Costuming Workshop

During my summer in Brazil, I took the opportunity to take part in some workshops. There was one that I got interested in.
"Figurino para Cinema, Teatro e Tv" was the name of the course. In English it would be "Costumes for Cinema, Theatre and Tv."
The teacher who taught this workshop was Fausto Viana. He studied not only in Brazil but also in Harvard, Yale and NYU. He also studied to get his Masters and Doctors degree in Theatre.

Here are some of my notes I took during the workshop

Day 1:
- 3 biggest categories of costumes: social clothing, military clothing and religious clothing. All these categories have symbolic/meaningful colours and may symbolise rank.
- Colour is important.
- Greek theatre, for example, used colours to show what type of characters there were: Yellow meant prostitute, Red meant Romantic hero, Black meant a fighter etc.
- Antonin Artaud also used a colour code: Yellow meant that the character will suffer a violent death, Red meant that the character will suffer a great loss of blood etc.
- Costumes may change. For example, in the movie Hairspray, the costumes of the blacks change from when they were rejected to when they were accepted.
- Background information is important when creating costumes. E.g. In Elizabethan times, the poor people wore clothes that didn't work for the wealthy. In other words, the clothes that failed to dye properly were sold at a cheaper price and therefore the poor people wore that.

Day 2:
-Eiko is a costume designer who makes costumes that work with light, since costumes always interact with light.
-Appia, a Swiss dramatist, created costumes that allowed physical freedom.
-Craig, an English theatre practitioner, decided to revolutionise theatre so that every concept in theatre are connected. I.e. Costumes that interacts with lights, that interacts with music, that interacts with .....etc

Day 3:
Unfortunately I missed this day because of various reasons

Day 4:
-In a musical, within the first 7 minutes, something must happen. To finish Act 1, there should be a good number. At the start of Act 2, there should be a shorter number. (This ensures that the audience will stay to watch.)
-When there is a number with many actors, to make them seem the same height, have their skirts the same height.
- With Choreographing, there should be a rehearsal skirt, so that the actors can get used to it (e.g. Moulin Rouge).

Day 5
- 3 ways to make costumes:
- Base it on the text
- Base it through the indirect characterisation
- Create it for the beauty of the production (photographic realism > to recreate the moment)
-Artaud once had an actress wear a dress in which it had a triangle on the front. The actress would hold the cloth and throw it so that it seemed like blood was spilling. (This was to foreshadow her death/suffering)
- Bertholt Brecht had Mother Courage wear a spoon on her shirt. It did not mean that she was gluttonous, but was worried with survival, i.e. ate what she can to survive. Also, to age this costume, Brecht scraped it on steel, put it in chlorine and then made the actress wear it so that oil would fall on it, dirt will get on it etc.
- One production by "Teatro de Vertigem" had fallen angels. These fallen angels wore nothing but a loin cloth, but they had their bodies covered with a mixture of toilet paper, water and corn flour. During the play, they would sweat and eventually the mixture would crack and fall apart. It was as if the angels were being humanised.
- There are 6 important aspects when making costumes:
- colour
- form (the shape)
- texture (important because it interacts with light)
- volume
- movement (What's the effect you're after?)
- origin (Where does the style come from? What was its original purpose?)

Day 6:
-Talked a bit about Theatre du Soleil. It was the actors who created their own costumes.

Some tips I've gathered:
-Details make the costumes (they're important!!)
- Motifs of the era also is important
-For a dancing number, fringes enhances the movement of the dancer.
- Don't get deceived by cliche/ideal ideas and images. They're often wrong.
- If a body part has a certain movement, the costume has to be compatible with that.
-When do you know you're in the light? Light reflects under your eyes. Although you can't see anyone, they can see you.
- The costume is meant to help the actor, and not just make them look "pretty."
- Contrast is important even if the costume is simple.
- When making swords, a good technique to customise one is to buy a fake sword (a toy) and reform it with a mixture of glue and corn flour.
- Make sure the "ages" match. If the top part is old and the bottom part is new, then the two facts are contradictory.


Many of the things Viana talked about, I was able to follow because we had studied it before; theatre practitioners like Brecht, Artaud etc. However it went a bit more in depth with costuming. During the workshop I've learnt a great deal of tips and concepts with costuming, and for a theatre practitioner, it would be tips on theatre, because costumes interact with the whole theatre, and is not a category by itself (like how Craig thought).