Robert Cohen - Theatre, Brief Version-McGraw-Hill Education (2016)

Theatre 117
the way for a more conceptual and holistic approach to
a show’s overall design. Such an approach is no longer
historical but stylistic. It communicates attitudes, themes,
feelings, and ideas rather than historical pictures. And,
when historicity is involved, it may be of a period unrelated
to the one set by the author: King Lear, for example,
has been played as variously taking place in medieval
Japan, the Iran-Iraq War, and today’s Africa. Costume
design in the twenty-first century is generally a more
imaginative art that conveys not just a historical period
or group of characters but a view of the world of the play.
Modern costume design serves four separate functions.
First, it retains at least a hint of the ceremonial
magic once conjured by ancient priests and shamans.
Even today, costume demonstrates a primordial theatricality.
As Theoni Aldredge said of the clothes she
designed for A Chorus Line, they “had to look real and
yet theatrical enough for an audience to say, ‘Okay, I’m
in the theatre now.’ ”
Second, the costumes of a play show us what sort of
world we are asked to enter, not only in terms of historical
place and period but also social and cultural values.
The word costume has the same root as custom and customary;
as such it indicates the “customary” wearing
apparel (or the “habitual habit”) of persons living in a
particular world. For example, the Mexican American
characters in Luis Valdez’s Zoot Suit, set in the 1940s,
are seen as virtual extensions of the overly long pegged
trousers and looping watch chains referenced by the
play’s title. Tennessee Williams, in A Streetcar Named
Desire, specifically directs the poker players to wear
shirts of “bright primary colors,” to contrast their primary
sexuality with Blanche DuBois’s dead (and gay)
husband, whom the dramatist had named “Allan Grey.”
The ensemble of costumes in a dramatic production
reveals the social and cultural environment of its collective
characters.
Third, the costumes can express the specific individuality
of each character’s role. They may reveal at a
glance, for example, the character’s profession, wealth,
age, class status, tastes, and self-image. More subtly, costume
can suggest the character’s vices, virtues, and hidden
hopes and fears. Through the judicious use of color
and shape, and even the movement and sound of the
fabric, costume designers can imbue each character with
distinct qualities that contrast that character to the others
in the play. When Hamlet insists on wearing his “inky
cloak” and “suits of solemn black” in his uncle’s presence,
for example, he signifies his refusal to accept his
uncle’s authority, and as a result demonstrates his adversarial
position within the Danish court. The garments
Robert Wilson’s Les Fables de La Fontaine is a hugely imaginative
stage re-creation of the stories of France’s greatest fabulist. Here
Bakary Sangaré plays the Lion and Céline Samie is Circé in “The Lion
in Love.” The 2005–2006 Comédie-Française production, directed
and designed by Wilson, was immensely popular with both adults and
children at this historic theatre. © Laurencine Lot
therefore become both a mark of Hamlet’s character and
a reflection of the play’s action. When Monsieur Jourdain,
in Molière’s The Bourgeois Gentleman, dons his
fancy suit with the upside-down flowers and, later, his
Turkish gown and grotesque turban, his costume proclaims
(albeit foolishly) to his peers that he is a person
of elegance and refinement. And Estragon’s unlaced
boots in Waiting for Godot represent—pathetically, to be
sure—his great wish to be unfettered, not “tied to Godot”
but simply free, fed, and happy.
Finally, and perhaps most practically, the costume
serves as wearable clothing for the actor. A costume,
after all, is a form of clothing; it must be functional as
well as meaningful and aesthetic. The actor does not