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- Volume 1, Issue 1, 2016
Studies in Costume & Performance - Volume 1, Issue 1, 2016
Volume 1, Issue 1, 2016
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The real professional: Designers and discourse in Hindi film costume
More LessAbstractSince the mid-twentieth century, successive generations of Hindi film costume designers and costume workers have asserted claims to an aesthetic and professional distinction. As each new cluster of designers comes on the scene, they draw a contrast between their practices and knowledge and those of past designers (or other costume department personnel) in ways that boost their own claims of being the first to do the job ‘professionally’. Such claims often tend to revolve around evolving (and often competing) notions of what makes a costume ‘real’. Based on in-depth interviews and ethnography among a cross-section of film costume producers from different eras, this article points out the ways in which discrepant discourses among designers and makers, and between designers of different generations, reveal important differences in how ‘real’ costume is understood. Paying attention to a wider range of voices within costume production also reveals the linkage of narrative, costume, and aesthetics in collaborative, albeit conflicted practice, as opposed to being the direct outcome of an intellectual and somewhat disembodied process of design.
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Such stuff as dreams are made on: Exploring costume design’s semiotic and scenographic potential in making meaning for performance
By Julie LynchAbstractThere has been an abundance of literature on the role of set and lighting design within scenography. However, the presence of costume within the scenographic whole has been poorly considered. In this article, I will analyse costume’s semiotic and scenographic potential by comparing two important productions of The Tempest. I will juxtapose the signification of Ariel in Giorgio Strehler’s Tempest at the Piccolo Teatro, Milan (1978) (set and costume design by Luciano Damiani), with Robert Lepage’s production of Thomas Adès’ The Tempest for the Metropolitan Opera in collaboration with Ex Machina (2012) (set design by Jasmine Catadul, and costume, wig and make-up design by Kym Barrett). I will examine why costume design has been less examined than other areas within scenography, and by comparing these two productions, I will show evidence of the different and significant ways that costume can interrupt or enhance meaning within performance.
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Memoirs of a GAY! Sha: Race and gender performance on RuPaul’s Drag Race
By Eric ZhangAbstractThe popular American reality television programme RuPaul’s Drag Race (2009–) has become well known for its racially diverse cast of contestants; notably, it has featured numerous contestants of Asian descent throughout its first seven seasons. Looking at four of these contestants (namely, Jujubee, Manila Luzon, Raja and Gia Gunn), I ask how Asian American drag queens use costume and other elements of bodily adornment in conjunction with performance in order to construct their drag characters. I explore the ways in which these former contestants embody their intersecting racial, gender and sexual identities through their costuming and performance, both while competing on Drag Race and in their post-Drag Race careers. Ultimately, I argue that Asian American drag queens often engage in an ambivalent rhetoric of race and gender both onstage and on-screen.
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Costume in carnival: Social performance, rank and status
More LessAbstractThis article deals with the range and evolution of costume in organized and spontaneous carnivals in Malta during the British colonial period (1800–1964). It discusses the performative qualities of carnival costume. The article also delves into the type of connections that can be made between costume, social stratification and political power in particular periods of Maltese colonial history. It shows how costume revealed social aspiration or recognition in certain contexts, while also providing a means to play with identity and dissimulation in others. It examines how control and power were affirmed on a micrological level through choice of costume, especially when the latter became subject to prohibition.
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Where is the body in the costume design process?
More LessAbstractSally E. Dean has led the Somatic Movement, Costume & Performance Project in collaboration with costume designers/visual artists Sandra Arròniz Lacunza and Carolina Rieckhof since 2011. This project offers an alternative costume design methodology that starts from the body or ‘soma’ (i.e. a sentient, perceiving person), whereby perception is inherently active and relational. This approach is thus multi-sensorial, somatic and holistic, and is based upon Sally’s background as a somatic practitioner, performer, performance-maker and teacher. This visual essay gives examples from the project’s design approach, working with a live, moving and multi-sensorial body to create Somatic CostumesTM through co-creation, collaboration and participation. Costume designers are actively engaged in trying on materials and costumes through all stages of the process in order to answer the following overarching question: what are the materials/costumes doing to the body (i.e. body image and body schema)? Through these experiential methodologies, the project aims to return and relocate the body into the costume design process.
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Event Reviews
Authors: Dr Suzanne Osmond, Mateja Fajt, Giulia Pecorari and Alyssa ChoatAbstractCRITICAL COSTUME 2015 CONFERENCE AND EXHIBITION, AALTO UNIVERSITY, HELSINKI, 25–27 MARCH 2015
PATTERNS OF INEQUALITY: A REVIEW OF THE CRITICAL COSTUME 2015 CONFERENCE FROM A STUDENT PERSPECTIVE ON POWER STRUCTURES
CRITICAL COSTUME: A CONFERENCE AND EXHIBITION WHERE THEORY AND PRACTICE COME TOGETHER
NEW SPACES
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Exhibition Reviews
Authors: Nadia Saccardi, Patricia Lennox and Tina CarterAbstractCOSTUME AT THE TURN OF THE CENTURY 1990–2015 A.A. BAKHRUSHIN STATE CENTRAL THEATRE MUSEUM, MOSCOW
SHAKESPEARE: L’ÉTOFFE DU MONDE, CENTRE NATIONAL DU COSTUME DE SCÈNE, MOULINS, FRANCE 14 June 2014 – 4 January 2015
REVIEW OF BJÖRK: A MID-CAREER RETROSPECTIVE WITH NEW COMMISSIONED PIECE FOR MOMA, NEW YORK
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Book Reviews
Authors: Linda Matheson and Sofia PantouvakiAbstractCOSTUME: READINGS IN THEATRE PRACTICE, ALI MACLAURIN AND AOIFE MONKS (2015) London and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 173 pp., 978-1-137-02948-5, Paperback
BEHIND THE SEAMS, JAMES BELLINI AND SALLY ANGEL (2015) London: Morris Angel & Son Ltd., 176 pp., 978-0-9932983-0-1, Hardback
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