Professor of Costume Design David Howard has been teaching at the University of Rhode Island for nearly 26 years, and has made significant contributions to the theater department and the surrounding community.
Some of these include immense development of both the theater program and wardrobing.
His education began at the State University of New York at Fredonia, where he studied acting and experimented with stage management, directing and design. While he realized early on that he wanted to have a career in theater, he was unaware of the enormity of careers he had to choose from.
“I met a very good friend of mine who got me my first job wardrobing for a theater and I found that I really liked it and was pretty good at it,” Howard said. “I did that for a number of years and four years professionally after I graduated.”
Wardrobing for a production involves the maintenance of clothes, which entails laundry and ironing for performing actors. During his time in this aspect of theater, Howard was a wardrobe supervisor at GeVa Theatre, in Rochester, New York . He continued this role until he was 23 and then moved to Newport, Rhode Island to work at Astors Beachwood, a museum on Belview Avenue.
“It was a living history museum that took place in the year 1891,” Howard said. “I was responsible not only for the maintenance of the clothes, but the creation of historic clothing for the people who worked in the house.”
The Gilded Age mansion, which at the time was Newport’s only living age museum, was transformed through a project led by the theater department at URI in the 1980’s, Howard said. It was operational until the early 2000’s then sold to Oracle in 2010, a corporation run by entrepreneur Larry Ellison.
In the hopes of getting more experience and education in design elements of theater, Howard worked to get a Masters of Fine Arts in design from the University of Connecticut in 1998. Howard has also explored a variety of careers, all of which he said had great value in his life.
“There are thousands of different facets to being a theater person,” Howard said. “I was very lucky in the school I went to because they really encouraged students to examine their talents.”
In addition to being a prop master, a part of the crew that handles props that are on the set, he tried stage managing, directing, acting and design.
“I really tried to take advantage of all the opportunities that were available to me within my department to have a bag of tools that you can take out into the world,” Howard said.
Howard felt very fortunate that he was able to experience such a variety of opportunities and careers. While he doesn’t have a favorite, he noted that each one of the career paths that he explored was the best thing for the time in his life that he was at.
“I love my career as a designer and educator,” Howard said. “I love teaching. Everything that I was doing was exactly what I wanted to be doing at that time.”
Along with being a professor at the University, Howard maintains a creative presence in the community. He is a professional costume designer, both for the University and for professional companies in the area, such as The Gamm Theatre.
Howard also does research within historic clothing and the ability to use historic clothing to teach people about those clothes.
“Usually clothes in a museum are displayed behind a glass panel,” Howard said, “So one of the things I do is recreate historic clothing so that students and others can see them up close and see details that allow me to teach about their evolution and importance.”
Though Howard’s original plan after graduating from UConn was to take a job as a designer, it fell through at the last minute and he was presented with a different opportunity in 1998. A connection reached out to Howard about a job posting at URI. The official position was the replacement educator for a member of the faculty who had gone on sabbatical to London.
After a year of teaching, he was asked to stay on as a lecturer for two more years. Before the two years were up, a position opened on the faculty for a tenured position in 2001. Howard applied and was accepted for the job.
“I kept working on my teaching skills and tried to be the best teacher I could while holding on to a professional design career,” Howard said, “I’ve really enjoyed being a teacher. I look to myself as being a teacher first and a scholar second.”
Howard hopes that within the next couple of years, he will continue to investigate deeper and hopefully publish a book. For fun, he enjoys reading, podcasts and working with legos. He is currently the advisor for the student lego club, which uses legos to explore creativity and build an artistic voice.
Among some of Howard’s favorite accomplishments are advising students, helping to make the department better and having a successful production of “Marie Antoinette” this past fall at URI.
“I look at accomplishments as being the things that we value,” Howard said. “I don’t look at publications and the hundreds of shows I’ve designed as being accomplishments.”
Among Howard’s most recent accomplishments was the design of clothes and costumes in the production of “12th Night,” which officially opened March 26, and will be closing April 14.