care what period it is in, then it's not right. You need to design costumes that can still be read and understood by audiences," she says. Though plays should be evaluated in their historical context, costume designers must evaluate whether to sacrifice historical accuracy in order for the story to fully resonate with the audience. Verheyen once designed for a Victorian play in which a female character disrobes. "I had her in the perfect Victorian corset. It was absolutely beautiful. She looked great and the scene seemed to be working, but the director kept saying 'Mariann, something's nagging at me about this.... I don't think it's sexy enough,' and I was like, 'You know what, I get that,' and I changed it to a 1950s boned bustier," she says. Though she admired the beauty of the historically accurate costume, it did not get the right message across. Verheyen frames the question as "What is more important: that it be period or that it be sexy the way we understand sexy?" She chose to stretch the historical veracity for the sake of the audience's comprehension. BOHEMSTER The role of the costume designer is not merely to update the setting of a play but to take it outside of time when necessary in order to serve the vision of the production. This freedom from the confines of accuracy can be liberating when other attributes of a production make adhering to historical facts difficult. For a production of "La Bohme" that Carlile designed,