Katja Andreiev is returning to Pipeline as costume designer for Beardo, after perviously working with us as costume designer for Caucasian Chalk Circle. Katja designs costumes for theatre, opera, dance, performance art, and film, primarily in New York City where she has lived since attending NYU Tisch School of the Arts. Her primary areas of continuing study include Shakespeare and Chekhov, but she is also dedicated to contemporary performance, particularly new works that expand the boundaries of genre, and theatrical space. She has designed for art galleries and site specific performance art as well as for short films, music videos, and the occasional circus act. Due to a profound belief in education and theater as a teaching medium, she continues to design and serve as a teaching artist with high schools, acting studios, universities, and the children’s theater departments of professional theaters in addition to working to expand her professional repertoire. Learn more about Katja in our interview below, and grab your pre-sale tickets to Beardo today!
Pipeline Theatre Company: What attracted you to Beardo? What made you want to work on this project?
Katja Andreiev: This play is about the fall of the Russian monarchy, an iconoclast looking for something he can’t articulate, faith, and the intersections and definitions of the sacred and the profane, and it is produced by Pipeline. I am a Russian American costume designer who was kicked out of the Orthodox church for “not attending choir practice”, specializes in Chekhov and new works and has been a fan of the Pipeline and their work since before there was an official name for the company. It just seemed like an obvious fit.
PTC: Why do you perform the role you perform? Why costume design?
KA: Costume design is entirely dependent on the people wearing the costumes; it’s very human. I like how it is impossible to do without being informed by other people, physically and otherwise. Maybe it is just orneriness, since my natural inclination is to shut myself alone in a library with a load of books (which there is also plenty of in costume design). My other focus in school was dramaturgy; I suppose I could have gone that route but dramaturgy is concerned with precedent and tradition over improvisation and innovation and I prefer not to choose. I was never good at drafting; I am always amazed by set designers. Lighting is a very symbiotic design form and I think if I were to go back to school for another degree, costumes and lighting would be a natural choice. I have never felt especially drawn to sound design, though I do love music, and play a few instruments and have been experimenting with recording lately, so it is all sort of appealing. Just writing about it makes me want to try everything again, actually.
PTC: If you ruled the world, what would you be remembered for?
KA: Aggressive whimsy, maybe. Compassion, hopefully.
PTC: Why should someone who has no connection to this show or its artists come see the show?
KA: I would have a hard time believing anyone wouldn’t be able to find something they feel personally connected to in this particular show. For a start because it is about struggle, and suffering, and all humans struggle and suffer, but we don’t always get to do it with musical numbers.
PTC: If you could create a tagline for this show, what would it be?
KA: -A Man. A Beard. No Plan. No Fear.
-Not Your Mama’s Russian Tragicomedy
– Bogeyman. Heretic. Seducer. There’s more but we don’t want to scare you away.
