Costumes

PIETER BRUEGHEL, PEASANTS' DANCE Kunsthistoriches Museum, Wien ANN HOULD-WARD, COSTUMES The audience has to believe the characters not only as fairy tale people but also as real human beings, with real parent/child relationships. The set and even the lighting can be very magical and strange, but the costumes need to act as the bridge between the real and the fantasy world. Our original idea was to draw from the work of a wide variety of fairy tale illustrators. But it quickly became clear that to facilitate the kind of crossover James and I wanted, the costumes would need to be fixed in historically accurate contexts. James said that he wanted Jack and his mother to have a very Brueghelesque look to them, so I took that as a base. It was very difficult to find the sort of tiny waist, low cleavage look that he wanted for Cinderella's stepmother and stepsisters, but we finally decided on European 1830s. The rest of the costumes fell into place over how to conceptually unify these two very different periods. Germanic 1860s peasant wear was used for the Baker, and I added elements like the 1830s big sleeves for the Baker's Wife. Like the fairy tales themselves, we wanted the combinations to be "illogical ," with a logic of their own. Then James determined that he wanted a highly graphic quality in the costumes-blocks of color, and clean defined silhouettes. This turned out to be a very strong choice because it corresponded exactly to the way European illustrators were beginning to inter58 pret shape and color around the turn of the century. In the contemporary theatre especially, the standard route in costuming has been to work with heavy texturing through pattern overdyeing. I couldn't use this technique if I wanted to achieve the graphic quality James was looking for, but I had to find a way of texturing the fabric so the actors wouldn't get lost in the vastness of the set. This is why almost everything is made of at least two or three fabrics applied onto one another, with a wide variety of hand applique work. In both Sunday in the Park With George and again here, Stephen took ideas for songs from the characters he saw in my renderings. In the same way, I can often know what a costume needs to be by listening to what his music is doing. This kind of collaboration is extremely rewarding, and gives the designers a very powerful role in the work. C: SKETCH OF THE WOLF COSTUME RENDERINGS OF THE BAKER'S COSTUMES 59 ...