Tattoo shirt for "Orin the Dentist”

The season finale of Playmakers Repertory Company’s 2024/2025 season was the popular and technically challenging musical, Little Shop of Horrors. The costume designer for this production, Grier Coleman, envisioned the character of Orin, canonically a sadistic dentist, as a would-be hard-core punk with arms covered in tattoos.. 

Robert Arica as Seymour, Jim Bray as Orin

The performer playing that role, Jim Bray, was also cast as four other characters, so the tattoos could not be done with makeup. The solution was to create literal tattoo sleeves, sewn into his shirt. This tattoo surface design effect is typically created on nylon spandex or Milliskin mesh dyed to match the performer’s skin tone. We went with the mesh for actor comfort and breathability.

Because I have done this type of tattoo shirt stage effect before, I did not have to do the kind of surface design product testing I might have otherwise had to do, and could begin hand-drawing the art as soon as graduate student and lead crafts supervisor Jillian Gregory dyed the fabric, patterned the sleeves, and thread marked them for me.

For the curious, products used were a combination of Sharpie markers in various colors and Marvy fabric markers. 

Because costume designer Grier Coleman was working on two other shows and is based out of New York City, she was not present in Chapel Hill when the tattoo sleeve decision was made. She emailed me the artwork for the tattoos that she would like incorporated into the sleeves and gave me placement directions as to what went where.

Here are some process photos and detail shots:

The first tattoo design

Jillian had threadmarked the elbow for the placement of this spiderweb

Here’s the whole sleeve, ready to be heat set, assembled, and stitched into the shirt.

In Traditional American tattoo style, a full sleeve is often composed of a patchwork of smaller tattoos with even smaller filler among them such as the stars, dots, & other motifs. I suggested we add pieces of candy in that filler art, and Grier loved the idea. Here’s the second sleeve:

A couple of other fun facts about the tattoo imagery:

1. The tooth with a braces attachment/wire is an actual tattoo on the arm of PRC company member Zoe Lord. 
2. Dental floss is incorporated into both sleeves of tattoo designs, because punks often use dental floss to sew patches onto their clothing. 

The show had so many fun projects, but this one might be my favorite.