Medieval costume Design & Exploration

After the Puppetry Project we continued working and focusing on the Human Body in Performance through Costume. The play that we looked at was The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer. The task was to produce six final designs for the characters of our choosing.

The Beginning:

In order to start with this project, we were asked to make an outline of one of the characters and write descriptive terms around and inside of the outline. We needed to respond to the text and research. This was an introduction into the work that we had ahead of us. It gave us a direction and a working method to best tackle this new project. At first, I thought this was an efficient way to work, but later discovered that my way of working was to begin with broad research and slowly focus on the individual characters. In Lectures we were taught ways of research for Costume Design which benefited me. I went to the Library, found reliable online resources, and visited the Victoria & Albert Museum in London.

Progress & Influence:

The characters underwent multiple changes in shape, posture, clothing, facial expressions, and more. This is all important to the process and progress made in my skills and knowledge of drawing and designing. Towards the end, the costume designs became more elaborate and definite, which made a clear path for the final designs. I noticed that over the weeks my skills in figure drawing improved and changed in style. It will continue to do so. Life Drawing classes helped me with understanding body proportions and challenged me with different and at times difficult postures. Attending Lectures provided me with a large source of information based on different time periods, culture, research techniques, etc. which has been useful for background knowledge. Learning about Gods of different cultures for example, helped me incorporate different races into my final designs. This was also influenced by learning about Fiona Shaw in her performance as King Richard III, which was described as a “controversy” by many critics and seeing New Nigerians (a play) in which it was important to the actors to see designs of characters from different ethnic backgrounds.

What I learned:

Through this project my knowledge and interest in Theatre Design expanded. Costume Design is a larger field than what it seems to be on stage. Research into History, cultures, and the text itself were one of my favourite things to do. I developed an interest in this field and hope to work more with it. By working on puppetry before we had a ground knowledge of the human body (movement, proportions, shape) and the importance of the performer. Following this with costume design helped us understand the detail of posture and designing a character from a story.