Costume and Design for Devised and Physical Theatre E-Book

Tina Bicat

• Herausgeber: Crowood
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 231

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2012

Beschreibung

Costumes designed and made for devised or physical drama, for contemporary circus or for dance, differ radically from the more traditional costume work produced for naturalistic performance. For those working in the field - whether professional or student - these differences present challenges that this book seeks to highlight and explain while offering effective solutions to overcome them.

Leseprobe

Costume and Design for Devised and Physical Theatre

TINA BICÂT

Copyright

First published in 2012 by The Crowood Press Ltd, Ramsbury, Marlborough, Wiltshire, SN8 2HR

www.crowood.com

This e-book edition first published in 2012

© Tina Bicât 2012

All rights reserved. This e-book is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

ISBN 978 1 84797 449 5

Front cover: Ockham’s Razor in Memento Mori. (Photo: Nik Mackey) Frontispiece: RedCape Theatre in 1, Beach Road. (Photo: Nik Mackey)

Acknowledgements

Thanks to the companies who have let me use photographs of their productions: Chris Baldwin Theatre, Bicat Co., Jonathan Lunn Dance Company, Lost Banditos, NIE, Ockham’s Razor, Punchdrunk, RedCape Theatre, St Mary’s University College at Strawberry Hill, Theatre-Rites, Turtle Key Arts. And to Chris Baldwin, Patrick Baldwin, Lisette Barlow, Sophie Bellin, Kate Bicât, Nick Bicât, Tony Bicât, Alex Byrne, Lionel Caujolle, Meline Danielevitz, Stefano Di Renzo, Maxine Doyle, Stuart Glover, Christophe Grenier, Mark Griffin, Alex Harvey, Marion Huard, Christine Jarvis, Ali King, Tina Koch, Christine Lee, Nik Mackey, Alexander McDonnell, Polly McDonnell, Alistair Milne, Charlotte Mooney, Sabina Netherclift, Gemma Palomar Delgardo, Ann-Noelle and David Pinnegar at Hammerwood Park, Kate Rigby, Anami Schrijvers, Paul Stowe, Kasper Svenstrup Hansen, Kim Swaden-Ward, Trevor Walker, Kasia Zeremba Byrne and all the people with whom I work, and who have answered my questions. Photos and drawings are by the author unless otherwise stated.

‘He’ and ‘she’ are used indiscriminately in this book because, of course, everyone in this job does everything they can.

For Jessie and Felix Caujolle and Daisy and Tom McDonnell, with my love.

Contents

Title Page

Copyright

1 The World of Devised and Physical Theatre

2 Invention in the Rehearsal Room

3 Communication and Meetings

4 Discovering the Style and Creating the Designs

5 Design in Rehearsal

6 Shopping and Sourcing

7 Cutting for Movement

8 Fittings

9 Costume for Extreme Physical Movement

10 Accessories, Extras and Costume Objects

11 The Technical and Dress Rehearsal and the Show

Index

Theatre-Rites and Ockham’s Razor in Hang On. (Photo: Patrick Baldwin)

1 The World of Devised and Physical Theatre

A set that suggests a world and leaves room for actors and objects to invent. (Photo: Kasia Zeremba Byrne)

Doing the Splits in Tight Trousers

There’s a difficult meeting point when performers, who perhaps are somersaulting six metres above the stage, want to play everyday people. They need to play recognizable characters and tell real stories while performing dangerous feats which no ordinary human could manage in skin-tight lycra, let alone in a suit and tie which might flap and catch, come untucked and rip.

How can a dancer perform an arabesque in a Victorian skirt that appears to weigh several kilos? How can you do a back flip in a hooded jacket without the hood falling over your face and blinding you for the all-important landing? What happens to the librarian’s specs when she is flying on the end of a rope, or walking on her hands in her dream of a more exciting life? What happens to the fairy’s wings in the rain?

(Photo: Nik Mackey)

(Photo: Nik Mackey)

(Photo: Alex Byrne)

Costumes are not solely for actors to wear; sometimes they can become an integral part of the set.

(Photo: Alex Byrne)

(Photo: Lisette Barlow)

(Photo: Lisette Barlow)

These, and hundreds of other problems, present themselves during the design and making process of any production that calls for unusual movement or circumstance. Many of them are not apparent before rehearsals start because most of this sort of work is created through the devising process in the rehearsal room. But it is a great help to be prepared, and to invent designs that are sympathetic to the physical needs of the performer.

It is easy to forget, in the busy and engrossing work of making theatre, how much work the audience does in interpreting what they see and hear. They can be made up of theatrically experienced people and those who have never been to a performance before. We may put our ideas on the stage for them to see, but they interpret them each in their own particular way using their own particular experience and interest. Our ideas, which seem so solid and important to us as we turn them into words and music, sights and sounds, are only suggestions, and we have to trust the audience to enlarge them into reality.

The Setting and the Light

The setting in which the performers play their parts is the first thing that the audience sees, and helps their understanding of, and involvement in, the show. It gives people confidence that their interpretation is on the right lines, or tells them if they can allow their mind to create a more abstract world. The set is the frame and the context for the costume designer’s work. Physical theatre tends to make the most of any available stage space for the movement of the actors. The setting has to allow for this, which can mean that there is not much room for the actual set, and the costume and objects or props have to work together with the lighting to do the set’s job. The performers and the lighting designer are the people who give it life.

Without light the world that the designer makes for the performers and the audience is lifeless. In a controlled theatre space, where the light of any mood and place can be created, the audience’s attention is focused directly on the action. In the open air in the daytime the designer has to design for God’s lighting, which is less reliable though often no less theatrical. The first consideration will be the quality of the natural light. This depends on the country, the time of day, and where the sun is in the sky at the time of the performance. In some parts of the world this is reliable – for example July in the South of France is usually flooded with light. Northern climates can be more problematic, however, and colour has to be clear enough to show up in a grey, soft light if nature does not choose to give you the light you hope for when you want it.

Collaborative Company Design

RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT

Rehearsals for a devised performance are not the same as those for a performance that is script led. It is quite usual for this rehearsal period to be a research and development (‘R & D’) time. This means that the end result of this particular period will be either a short, rudimentary performance, possibly to attract future funding, or a springboard to the discussions and development of the finished work. These sessions are invaluable to the designer. The cast may not be the final choice for the performance, and much of the content will be unformed and experimental. But the style the company will work in, the atmosphere they hope to create on stage, and the reality or otherwise of the world they are inventing, will be clear.

All theatre technicians love gaffer tape (duct tape) and cable ties.

There will have been meetings, and perhaps casting workshops, before this collaborative creative period. The company will have been chosen not only for their skill, but also for their inventive ability. It can take a long time to assemble a company, and often a nucleus of the group will have worked together before and will have a tried and tested working relationship; new members will have been chosen for their ability to fit in with the group and to add fresh skills to the process. Designers for each production are chosen for the same reasons; their differing skills and particular specializations must be appropriate to the style of work envisaged.

The design of all areas used in the production will grow together. The number of different designers employed on a show varies with the scale of the production and its budget. Designers and makers who work in this field tend to have an open ability to design anything that appears on a stage, and particular skill in one or two fields. The costume designer for a devised production may also be responsible for the design of the set, effects, props or objects. If puppets and masks are being used they will be in her design brief unless other people with these particular skills have been employed.

Skills tend to overlap. A physical theatre company devising a piece may include actors who are also musicians, dancers, acrobats or puppeteers. Performers are trained in a wide variety of skills and know that their best chance of success in the ever-changing world of theatre is to have a wide base of expertise to draw on. The company may use one person in a variety of ways. An actor may make puppets and show others how to animate them, or use a specialized skill in movement for mask work, stage fighting or tumbling. Designers working in this type of theatre need a similar variety of chameleon skills.

An improvised costume sets the design for the performance. (Photos: Alex Byrne)

COLLABORATION

A devising company will make decisions collaboratively. The designer’s vision encompasses the whole production as the audience will see it. Performers often have a picture in their head of the way they will look as a character, but their situation prevents them from imagining the production as a whole, or how they will look within it. It is important, therefore, that you all work together quickly and openly near the beginning of the rehearsal period, before actors’ visions become too fixed and engrained into their character development and movement, or yours into a characterization that does not exist.

In every department, through each stage of making a production, there runs a difficulty. So much is invented by so many different people, all of whom have been employed because of the skill, the speed and the variety of their invention, but not all of their improvisations and ideas can make it to the final production. Many will be followed and will perhaps have taken a long time to develop, and it can be hard for everyone to recognize, at the end of all this labour, that they have been sweating down a blind alley. One of the great skills of this type of rehearsal is to recognize these culs de sac early, to drop an idea without regret or personal involvement, and then to get on with the job. Another is to find the way to communicate an idea clearly and excitingly enough for it to get a fair trial.

Performers improvising with costume can be astonishingly quick in inventing characters and action around any costume or objects they are given to work with. The imaginations and inventions of a devising company can produce a dozen ideas from the same source, and an actor may show you depths and movement in a costume that surprise and delight you. On the other hand, they can also fail to notice possibilities in a costume because they are playing within it, rather than seeing it from the outside, as you are. Performer and designer, when they can work together from both points of view, get the best results from any costume.

Group discussion will be easier if you have talked about your reactions to the initial stimulus with the director before rehearsals start, and perhaps have pinned up a few images or produced some hats or small items that are appropriate to this germ of a concept. These and the concept they suggest can be discarded at the first discussion, but at least there will be something concrete to work from. Rudimentary on-the-spot sketches will describe your thoughts to the company more clearly than words.

Another useful skill is to draw as someone describes the costume they imagine, so that you can both see what is in each other’s mind; later, in the more peaceful situation of your workroom, you can translate these scribbles into complete drawings and add to them with appropriate images.

THE PLACE OF THE DESIGNER IN THE COMPANY

The designer in this sort of group has the opportunity to invent and present suggestions and solutions, which can help the company work through the process. How they do it is different for every company and every project. Everyone in the devising workroom is there to help invent the final performance, and all share the responsibility for the development of the work.

In the world of devised, physical theatre it is quite usual for the designer to be a maker, too. This is partly a matter of the budget, but even where there is enough money to employ more people, it is better for the designer to stay closely in touch with the changing and inventive progress of the work. A drawing of a costume invented through rehearsal can be given to an outside maker, but in order to really understand how the costume must be cut, the maker must see the actor moving in rehearsal and spend time with the designer understanding their ideas. If rehearsal results in a new aspect having to be incorporated into the costume, the designer must redesign, and the whole business begins again. It is possible to work like this, and many people do, but unless designer and maker know each other’s work very well it will be a time-consuming affair.

Make sure the company know which are stand-in costumes and props and which are performance ones.

Makers at Work

Once a designer and her makers have worked together a few times, a team style will be established, and a sort of shorthand can develop where everyone’s skills are used to the best advantage of the project. It may be that the designer is an excellent cutter, an impatient shopper, an adequate fitter and a slipshod seamstress. She will choose a team that includes people with the missing skills. This means that makers, with all their abilities in shopping, dying or cutting, have a much greater input into the work than in a non-devised piece. The better they understand the needs of the company, the demands of the movement and the eyes of the designer, the closer they will come to being assistant designers, rather than straightforward makers. They will often become a familiar and trusted presence in the rehearsal room, and make decisions or suggestions with great freedom.

Maker at work.

The Devising Process

For those not familiar with the process of devising, a rough guide might be helpful. It can only be rough because every company has their own way of working, and every project its own stages and momentum.

First idea for a production: This can come from anywhere – a conversation overheard on a bus or a wish to change the world.

Sharing the idea: Opening out the idea in words or in writing is the first step towards the public ear and eye of an audience.

Beginning research: Putting flesh on the bones of an idea through a search for appropriate and inspiring research and conversation.

Funding: Working out how to pay for rehearsals and production.

Choosing the company: Collecting a creative team whose members will work together and have an appropriate variety of skills both in their specialization and their ability to work together as a company.

Research and development (R&D): Testing and developing the idea and the company skills. Also used for casting, and collecting material to attract funding.

Development: Further work away from the rehearsal room to develop the idea, the style, the company make-up and the funding.

When and where and who: Settling the dates and venues of rehearsals and performances; also checking the availability of the chosen company, and contracting them to the work.

Rehearsals: Schedules and venues.

Performance: With luck leading to success, future performances and development of the company.

Clothes often look very different inside-out.

Shoelaces are good for more than shoes because of their strength and stiff ends for threading.

It all sounds so clear and simple when set out on paper. Each step, apart from the first and last which are clear in their single-minded simplicity, leads to a huge and open space full of people, possibility, hazard and invention. The project can falter and fail, or fly and succeed at any one of them. Each stage has to be in place to pass to the next. Many of the stages on this journey are so interesting and involving that even if the funding fails and the performance never happens, the interest of the creation process remains and the nucleus of the company will try again on another project, or develop the initial idea in another form.

The actor’s body and the shadow puppet work together to make the wolf climb the stairs. (Photo: Nik Mackey)

A Design Game for Rehearsal and Improvisation

There is game played by children all over the world. It may be called ‘Grandmother’s footsteps’, ‘Babushka’ or ‘Un, deux, trois, Soleil!’ but it has the same rules: one person stands in front with their back to the rest of the group, which is as far away as is practical. The group has to creep up on the ‘Grandmother’, who will whisk round every few seconds and try to catch them moving. If she sees them they have to go back to the beginning and start again. The winner is the first person to touch ‘Grandmother’. The game becomes a fiercely concentrated and often very comic game of skill when played by physical performers with trained bodies and minds, and every sense alert to performance possibilities. Adding an element of dressing up to this game presents a whole new platform for comic invention.

Between the performers and ‘Grandmother’ there is a barrier made up of a heap of costumes and props. This may look random, but has been carefully chosen to include items that can be worn by many different sizes and in many different ways.

Improvisation with costume leads to the final design for performance. (Photos 1, 3 to 6: Kasia Zeremba Byrne; photo 2: Alex Byrne)

The game is now more difficult. The actors have to dress up without their movement being seen. As the game continues a strange collection of characters begins to emerge. At some point the director may see the possibility of a connection between two or three of these characters, and may make a pause in the game while they develop a short improvisation. Then the game resumes, perhaps with the improvisation being remembered for future development.

The designer can take away items that are either stereotyping the characters in a way that is not helpful, or add items that will enrich the ideas, or to help her see the way particular performers work in different clothes. An actor wearing a full skirt which will swing from the hips with every turn will move very differently to one in a crossover flowered overall or a white laboratory coat with pockets. A surprise prop in one of the pockets – a lipstick in a case and a small hand mirror, a photograph of a child in a locket, a broken watch – could result in a morning of new invention. If the surprise is appropriate to the path of the story, the work is more likely to be useful to the eventual production.

The dramatis personae and sights that develop could never be planned on paper in the studio on imagined bodies. The incompatibility of colour, style and shape will be extreme. Gender and personalities cross and appear in a way that is dictated by the strictures of the game’s rules, and not by probability or sensible, researched planning. The designer will see ideas outside the combinations of colour and shape that have been tried and tested, and may find new inspiration in the wild improbability of the sights she sees. She will also see the way the actors wear the odd costumes, and how a certain cut or colour of cloth or pair of spectacles lends an air and a posture to a particular performer – or the spark that will help him reveal, through the magic and skill of his work, the unteachable, unexplainable trick that makes people look at him, listen to him, and care about his story.

Different Specializations

PUPPET MAKING

The designing and making of puppets is one of the unplanned and unbudgeted tasks that often fall within the brief of the costume designer and maker in devised small-scale theatre. No one might have known in advance that they would feel the need of a puppet, and consequently no one would have been included in the company with that specialized skill. The safest way to approach creating a puppet that will become one with its animator, who may well have never worked with puppets before, is to start tentatively. You need to find a path towards the most natural way for the actor to work with the puppet, and make sure that you are capable of designing and making an object that will give all the right messages to the audience. It is no good creating a beautiful, complex marionette if the actor doesn’t have the specialized skill of giving it life, and no good imagining a puppet that you do not have the skill, equipment or budget to create. This does not mean the puppet in the show won’t be full of life and vigour.

As the scene begins to develop in rehearsal you can begin to experiment with the actor and director with different types of puppet and objects to discover what feels most natural and telling in the circumstance. A sock or a glove on a hand will give the feeling of a glove puppet, and a rolled-up newspaper, crumpled and taped into shape, will suggest a more complex body and its movement. Knotted cloth, or a ball on crossed sticks with an old shirt will promote a different type of work. Once you see how the actor is working, you can start refining these rough suggestions into forms, which will eventually assume the character and movement of the puppet’s character in the performance.

The only rule is that the puppet is able, with the actor’s help, to give the messages of its character and actions to the audience; how and with what you create it does not matter: if it works, it’s good.

You can buy bladed needles for sewing leather, which are useful for other tough work.

A collection of masks made by different methods.

MASKS

Mask making is a specialized skill, and working in masks takes particular training. This does not prevent them turning up unexpectedly in a devised production, and much of the training of physical performers means that they find it easy to adapt to the restrictions of movement and facial expression that masks demand of bodies; they are used to absorbing emotion and fact and showing it through the movement of their bodies, and this particularly theatrical device does not limit them in the same way as it does more naturalistically trained performers.

Once again, the best way to proceed is to get some masks into rehearsal as soon as possible so that you can establish the style of mask that will be best for the production and the performers. There are basic questions that need to be answered straightaway. For example, do the actors have to talk or sing in the masks? If so, the mouth must be clear or the mask formed to allow the sound out. Are the masks blank and the character provided by the movement, or do they give the character to the actor who creates the movement from the way the mask makes him feel? Once the director has decided on a style of mask and play, then it is time to create a prototype, which will lead to the finished article.

There are always problems when actors start working in masks as they are usually hot and uncomfortable. Many fitting problems can be alleviated by gluing slivers of foam to the inside of the mask’s forehead to take away the pressure on the nose and its bridge, and making sure that the eyeholes are set in exactly the right place and that the actor’s eyelashes are not encumbered by the eyeholes when he blinks. The closer the eyeholes are to the eyes, the better the actor’s peripheral vision.

Many devised performances go on growing and changing throughout their life, particularly if they are being performed night after night in the same venue. This can be because a change of performer during a long run may present the company with a different skill that could be incorporated into the show. Performers who work in the devised and physical side of performance have different skills. Though replacements would be cast for a similar ability to perform the rehearsed work, they might have different secondary skills, which could be used in the performance. The violin-playing ability of one performer may replace the splendid singing voice of another, or a trick cyclist replace a juggler. Costumes may have to be redesigned and made for these changes whilst keeping the balance of the rest of the concept intact.

NIE in Tales from the Sea Journey. (Photo: Alex Byrne)

2 Invention in the Rehearsal Room

Different Approaches

Performance that is created not from a script but through collaborative work in the rehearsal room presents particular challenges to the designer. The excitement in the opportunity to invent and improvise the costume side by side with the actors and director far outweighs the fact that rehearsals are often infuriating and exhausting, and call for much patient, silent participation. Work where the company collaborates in this sort of process has a wavelike rhythm. There are times when all flows easily and almost effortlessly and ideas coalesce without problem – and there are times when it feels as if you are wading through treacle, and when a wave that is full of power and potential just refuses to break and give up its secrets. The designer has the opportunity, in these moments, to produce inventive solutions, which give new inspiration and confidence to the process.

THE DESIGNER’S VIEWPOINT

Designers can read a script and use their skill, research and imagination to support the invention of the writer and the concept of the director. They can pull information from the words on the pages and work with the director and the rest of the creative team to bring the page to life. The arc of the narrative will be in place; the characters will exist in the words written for them to say and the context the author has created for their lives. Much of the subsequent design work is spent alone in research and in the studio so that a model of the set and a batch of costume designs can be shown to the company on the first day of rehearsal. Everyone has a good idea of what they will be wearing before they begin to move as their characters.