UCI alumna Danielle Nieves serves as a costume designer for the upcoming “Go, Dog. Go! — Ve Perro ¡Ve!” performance by the Children’s Theatre Company in Minneapolis, scheduled Jan. 20 to Feb. 22, 2026.
The show — adapted from P.D. Eastman’s classic book Go, Dog. Go!— is intended for younger audiences.
First performed at the Chicago Children’s Theater in March 2025, the show in Minneapolis will incorporate English and Spanish.
Nieves was invited to the team by director Juliette Carrillo, whom she first met as a graduate student when she was delivering colloquiums at UC Irvine. Nieves later worked with her on the play “I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter,” which was staged in January and February 2023.
“It’s been great… It’s always really nice to get to work on theater for young audiences, because the content is just very uplifting, usually, and the visuals are very colorful and engaging,” Nieves told New University.
Nieves described her work as being intrinsically linked to personality and identity.
“Because costume design asks me, and all costume designers, to really focus on who people are at their core and how that manifests,” Nieves said. “But also how their personality and their belief systems and their identities and their backgrounds, all of that is expressed, I think, very pertinently through clothing”.
She developed her interest in costume design while studying at Middlebury College after attending an information session on the subject, where she realized how it connected to her experience in sewing and drawing.
“Go, Dog. Go! — Ve Perro ¡Ve!” has pushed Nieves to approach costume design differently than she does in productions for adult audiences.
“I would say with most other plays that I do, would gear towards adults, you do a lot of character analysis and background research, and who is this person and why are they making these choices and saying the words that they say,” Nieves said.
However, children’s theater requires a different outlook, according to Nieves.
“In this show, well, they’re dogs,” Nieves said. “These characters should be recognizable and still within the visual world of the source material, which is an illustrated children’s book”.
The original book’s art also shaped her design process.
“You’re drawing direct inspiration from one source material… like other art and photographs, research, clothing comes into play there, but the main source is the book,” Nieves said.
Additionally, this required her to focus on color as a direct connection to the source material.
“The way that we have decided to try and tackle it is by really honing in on the color and being very specific about the color scheme,” Nieves said. “These colors are not quite like you would think red dog is like a primary red, but it’s slightly off-red because this book was written in the 60s. And so they all have like a ‘60s tinge.”
Nieves also spoke about the role of minute detail in costume design and how this impacts acting.
“I think that that helps bring realism into shows and that sometimes with clothing and costumes, the less people are aware of costumes, the better,” Nieves said.
Those interested in buying tickets to the event in Minneapolis can do so through the Children’s Theater Company’s website.
More information on Danielle Nieves’ work — including her past costume designs — is available online.
Aidan Wyrough is a Features Staff Writer. He can be reached at awyrough@uci.edu.
Edited by Aditya Biswas and Mia Noergaard