If the Song Doesn't Work, Change the Dress

Iconic Broadway costume designer Patricia Zipprodt (1925-99) tells her own colourful story from a tumultuous childhood in Depression-era Chicago to Bohemian New York in the 1950s, becoming one of the 20th century's most celebrated designers.

Told with Zipprodt's acerbic humour and delicious wit, If the Song Doesn't Work, Change the Dress charts her journey to 1950s Greenwich Village, America's literary and artistic Bohemia. Tracking her career as it plunges into the developing Off-Broadway movement, and charting her personal and professional failures and successes, she collaborated with the biggest artists of the day—Jerome Robbins, Hal Prince, and Bob Fosse—making her one of the most recognisable, and award-winning, designers of 20th-century theatre.

Published in full colour, this illustrated memoir includes pictures from Zipprodt's own archive, including sketches, drawings, and photographs of her work from some of the most significant shows of the 20th century, such as Cabaret, Fiddler on the Roof, Chicago, and Pippin. Her collaborations with American theatre giants like Jo Mielziner, Irene Sharaff, José Quintero, Boris Aronson, Tony Walton, and Joel Grey (who provides a personal foreword to the memoir) are also showcased.

Zipprodt’s posthumous collaborator, theatre design historian Arnold Wengrow, provides a vivid epilogue about her final battle with cancer. Drawing from her archive at the New York Public Library and Museum of the Performing Arts, he amplifies her recollections with letters, oral histories, and interviews she gave over the years, offering a portrait of an artist consistently working against the grain.

If the Song Doesn’t Work, Change the Dress will delight readers interested in Broadway, ballet, opera, and the history of costume design. Her lively anecdotes about New York theatre and working in Hollywood provide a rich insight into the life and work of a celebrated female creative giant of American theatre.