It’s a Universal experience.
You begin your workday sorting through paperwork, crossing the “t’s” and dotting the “i’s” necessary to manage the costuming logistics for a large theatrical production. You get a call from another department requesting help laundering their costumes, and before long, you’re pushing a cart of laundry through 1920s Paris, thinking ahead to a meeting you have with the senior costume designer in the afternoon.
Meetings take place, the list of tasks grows; the number of days until your deadline shrinks. The panic starts to set in—at all there is to get done, the expectations from the intellectual property holders, the standards for excellency you keep for yourself… You thrive under pressure, but the approach of the eleventh hour is pushing you to your limit.
So, you do what anyone in your position would do. You take a break, and you go pet a dragon.
For School of Theatre and Dance (SOTD) alum, Matty Limerick, who joined Universal Studios in late 2024 as a costuming coordinator for the highly anticipated theme park Epic Universe, the line between the imaginary and the real is delightfully blurry. Working on costuming for How to Train Your Dragon — Isle of Berk, Limerick’s position allows them to blend their passion for theatre with their life-long appreciation of theme parks.
As a graduate of the University of Florida’s MFA program in Theatre with a focus in costume design and technology, Limerick joins the scores of SOTD alumni who are making their mark in the world of technical theatre. The challenges they faced in graduating in 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic makes this moment especially sweet for Limerick and those who share in their success.
In the Loop sat down with Limerick to discuss their journey to their current position, and how throughout times of uncertainty, their devotion to their art and to the communities they have formed have culminated in their work on a true dream project.
Can you share a bit about yourself and your background in the theatre arts?
Limerick: I have always been doing theatrical things, even if you don't always realize how theatrical they are when you're growing up. Large-scale church musicals, band, theatre, and high school.
I started off as an actor years ago. I was going to be the next Broadway star—as most are wont to do—and lived in New York City. I kind of took any work I could at that point, which led to stage managing, house managing, selling T-shirts at Wicked. Very broad yet niche things.
And then I started doing some dressing and design work here and there, just because it was fun. I had an interest in style and fashion, and I ended up working for a theatre in upstate New York at Cayuga Community College. They have a really wonderful theatre program there, and they needed a costume designer, so I kind of fell into it. I loved it, and that led me to UF, as they were a great program and really supportive of the graduate students.
You have quite a bit of experience working on staged theatre productions. How did your work at Universal Studios come about?
Limerick: One of my hyper fixations is theme parks and theme park history. I used to be what I call “the certified Disney adult.” And prior to the pandemic hitting in 2020, when I was in my last semester of UF, I was offered a job at Disney on an upcoming project. I came to Orlando, and—as with many things during COVID-19—the project did not stay intact. And so, I was here in Orlando, kind of working around. We didn't know if the industry was ever coming back.
But this is what led me to Universal. I have friends that worked there and loved it. And so, the first time I worked there, I worked in a non-theatrical department because I needed work. Then I went to Norwegian Cruise Lines, where I've spent the last two-and-a-half years overseeing their large-scale Broadway shows and traveling to work with that.
When Epic Universe was announced years ago, I thought: “How cool would this project be? I’m not gonna get to work this. But man, wouldn’t that be cool?” And then the opportunity dropped in my lap last fall, and I could not say no! There are certain fun things that you just dream of doing, and this was one of those things.
Can you share about the work you’ve been doing at Epic Universe?
Limerick: I started in December with the entertainment costuming department as a costuming coordinator. I’m on our leadership team helping our daily operations team—in this situation, our dressers in “Isle of Berk”—get the show ready.
This is the first time in a long time Universal Orlando has had a musical, and potentially the first time Universal has had a musical of this scale. “Untrainable” opened in Beijing about three or four years ago in Mandarin, and it’s more or less the same show. We have had to make some changes because of where we dramaturgically set the timeline on the “Isle of Berk” within the franchise “How to Train Your Dragon,” which guests will learn as they come and visit.
It’s a large-scale show, plus the amount of atmospheric performers that we are offering—so there are a lot of moving parts. I’m in that "middle management" range of helping make sure all those parts move, or jumping in and doing a quick change when we need to. I’m doing all the fun things, but also the not-so fun things that are all required to make large scale theatrics.
You mentioned your “hyper fixation” on theme parks. Can you speak a little more about what draws you to them?
The thing that always drew me to theme parks is how we can convey nonverbal storytelling. The first thing an audience learns about a guest or a character is when they walk upstage and how they're dressed—even in our daily lives. Clothing. It's how we prepare ourselves for the world.
You are going to have an assumption about a character or a place based on what it looks like.
We’ve got four different lands. In one day, you can meet Princess Peach, the Bride of Frankenstein, the Invisible Man, a group of students from 1927 Paris in The Wizarding World, a bunch of Celestians who are telling stories and making music with a bunch of Vikings.
We're making sure that everything is looking as squeaky-clean and awesome as it can, so that the guests who, for example, might not speak English, are going to understand the narrative of the land and understand what they're seeing—even if they don't speak the language.
And then also with us—going back to your earlier question about my role—we don't own outright all the properties, necessarily, that we're presenting. We have what we call IP integrity, which means that we’re making sure that the intellectual property holders are happy; that we are presenting the best version of their brand with our brand. That’s also something I consider a big part of my job.
Can you give us some insights into your process as a designer and costuming coordinator?
Limerick: I always say I like to do the weird, wonderful things. One of my favorite things that I’ve ever designed was costuming for “Rough Magic,”which was directed by Dr. Judith Williams for UF in 2019. It was modern magic Shakespeare written by the guy who developed “Riverdale” (Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa). It was all things that seemed cool, and like magic in the real world, so I loved working in that structure creatively.
Getting to know my designer, I think, is really important. A lot of the processes I use when I'm approaching this job are because we had Maggie Baker working with us. She is an incredible designer who is responsible for so many, if not all the costumes in Epic. It’s just getting to know her and her process.
I treat every project I work on as if it's a big piece of art. We’re making a musical about dragons and finding your forever family for theme park audiences, and I'm treating that with the same respect and seriousness as the pre-Broadway shows I've worked on. It was designed the exact same way, and the performers are giving it their all.
It helps that I’m also someone who loves working in wardrobe. I love running a wardrobe team—the rush of a quick change. I got a lot of experience in that during my time at Cayuga Community College and as an undergraduate at State University of New York at New Paltz, and it's something I brought with me when I came to UF and was working with our shop manager and teams that do wardrobe. I like to bring that approach of: how I would want my design to be respected if I was the designer? I want it to be upheld!
Have you worked on Epic Universe with any other UF alumni?
Limerick: Yes! Amanda Resch, who is Class of 2017 and Jade Campbell, who’s Class of 2018. They have worked in different parts of the costuming department with Epic Universe, so it’s been fun to see those faces. And getting to work with Jade every day has been really great. I’ve also worked with Halea Jo Downing, who graduated in 2022 from the MFA Scenic Design program.
Do you have leaders in the industry that you really look to? People who are doing really cool design work, or who inspire you?
Limerick: I like to go back to Joe Rohde, who was a huge pioneering force for Disney for a long time. The way he designs entire worlds is brilliant to me. I think it's incredible because he's thinking about a lot of different aspects of the design process.
Paul Taswell is also someone who I have looked up to for years. He just won the Oscar for costumes for “Wicked”. His eye is incredible. There’s also Ruth Carter, who did “Black Panther" for Disney. Her approach to Afrofuturism is incredible. And then, also, Greg Barnes, who's one of, in my opinion, the most legendary theatre designers that we have. The “more is more” of his aesthetic, but also the kindness that he approaches people with, is something that I love.
Also: Jen Dasher, who is at UF and was my mentor there. I learned so much from her: the business aspects, and also just the empathy, and how to remember kindness and the spirit of why we do what we do.
You know, there are just so many inspirations I take on. I love eighties cartoons. I love a bright, silly world. And that's the kind of levity I like to bring even to the most serious things I'm working on.
As a lifelong fan of theatre with a deep reverence for theme parks, what has it been like seeing this dream come to fruition?
Limerick: I am incredibly lucky to be working on this monumental project. When we were in technical rehearsals, we got to show all our coworkers the really cool things we’re working on. It was an incredibly stressful day, but if I’ve had a bad day, I go take a walk to see them working with Toothless—and I get to see him emerge as this really cool product and watch our show come together.
And now, I’m getting to see people in their twenties and thirties who grew up with “How to Train Your Dragon” walk around the bend and scream and fall to their knees because there is a fully interactive Toothless that, for the first time, they're getting to meet. It’s like I get to see their inner child being fulfilled. It’s a really cool part of what I do.
When we had kids in the park for the first time with their families, seeing them get to experience the insane work of my team has just been really rewarding. And this twenty-minute show that we’re working on is going to be a lot of children’s first time in a theatre. And it’s going to inspire them to go see their local community theatre; it’s going to encourage them to audition for their school plays.
As someone who graduated in 2020 into a particularly challenging time for those pursuing careers in the theatre arts, could you share any insights on how you made it through that time? Is there any advice you would give to today’s graduating students?
Limerick: A lot of folks leaving a BFA program might be frustrated. This is at any school — you might be frustrated. You might be so exhausted from four years of rigor and rules, and you think you know what your next step is, or you might be so lost that you don't know, and you're ready to turn your back on everything you've learned.
Find your community. Find the people you're going to make theatre with, make art with. Make things that you enjoy. Some of my most successful friends who I'm so proud of have spearheaded most of their own career by deciding what they were going to do themselves with their own community.
Give yourself grace and patience. There is no timeline on success, but I think success is a weird topic for a lot of people because there's no one answer to what success is and when you can consider yourself a professional.
I was someone that wanted every step planned for myself. When I graduated with my MFA, I had a production lined up at the Asolo Repertory Theatre I was supposed to work on. I was supposed to do two back-to-back productions in the summer of a pre-Broadway run of a show, and then come back to Orlando and start working for Disney. I had everything micromanaged for myself.
And if I learned anything in the last almost five years since graduation, it is that every time that I said, “you know what, I'm just going to exist and enjoy this for now, and then I'm going to figure out what's coming next”—that next thing kind of dropped in my lap or popped up relatively quickly. Because sometimes we don't necessarily know what our best next move is, and we've kind of got to let the universe speak to us a little.
We have to remember that we're people first, and if the person is not being fed, then the art, or whatever you work to create, can't be fed either.
Let yourself exist. Surround yourself with people you can trust that make art that you also believe in. And give yourself time. Don't rush yourself. Just do what you need to do to make sure you're making it to the next day—and then, have some fun and make sure you're making some really cool art while you are. This is what I recommend.
