Creating Costumes for Devised Theatre combines perspectives from a variety of theatre practitioners to guide artists through the journey of creating costumes for devised work. Devised theatre can take a number of different forms, and it can be a challenge for the costume department to plan, organize, and assemble things for performers to wear while the entire shape of the piece is constantly changing. This book provides practical resources to guide the theatre artist through the journey of designing costumes as the characters are created. It addresses a wide range of questions, including how to adapt traditional methods of costume design to non-traditional practices, how to effectively collaborate with a team, and how to adapt costume technology practices to meet the needs of devising. Stories and photographs from performers, designers, technicians, directors, writers, educators, students, and activists working in the realm of devised theatre around the world are contextualized through the author's own involvement in unscripted, partially scripted, and otherwise dynamic drama, dance, and physical theatre to offer tangible solutions to streamline costume design and construction processes. This book is an invaluable guide for both experienced and novice costume designers, costume technicians, students, teachers, directors, managers, and theatre artists who exist in the spaces where all these roles overlap.

Costumes designed and made for devised or physical drama, for contemporary circus or for dance, differ radically from the more traditional costume work produced for naturalistic performance. For those working in the field - whether professional or student - these differences present challenges that this book seeks to highlight and explain while offering effective solutions to overcome them. Includes: the differences between designing for scripted and for devised work; the specialized designing, cutting and making, and fitting of costumes for dance, circus and other physical work; the role of the designer/maker in the devising company; design invention in the rehearsal room; the management of both time and budget with the late changes that happen with devised work; the breadth of different skills used in the work for performance.

A substantive exploration of theatrical costume Stage costumes reveal character. They tell audiences who the character is or how a character functions within the world of the play, among other things. Theatrical costuming, however, along with other forms of theatre design, has often been considered merely a craft, rather than part of the deeply systemic creation of meaning onstage. In what ways do our clothes shape and reveal our habits of behavior? How do stage costumes work to reveal one kind of habit via the manipulation of another? How might theatre practitioners learn to most effectively exploit this dynamic? Theatre Symposium, Volume 26 analyzes the ways in which meaning is conveyed through costuming for the stage and explores the underlying assumptions embedded in theatrical practice and costume production. THEATRE SYMPOSIUM, VOLUME 26 MICHELE MAJER Plus que Reine: The Napoleonic Revival in Belle Epoque Theatre and Fashion CAITLIN QUINN Creating a Realistic Rendering Pedagogy: The Fashion Illustration Problem ALY RENEE AMIDEI Where'd I Put My Character?: The Costume Character Body and Essential Costuming for the Ensemble Actor KYLA KAZUSCHYK Embracing the Chaos: Creating Costumes for Devised Work DAVID S. THOMPSON Dressing the Image: Costumes in Printed Theatrical Advertising LEAH LOWE Costuming the Audience: Gentility, Consumption, and the Lady’s Theatre Hat in Gilded Age America JORGE SANDOVAL The RuPaul Effect: The Exploration of the Costuming Rituals of Drag Culture in Social Media and the Theatrical Performativity of the Male Body in the Ambit of the Everyday GREGORY S. CARR A Brand New Day on Broadway: The Genius of Geoffrey Holder’s Artistry and His Intentional Evocation of the African Diaspora ANDREW GIBB On the [Historical] Sublime: J. R. Planché’s King John and the Romantic Ideal of the Past

Written by a well-known costume designer, this book is for anyone who would like to create costumes for the theater, whatever their experience or their budget. Topics include understanding the structure and work of a theater company; making the best use of production meetings; coping with budgets; decoding the costume clues in a script; setting up and equipping a workroom; finding costumes at thrift shops and flea markets; altering modern clothes for period productions; using and adapting commercial patterns; and developing simple sewing skills. Tina Bicât has worked as a costume designer for The Royal National Theatre, The New York City Ballet, The English National Opera, as well as for fringe theater groups, television, and film.

Unbuttoned: The Art and Artists of Theatrical Costume Design documents the creative journey of costume creation from concept to performance. Each chapter provides an overview of the process, including designing and shopping; draping, cutting, dyeing, and painting; and beading, sewing, and creating embellishments and accessories. This book features interviews with practitioners from Broadway and regional theatres to opera and ballet companies, offering valuable insights into the costume design profession. Exceptional behind-the-scenes photography illustrates top costume designers and craftspeople at work, along with gorgeous costumes in progress.

The Costume Designer’s Toolkit explores the wide-ranging skills required to design costumes for live performance in theatre, dance, opera, and themed entertainment. Arranged in chronological order to create a design, each chapter describes tools, strategies, and techniques costume designers use to create lively and believable characters within a story environment. The book provides a step-by-step outline of the costume design process beginning with developing as an artist and creating an artistic vision for a script. It covers a wide range of topics, including: Assessing the scope of a production Understanding design thinking and the creative process Project management and budget forecasting Collaborating with and leading creative teams Current practices in costume rendering and communication Mixing purchased, rented, stock, and built costumes to form a design Designing a garment with impact Fitting costumes on performers Combining grit and grace for a successful career Each topic includes case studies and tips from experienced professionals, identifies vital skills, describes techniques, and reveals the essential elements of artistic leadership, collaboration, and cultural acumen. The Costume Designer’s Toolkit is the perfect guidebook for the student, aspiring, or early-career costume designer, to be used alone or in costume design university courses.

A new issue of the longstanding theatre journal, documenting conversations that traverse disciplinary boundaries The essays in the thirty-first volume of Theatre Symposium traverse disciplinary boundaries to explore what constitutes the "popular" in theater and performance in an increasingly frenetic and mediated landscape. Amid the current resurgence of populist discourse and the enduring impact of popular culture, this volume explores what is considered popular, how that determination gets made, and who makes it. The answers to these questions shape the structures and systems of performance in an interaction that is reciprocal, intricate, and multifaceted. Productions often succeed or fail based on their ability to align with what is popular--sometimes productively, sometimes clumsily, sometimes brazenly, and sometimes tragically. In our current moment, what constitutes the popular profoundly affects the real world politically, economically, and socially. Controversies about the electoral college system hinge on the primacy of the "popular" vote. Streaming services daily update lists of their most popular content and base future decisions on opaque measures of popularity. Social media platforms broadcast popular content across the globe, triggering new products, social activism, and political revolutions. The contributors to this volume engage with a range of contemporary and historical examples and argue with clarity and acuity the interplay of performance and the popular. Theatre and performance deeply engage with the popular at every level--from audience response to box office revenue. The variety of methodologies and sites of inquiry showcased in this volume demonstrates the breadth and depth of the popular and the importance of such work to understanding our present moment onstage and off. CONTRIBUTORS Mysia Anderson / Chase Bringardner / Elizabeth M. Cizmar / Chelsea Curto / Janet M. Davis / Tom Fish / Kyla Kazuschyk / Sarah McCarroll / Eleanor Owicki / Sunny Stalter-Pace / Chelsea Taylor / Chris Woodworth