The Discussion of Costume

27/04/2016

This rehearsal session we dedicated to the use of costume and make-up.

As a group we are working on the idea of how men and women are treated differently in various scenarios, as collective with three men and one woman using this to our advantage. After a discussion of how our one female actor does not act like stereotypical girl, it became an interesting topic of how if she dressed as a man and the men dressed as women it would create an interesting twist on the performance as we don't believe that 'there is a feeling among some people that only people who belong to a certain group should act the roles of people who are in that group' Cummings, K (2014).

Goh, C (2015)

However we did not want it to be a drag act of any kind, wanting us to look like a man dressed just simply in a dress with a little make up and a woman dressed in trousers and a shirt with less make up and hair tied back. 

The brainstorm on costume began on having then men in matching dresses to show a correlation between the characters however we saw an advantage of using outfits from Louise's wardrobe using a similar theme of floral and flowing dresses to allow movement through out the performance. Under the dresses the men will wear either no shirt or a vest depending on their preference and boxers or shorts again depending on how they feel. 

We decided that the men would begin the piece standing in their preferred outfits before the dresses they would then be dressed like dolls and moved into position to start to the beginning on the piece. 

The targets for next rehearsal session:

•  The continuation of using the bench as a representative timeline
• The addition of using more scenarios that relflect the difference between men and women.

Katherine Cummings (2014) Cross-Dressing in Modern Theatre www.gendercentre.org.au/resources/polare-archive/archived-articles/cross-dressing-in-modern-theatre.htm (Accessed 01/05/2016)

Celeste Goh (2015)  H&M loves coachella collection http://www.juiceonline.com/hm-loves-coachella-collection/ (Accessed 01/05/2016)