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Hartford Stage’s Artistic Couple Talk About Their ‘Private Lives’

Costume designer Joshua Pearson, left, and his husband, Hartford Stage Company artistic director Darko Tresnjak,  at their home in Hartford.
Mara Lavitt, Special To The Courant
Costume designer Joshua Pearson, left, and his husband, Hartford Stage Company artistic director Darko Tresnjak, at their home in Hartford.
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If you think a married couple working together on a Noel Coward play about battling exes would be filled with tensions, bon mots, or at least a pitcher full of martinis, think again.

It’s a seemingly seamless partnership for director Darko Tresnjak and his husband Joshua Pearson who is designing the deco-delicious costumes for the Hartford Stage production of “Private Lives,” now in previews with a press opening on Wednesday, Jan. 14.

Oh, they bicker, this theatrical couple says, if not quite as wittily as Amanda and Elyot in the play — and who does? — then as any long-married couple, except it’s about daily details of home life, whether it’s their cooking styles or the care of their French bulldog, Hector.

But it’s never about what to wear — or what not to wear.

“Because in that area he’s right and I’m wrong,” says Tresnjak jokingly during a recent break from rehearsals over a glass of wine in their living room from their apartment in downtown Hartford.

“But I don’t dress him or tell him what to wear every day,” interjects Pearson. “But if he’s leaving the house and something is off, I point it out.” One stylish flourish of color, pattern or fabric is fine — but never more than one.”

As far as their working relationship for this show — as it was for last season’s “La Dispute” — they’re on the same pattern page.

“The way I cast actors is the same way I cast designers,” says Tresnjak, who is also the artistic director of the theater. “I wouldn’t want to work with him on this play unless he was perfect for it. Like I always think long and hard about who the perfect person is for every project. I have no loyalties outside of that.”

The 1930 comedy centers on a divorced couple Amanda and Elyot — played by Ken Barnett and Rachel Pickup — who discover that, while on their honeymoons in France with new younger (and duller) spouses, Victor and Sibyl, they are staying at adjacent hotel rooms. Despite Amanda and Elyot’s volatile relationship, they find they still have feelings for each other and run off together, abandoning their new spouses, only to realize they can’t live with or without each other.

“‘Private Lives’ is perfect for us because they’re a really healthy couple,” says Tresnjak. “When you meet people who say they never argue, I think that’s insane. Are they both zombies?”

Tresnjak says he sometimes worries about the age difference with his husband — the director is 49, Pearson is 35 — and that Tresnjak is in an influential position as the artistic head of a major theater. “But Josh had a strong personality and he also can tell me when to back off.”

Pearson’s designs in “Private Lives” and “La Dispute” tap into his affinity for elegance, small details and minimalism. It’s also reflected in the clean aesthetics in the couple’s apartment of mid-century and contemporary design and in Bosie, the company Pearson and fashion stylist Shala Rothenberg established three years ago.

Bosie specializes in refined and impeccably crafted bow ties, cravats and accessories for men and women. (Pearson’s made-in-New-York bow ties were recently sported by Michael Douglas, Morgan Freeman, Robert DeNiro and Kevin Kline in a GQ photo shoot. And yes, Tresnjak sported a Bosie bow tie when he won his Tony Award last June for his staging of the Broadway musical “A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder.” His tux was by Paul Smith.)

No Coward Connect

Both men were raised far from luxe penthouse apartments and the glitterati.

Tresnjak was born in Yugoslavia (now Serbia), emigrated to Washington, D.C. when he was 10, and went to Swarthmore College and then Columbia University where he majored in theater studies,

Pearson grew up in Idaho and Oregon where his interest in architecture turned towards costume design, a focus he majored in at the University of Oregon. “I’ve always been interested in aesthetics,” says Pearson.

After college Pearson moved to New York where his first “day job” was as a case worker with heroin addicts in a methadone clinic. But a more career-friendly job soon opened up in the summer of 2002, assisting a college friend in the costume shop at the Williamstown Theatre Festival in the Berkshires in Massachusetts.

Three weeks later he met Tresnjak who was directing there. They soon became a couple and in 2004 they married in Oregon. (Because there was a ruling that those marriages weren’t legal, they wed again in 2008 in California.)

Pearson was associate designer to Linda Cho (another Tony Award-winner for “Gentleman’s Guide”), working as associate designer on three shows that Tresnjak directed: “Two Noble Kinsmen” at the Public Theater, “Twelfth Night” at Oregon Shakespeare Festival, and “Titus Andronicus” at Stratford Shakespeare Festival in Canada.

When Tresnjak became artistic director at Hartford Stage in 2011, they moved to their Pearl Street apartment.

“I’m very particular and neat,” says Pearson. “I’ve always been minimal in my aesthetic so I don’t like clutter too much. I have a good sense of space so even in a small apartment I can make things visually correct.”

The home feels surprisingly free of tchotchkes, mementos and theater ephemera. “I feel more strongly about the space being visually correct than having some prized possession that I have to stare at. I have a kind of OCD thing. [Darko] knows that I live a certain way.”

Tresnjak agrees. “When he asks me where something should go in the apartment, I kind of say, ‘Upstage.’ I mean I only think about set design, not home design so I’m very happy to let him take charge. He’s also gotten rid of all my old clothes over the years.”

“He had all these cargo pants which drove me insane,” says Pearson.

“It’s all been wonderful because I can so focus on the productions,” says Tresnjak whose thin 5-foot-9-inch frame makes his body type an easy fit for impeccable clothes. Pearson, at 6-foot-5-inches, is a more challenging off-the-rack guy.

As for his own wardrobe, Pearson says: “I’m into lately buying less [clothes]. I have some American Apparel T-shirts that I wear every day and some well-fitting jeans and then I…er…shop at Dior a fair amount.”

Tresnjak says that during his bachelor days he thought of himself as “the filthiest gay man in the U.S.,” barely able to walk from one room to the next without stepping over pizza boxes, beer bottles, coffee cups and dirty clothes. Some bad habits aren’t entirely gone.

“You should visit his office,” says Pearson. “It’s disgusting. I don’t go there ever.”

“That’s my messy place,” laughs Tresnjak. “But it’s often difficult for me because sometimes I become so focused on plays, things like messes I tune out.”

But then he comes home to clean lines, soothing colors and uncluttered surfaces.

“I go through periods where all I want to be after a rehearsal is right here hibernating with the two of them,” Tresnjak says referring to Pearson and Hector who is now zoned out on Pearson’s lap.

“PRIVATE LIVES” is now in previews at Hartford Stage, 50 Church St, and opens Wednesday, Jan. 14, continuing through Feb. 8. Information: 860-527-5151 and www.hartfordstage.org and www.bosienewyork.com