WORK • Tuesday Routine
MELINDA C. BASACA • associate costume director & staff board representative • The Public Theater
Neighborhood you work in: East Village
Neighborhood you live in: Dumbo
It’s Tuesday morning. What’s the scene at your workplace?
With five theaters at our downtown location, a touring production that tours the five boroughs, and the Delacorte Theater in Central Park, there’s a lot of multi-tasking, scheduling, and touching base with different show teams. So, a typical Tuesday morning may include meeting with costume designers, going to costume fittings with actors, checking in with our wardrobe or wig run crews to see if they are ready for the upcoming shows for the week, reconciling receipts and invoices, and meeting with other production departments about current and upcoming shows. If we’re in production at Central Park, I may take a trip up there, too, to check in on the run crew and current status of things.
What’s on the agenda for today?
We built a majority of the costumes in-house for our current production of Twelfth Night, and it’s wonderful to see our all-star cast, which includes Peter Dinklage, Jesse Tyler Ferguson, Lupita Nyong'o, and Sandra Oh, make the most of them. Since the Delacorte Theater is reopening after major renovations, we also thought it would be wonderful to display the history of the Public Theater’s canon of Shakespearean productions through the lens of costumes, so we put together a costume exhibition downtown that ran in August. We went through our archive in Queens, which spans over 50 years.
Any restaurant plans today, tonight, this weekend?
Kalye is a restaurant I frequent because it serves traditional Filipino food and some dishes with a fusion twist. Its pork ube sliders are my favorite. There are two locations, one on Broome and the new location on Rivington, which is where I usually go. Some nights you can also play mahjong, or there will be live music or a DJ, and some days, they have a drag brunch. It’s this great mix of Filipino culture within an intimate yet communal NYC setting.
How about a little leisure or culture this week?
My Pinay girlfriends and I are going to see Ruby Ibarra, a Filipina rapper and spoken word artist from the Bay Area, in Williamsburg. She’ll be joined by rock legend June Millington and an all-Filipino band that is on their Tiny Desk tour, having won the Tiny Desk contest this year! Ibarra is so inspiring, and such a dope rapper.
What’s a recent big-ticket purchase you love?
It’s not really a big ticket item, but my Willy Chivarria t-shirt was more than what I would pay for a regular muscle tank. It says, “How We Love Is Who We Are,” which is such a simple, powerful message; one we especially need right now. Proceeds from it go towards the Human Rights Campaign, which supports their fight for LGBTQ+ equality. Willy Chivarria is my favorite designer today. His Chicano-inspired collections are impeccable and always have strong messages, whether about immigration, equality, empathy, and love.
Where are you donating your time or money?
I donate my time to two organizations that are close to my heart: the Filipino American National Historical Society, which uplifts and brings our Filipino community together as well as sharing the beauty of our culture with others; and Broadway Barkada, which is an organization that supports Filipino artists in theater, dance, and music. We showcase artists and celebrate our community and love of the arts through sharing our stories, singing, dancing, playing music, and rejoicing in who we are.