Before the hurricane arrives — before the arguments ignite and the family fractures at a luxury Caribbean resort — someone has to decide what everyone is wearing when it all falls apart.
For Miami New Drama’s world premiere of The Zionists: A Family Storm, that someone is Anya Klepikov, a designer whose work spans off-Broadway, opera, dance, and fine art installations. She returns to Miami following her work with Miami City Ballet, and she brings to this production the same exacting eye: the belief that what a person wears is never incidental. It is always a confession.
The Starting Point: A Matriarch’s Discipline
Klepikov’s process began not with a sketchpad but with an image of a prominent Jewish-American matriarch, who could have been the inspiration for Ruth Rosenberg.
“I zeroed in on her personal discipline as it manifested in her choice and cut of clothes,” Klepikov explains. “I began my collaboration with our director by sharing a photo of this woman wearing some bossy blue suede pumps. The feeling I developed for that character has animated my work on this show.”
A Map of Identity: From New York to Tel Aviv
Gelman’s play gathers a fractured Jewish family in the shadow of October 7. The characters arrive from different worlds, and Klepikov dressed them accordingly:
- New York’s polished minimalism
- Tel Aviv’s relaxed ease
- Oakland’s creative edge
But the specificity cuts deeper than geography. Every character arrives performing, in some sense — this is a family vacation, a curated self-presentation — until the performance collapses.
“They are all conscientiously showing up for the occasion of ‘family vacation,’ which is a performance of sorts — until things get real.”
Working closely with director Chloe Treat, Klepikov mapped the power dynamics within each couple: who dresses with intention, and who simply wears what their partner selects. She also did something less conventional — she researched each actor’s own history on stage and screen, mining their past work for colors and silhouettes that would amplify what they naturally bring to their characters. “Casting always has an enormous effect on how the characters are portrayed,” she notes, “but in the case of a contemporary play, casting especially affects the costumes.”
The guiding principle throughout: real people, not archetypes. “It was important for us to make each character as compelling as possible in their truth so that the audience would not be able to easily write off any of the perspectives shared in the play.”
The Art of the “In-Process” Sketch
Klepikov’s design sketches, built from digital collages featuring the actors’ actual faces alongside images of real garments, are deliberately, productively unfinished.
“I have intentionally left the seams of my Photoshop splicing visible, so that these sketches scream ‘In Process!'” she explains. The rough edges are an invitation — space for director and actors to step into the design and make it their own. The final costumes aren’t exact replicas of what appears in the collages, but as Klepikov puts it, “they are in that same attitude.”
A Story Told in Every Detail
At the heart of Klepikov’s practice is a belief in what happens when a garment meets the right body in the right context. “When designing costumes for theater, I love co-creating a character with an actor. Watching an actor settle into a garment and become someone a little different is a taste of paradise to me.”
Asked which look she’s most excited about as the production opens, she deflects with the warmth of someone who has clearly fallen for the whole ensemble.
“They are all my children,” she says. “And like Ruth Rosenberg, I love them all.”
The Zionists is onstage now through May 10.
Written by S. Asher Gelman and directed by Chloe Treat, this urgent world premiere has already been called “a stroke of genius” by the Miami Herald. Performances are selling out — secure your seats today before the storm hits.
