“Reading the Play” Project
Read the Outline Reading the Play: Questions Costumers Should Ask. Then read One of the following One Act Comedies:
and ask yourself the questions in the outline. Write answers to these questions and post them to the Class Message Board
Many costume students are drawn to the field by an enthusiasm for one or more historical periods of dress. This project allows you to research an era, or ideally a small easy to handle segment of it, such as an object like a codpiece or a flag fan, or a particular type of garment, and make a new web page devoted to it. To do this well, and legally, you will need to find visual representations of your era or object that are copyright expired, make ones you create yourself, or which date before the concept of copyright existed. Before uploading images please refer to Wikimedia Copyright Rules to determine what is OK to post.
You also will wish to research your topic two ways. You will wish to consult both secondary sources and primary sources. In the case of costume history, examples of a primary source would include:
Continue reading Costume Class Project: Primary and Secondary Research on an Historical Costume TopicCostume Class Project: Historical Research Project
Step 1: Read and review in your mind the characters and setting of one of the following plays: [Note: Your instructor may assign different plays}
Chekhov’s decidedly slapstick One Act ‘The Marriage Proposal’: (aka ‘The Proposal‘, or ‘A Proposal of Marriage’) which has a Mel Brooks/Three Stooges feel. This play may be written by one of the founders of serious modern drama, but this is no drama, it is more like a 1900 Russian Saturday Night Live skit without the intellectual content.
‘Patience’: Aristocratic ladies who were engaged to cavalry officers, now spurn their fiancées in order to follow a fashionable (Oscar Wilde-like) poet in a goofy cult-like ardor. The poet, meanwhile, has the hots for a low born milkmaid. The soldiers plot to get the girls back, another sexy poet arrives on the scene, and chaos ensues. An operetta set in the Aesthetic movement in England of the 1880’s.
‘The Contrast‘: a 1787 American play that combines comedy and patriotic sentiments. Filled with characters that in transmuted form are still with us. The gossipy ingénues talk like 18th Century Valley Girls.
Continue reading Costume Class Project: Visual Historical Research for a PlayResearch Heresy: As a high school student it was my ambition to become a librarian. As a result, my first paying job, as well as years of volunteer jobs and classes, were spent in libraries, working, studying their systems, and hiding out. This put me at a singular advantage all through college and grad school, and I was generally regarded by students and faculty alike as a sort of guru of library research. I could, and did, do major graduate research papers on obscure subjects in 3-7 days, start to finish, and get highest marks. So it was no great surprise to me when the faculty asked me to do a seminar on research for the assembled faculty and students in the department’s weekly lecture series. The faculty sat down expecting I’d give a serious harangue to my fellow students encouraging them to stick their noses to the grindstone of the library, and the students braced to snooze through yet another “scholarly paper”. I seemed to shock everybody, pleasantly or unpleasantly as the case may be, by actually explaining how I did my research. You see, because I understood the system, I understood how to “cheat” the system. So I explained that one could get information out of the library in bulk, in less time, without so much “nose to the grindstone.” I was, I’m afraid, even flip about it. And I admitted that the recent research paper I wrote that was considered by the faculty to be “of publishable quality” on French Revolutionary Festivals, was in fact the product of one weekend’s cramming. Well, the students didn’t fall asleep, and my advisers were looking not at all happy with me, but, I thought: “I have a mission here—I must lead the righteous to the path of better grades, no matter what the cost!” So I did. And here is my lecture (with some new tricks I’ve learned since):
Continue reading Research HeresyTHE IDEA COMES FIRST: There is a strange notion when you first begin designing costumes that some how “high concept” must translate to “high budget” or it isn’t possible. I’m not exactly sure where one acquires this stupid idea, but we, the design students at College of Marin and S.F. State, all had it.
This is simply wrong. Imagination, forethought, and unified concept are the three cheapest things you can do for a show, a fact that our professors attempted to hammer into us in vain. In fact, my post graduate experience showed me that usually these things can make a show happen more cheaply. At all events,there is no excuse for not having them, simply because your budget is small. You need to look at the play script, and talk to your director about ideas even before you talk about money. If you have the right idea, there will be a way to make it happen, money or not. It is ideas in design that get the ball rolling, once you have them, money often becomes irrelevant.
Continue reading Deep Theory, Ideas for Show ConceptsIDEA STEALING: Ideas rarely, if ever, flow spontaneously forth in original brilliance from a mind untouched by outside influences. God does not, in costume design, tap lightly on your shoulder and tell you the All New Perfect And Inspired Way to design Miss Julie for your graduate design seminar. Some people’s designs may look like She did, but She didn’t. Design is a process that works out of, and through, many pieces of information, from costume history, to cultural perceptions of color, to actor’s body proportions, to budget realities, and more. Trying to design costumes without being influenced by outside factors is therefore, pointless.
Continue reading Idea Stealing
