Crabtree, Howard

Costume designer, librettist, and performer Howard Crabtree (1954-1996) created unique costume designs for several cabaret and Off-Broadway productions during the 1980s and 1990s before his untimely death from AIDS.

Born in Excelsior Springs, Missouri, Crabtree briefly attended Maple Woods Community College in Kansas City and later worked with the Missouri Dance Theatre as a dancer and choreographer. In 1976, he moved to Las Vegas for more career opportunities. The costumes and classic Vegas showgirls he encountered there had a lasting impression and their influence can be found in his productions. He first arrived to New York in 1978 and found work in a summer theater in Long Island, but soon moved to Canada to pursue ballet. In 1979, he joined the City Ballet of Toronto (later the Atlantic Ballet Company), and remained for the next five seasons. In addition to becoming a principal dancer, Crabtree choreographed many pieces and designed costumes for productions, including The Nutcracker, Peter and the Wolf, and Alice in Wonderland. During the mid-1980s, Crabtree returned to New York and worked in the wardrobe departments of several Broadway shows. While working backstage at La Cage aux Folles, he and a friend, Drew Geraci, created a cabaret act called Howard and Drew Meet the Invisible Man. The director was Mark Waldrop, with whom Crabtree formed a partnership under the name Figment Productions in 1988. The two began work on Whatnot, in which four actors, including Crabtree, played a multitude of roles in a variety show. The next show conceived by Crabtree and Waldrop was When Pigs Fly, a cabaret extravaganza with seven performances at the Duplex Bar in June 1991. This experience prepared them for the larger scale production that followed, Whoop-Dee-Doo of '92, which had a brief engagement at the Actor's Playhouse. After refining the libretto, and shortening the work's name to Whoop-Dee-Doo!, the revue returned to the Actor's Playhouse for eight months in 1993-94 and then went on the road to Boston. During this time period, Crabtree and his companion, Danny Gates, moved from Manhattan to a farmhouse in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, where they hosted weekend-long drag parties for friends and used the property's barn as a workshop to develop new costumes. The success of Whoop-Dee-Doo! led to an even more outrageously designed show that built upon, and used the same title as the earlier cabaret act, When Pigs Fly. Unfortunately, Crabtree's health was in decline, which forced him to have a reduced role in working on the show. All of his strength went into building the costumes, but he died a few days after completing them and several weeks before the show opened at the Douglas Fairbanks Theater. The show lived on after him; it played Off-Broadway for two years and won several awards, including a special OBIE citation for the work of Crabtree and the creative team.

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