Qween Jean Speaks Out on Freedom, Fashion, and LIBERATION

A revolution is about to go down at the James Earl Jones Theatre. This fall, Bess Wohl's Liberation, directed by Whitney White, moves to Broadway following a critically acclaimed, award-winning run at Roundabout Theatre Company.

Set in 1970s Ohio, Liberation follows a group of women who meet weekly in the basement of their local Y during the height of the women’s Liberation movement. As their candid conversations unfold, the play examines the everyday moments that ignite lasting change, interwoven with a present-day narrator uncovering her mother’s radical past.

Qween Jean is the Costume Designer who gets to give each of these women an identity, and it's not a job that she is taking lightly. She just checked in with BroadwayWorld to tell us all about what Liberation means to her, and why this is play that audiences will not want to miss. 

What was your starting point in the design process and what were your early conversations with Bess and Whitney like?

The world of Liberation is so powerful and necessary and I think urgent. These are all ordinary people who end up doing something quite extraordinary because they've all  focused their energy and their power towards arriving at a solution. And I think that ultimately for me reading it, it's just all so timely, so aligned. As a human rights advocate myself, it just all felt like a very continued conversation as our main character is desperately trying to fill in the gaps about their mother's past.

Bess and Whitney are truly magnificent collaborators and in terms of our process, we really have just a lot of conversation, specifically around movement work in the early 70s. I think a lot of like women in the movement were like, "Okay, what about us!?" I think the call for freedom, and equity and Liberation is necessary, but it's often from a patriarchal perspective. So we find this identifying principle that no matter what color you are, as a femme or a woman existing in society in the early 70s, there still wasn't any dedicated intentional space or provisions being made for women's Liberation. That's kind of where we start the show. 

There's something really powerful about people realizing that, yes, we're free, we're not in captivity, but there's still bars all around us. And that's a direct line from the show. So in a way, it's like women are still placed mentally in this positionality of service and there's no reciprocity and there's no clear path for this meeting to have a retribution... until they start raising consciousness. That's powerful, right? That's how we have breakthrough and transformation is when began to ignite and to spark a flame. 

And so how do you convey all of that in clothes?

I'll be so honest. I love clothes as much as I love my freedom. [Laughs] I do! There's something about the 70s that is a dream. This is early 70s and there is a beautiful shift that we're starting to see where we're coming out of the 50s- coming out of a silhouette that was very feminine, but maybe it could be seen as rigid. In the 70s, you know, we're now seeing the trouser really become a unisex thing. Fashion actually becomes unisex, and even more deeply as we get further into the 70s. But there's something really powerful about being able to follow this beautiful connecting tissue line- as people are getting free, the clothes are getting free.

Were there any specific reference points for you? 

I spent a lot of time doing archival research. I was really looking into the myriad of protests. Obviously, we know that New York City was the epicenter of the hotbed for a lot of activation, Detroit, DC... we saw how uprising consciousness was spreading, right? And so even in Ohio, folks are like, "Well, hey! you know, people are getting together and people are taking to the streets!" Just two years before, there was a Stonewall uprising. I think a few years before that, we had the Compton Cafeteria riots in Los Angeles. Down in North Carolina, people were doing sit-ins at the diners. There's something that is really powerful that is woven in real places, work, and words. 

So a part of my design process was seeing how a lot of these movements were started, looking at flyers, looking at detail. And of course, what folks are wearing. I call it armor. How would someone show up in the 70s versus the 60s versus 2025. And how do I even show up? And so these are the things that I'm really looking at. There's something really beautiful about being able to look at the past and to weave in so many of those details into each character for this production. 

I think this show is so important. It must be so exciting that so many more people are going to get to see it now...

Absolutely. I think one of the extremely special things that Bess and Whitney are inviting us as an audience to be able to take away from this project is its transformation and reconciliation. And that our main character felt at odds with her mom. To be able to travel back and to see all of the sacrifices, the pain and the turmoil, and to be able to provide for your family ultimately. I think this piece is cathartic in that way.

I think that a lot of us need reminding that in order to get to this next step, to get over this hurdle that we're experiencing currently in 2025 with this administration, we have to know that there was a time where it was even scarier. We will get through this moment, but the only way that we get through it is by listening to each other, caring for one another, and deeply respecting that everyone around us is here and they don't have to audition for empathy or audition for the right to exist. 

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