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

120 Chapter 5 Designers and Technicians
are less expensive and often very effective for theatrical
use. Contemporary designers, particularly in nonrealistic
productions, may also turn to unique and surprising
materials: Dean Mogle, for example, adapted hundreds
of greyed-down beer bottle caps into his costumes for
a Utah Shakespeare Festival production of Macbeth.
Dyeing, “aging” (making a new fabric appear old and
used), and detailing are often achieved with commercial
dyes, appliqués, and embroidery, and sometimes with
paint, glues, and other special treatments (for example,
the costume designers Motley—three women working
under a single professional name—simulated leather by
rubbing thick felt with moist yellow soap and spraying it
down with brown paints). Before large quantities of fabric
are ordered, samples or swatches can be pinned to the
renderings to forestall the purchase of material at odds
with the desired “look.”
Costume accessories greatly affect the impact of the
basic design. Jewelry, hats, sashes, purses, muffs, and
other adornments have considerable storytelling impact:
they “read” to the play’s audience a character’s rank or
role in society. Even the shoe, if unwisely chosen, can
destroy the artistry of a production by being unsuitable
for the character or by being so badly fitted that the actor
exhibits poor posture.
Whether arrived at through design and fabrication or
through careful selection from a dollar store, good costume
design creates a sense of character, period, style,
and theatricality out of wearable garments. In harmony
with scenery, makeup, lighting, and the play’s interpretation,
costuming’s impact may subtly underline the play’s
meaning and the characters’ personalities, or can scream
for attention—and sometimes even become the star of
the show. But even in productions of purely naturalistic
drama, well-designed and well-chosen costumes can
exert a magical theatrical force and lend a special magnitude
to the actor’s and the playwright’s art. Much like
lighting—and all of the design elements—costuming
can be most effective when it seems invisible but is in
fact contributing to create the seamless impression of an
entire world.
Makeup
Makeup, which is essentially the design of the actor’s
face and hair, occupies an undervalued position in much
contemporary theatre, where it tends to be the last design
field to be considered. In amateur theatre, makeup is
likely to be applied for the first time at the final dress
rehearsal—and sometimes not until just before the opening
performance. Indeed, makeup is the only major
design element whose planning and execution are often
left entirely to the actor’s discretion.
Makeup, however, is one of the archetypal arts of the
theatre, quite probably the first of the theatre’s design
arts, and it was absolutely fundamental to the origins of
drama. The earliest chanters of the dithyramb, like the
spiritual leaders of primitive tribes today, invariably
made themselves up—probably by smearing their faces
with blood or the dregs of wine—in preparation for the
performance of their holy rites. Their resulting makeup
subsequently inspired the Greek tragic and comic masks
that are today the universal symbols of theatre itself. The
ancient art of face painting remains crucial to Chinese
xiqu, as well as to other traditional Asian, African, and
Native American theatre forms.
The reason for makeup’s paradoxical role resides in
the changing emphasis of theatre aims. Makeup, like costuming,
serves both ceremonial and illustrative functions.
The illustrative function of makeup is unquestionably the
more obvious one today—so much so that we often forget
its ceremonial role entirely. Illustrative makeup is the
means by which the actor changes her or his appearance
to resemble that of the character. Makeup of this sort is
particularly useful in helping to make a young actor look
older or an old one look younger and in making an actor
of any age resemble a known historical figure or a fictitious
character whose appearance is already set in the
public imagination. Makeup gives Cyrano his great nose
and Falstaff his red one; it reddens Macbeth’s “bleeding
captain” and whitens the ghost of Banquo; it turns the
college sophomore into the aged Prospero, the Broadway
dancer into one of T. S. Eliot’s cats, and Neil Patrick
Harris into Hedwig. Artificial scars, deformities, bruises,
beards, wigs, moustaches, sunburn, frostbite, and scores
of other facial embellishments, textures, and shadings
can contribute significantly to realistic stagecraft when
needed or desired.
A subtler use of makeup, but still within the realistic
mode, is aimed at the evocation of psychological traits
through physical clues: the modern makeup artist may
try to suggest character by exaggerating or distorting
the actor’s natural eye placement, the size and shape
of her mouth, the angularity of her nose, or the tilt of
her eyebrows. There can be no question that we form
impressions of a character’s inner state on the basis of
observable characteristics—as the title character of
Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar nervously notices Cassius’s
“lean and hungry look,” so do we. And the skilled
makeup artist can go far in enhancing the psychological
texture of a play by the imaginative use of facial shaping
and shading.