for about four to five shows a year.
Working in theater for the first time in the United States was a bit of a “culture shock” for her, as she was used to spending longer periods of time on productions instead of just three to four weeks. She said in order to dive deeper into a project and fully explore the design and story, more time is needed to rehearse.
“I always tell my actors that, because I think that’s what you need to explore and learn about each other, about the play, about what you do and really master something,” Aayani said.
She was first brought onto the creative team for Birthday Candles, Chautauqua Theater Company’s 2024 mainstage season opener, after director Arya Shahi suggested that she design the show’s costumes. Playwright Noah Haidle’s story, which follows Ernestine Ashworth, played by Guest Artist Ceci Fernández, through nine decades of life on her birthday, continues its run at 4 p.m. today in Bratton Theater and will close Sunday.
In January, Aayani worked with Shahi on a play called English at The Old Globe in San Diego, and they’ve kept in touch since then. When she read the script of Birthday Candles for the first time, she said she could not put it down.
“I just felt so connected with the script,” she said. “Every person that I got to chat with on the production team felt the same, and they really loved the play. It’s beautiful.”
When creating the concept for the show’s costumes, she kept the layout of the set and the staging front of mind. Because most of the actors play multiple roles throughout Ernestine’s life and never leave the stage, each character has a base layer of clothing and either adds to it or takes pieces away as the show progresses.
“I didn’t want to create too much distraction,” she said. “The play is just so stunning that you want to make sure the audience is going through this journey uninterrupted.”
Brainstorming months in advance, she began drawing sketches and confirming designs with Shahi, developed “base looks” and “themes” for each character’s wardrobe and started sourcing clothes with Erin Prokopchak, the production’s costume supervisor.
Since Shahi had a more modern vision for the costumes, most of the clothing was sourced and bought from Buffalo with a couple pieces coming from overseas, including a pair of shoes from London. The two aprons in the play, which belong to Ernestine and her mother and resemble a homemade quilted pattern, were designed and made to fit their time period.
As the characters age throughout the story, layering and adding new accessories, such as hats, coats and glasses, helped play with that illusion of time passing.
Throughout the play, actors not in the current scene sit quietly in chairs on each side of the stage as they watch, in character, and wait for their next cue. Next to them on the stage are costume pieces that fit in boxes wrapped like presents next to them, allowing the actors to change layers quickly but subtly.
When she arrived at Chautauqua and stepped into the theater for rehearsals, Aayani could finally see her vision come to life. After two days of tech rehearsals, the costumes were finalized after mild adjustments — though she said an artist’s work is never truly finished.
“As artists, I don’t think we’re ever really done,” she said. “You can always tweak it, you can always make different changes and different decisions, but at some point you have to let it go, let the audience see it and let everyone experience it, which is the hard part of doing theater.”
From designing puppets in Iran to creating concepts for scenery and constructing costumes in Houston, she said connecting with the story of Birthday Candles and collaborating with the cast and creative team has been an experience she won’t forget.
“I was so happy and felt so lucky to be given this opportunity to be there and also be in beautiful Chautauqua,” she said. “It was wonderful to live in that little piece of heaven for 10 days and create art for the most wonderful people.”
