Realised by Jeremy Richard

Project 1a _ Costume Design

Chelsea College of Art & DesignFdA Interior Design

METAMORPHOSE

BRIEF_ p.07A BACCHAE PLAY_ p.08DIONYSUS_ p.010INSPIRATIONS_ p.012CONCEPT PROPOSAL_ p.019MAKING PROCESS_ p.021PHOTOGRAPHIC ESSAY_ p.027CLOSE UPS_ p.032

CONTENTS

06

07

The Theatrical WastelandLive Installation Project at the The Yard Theatre, Hackney Wick, LondonThe Bacchae by Euripides, directed by Jay Miller

Project 1a: Costume

In pairs or individually you will be given a character from the Bacchae and a body part – [Head and shoulders/Left arm/Right arm/Torso/Left leg/Right leg] to design, make and document a costume for. Choose one aspect of your char-acter to represent in your costume – this could be an emotion, architecture, conversation, particular relationship or material quality. Think about how your costume will hinder, exaggerate or suppress the movement of your character and how it might define the space that their body inhabits on the stage or in the space. Utilise different techniques for making – moulding/sewing/casting etc and think about how your costume will fit to the body - does it fit snugly, hang loosely or change as the play unfolds? On 7th November we will review these costumes and you should wear all black to the crit in order to model your constructions. Alongside the physical construction we will ask you to document your costume photographically or using film or video, choosing carefully which material surroundings, light and level of detail to document the work.

Deliverables: - Costume to describe your given character and made for your given body part.- Documentation (photographic or film) of your costume being inhabited or worn.

08

A BACCHAE

“A play that explores a moment in time when beliefs erode and reconstruct. A politician will confront the limits of his beliefs, a god will befriend you, and the unbelievable might become possible.”

Conceived and directed by Jay Miller.With Chris Bailey as Dio.

THEMES: - relationships in society - mind control - time control - invasion - freedom - escape

DUALITY: - responsabilities vs freedom, liberation - tradition vs modernism - perfection vs imperfection (gods/mortals) - rationality vs madness (divine) - order vs disorder - knowledge vs fact - death vs rebirth of the self

CHARACTER: DioBODY PART: Right arm

09

010

011

DIONYSUS (dio-nysus = double-birth)

Nationality: Greekfrom: c. 1500—1100 BCAdobe: Mount OlympusSymbol: Thyrsus, grapevine, leopard skin, bull, goat, panther, ti-ger, leopardConsort: AriadneParents: Zeus and Semele

God of the grape harvest, of the ritual madness and ecstasy in Greek mythology. A traveller who arrives from the East as an asi-atic foreigner and who often present himself as a stanger taking the risk of not being recognized. He is the God of nowhere and everywhere at the same time. Dionysus is hermaphrodite and can take any physical appearance he likes. Capable of controling time and people’s mind. He often drags people into frenzy leading to dramatic situations to destroy those who oppose his cult and the freedoms he represents. He is also the Liberator, whose wine, music and ecstatic dance frees his followers from self-conscious fear and care, and subverts the oppressive restraints of the pow-erful. Those who partake in his mysteries are possessed and em-powered by the god himself. His cult is also a “cult of the souls”; his maenads feed the dead through blood-offerings, and he acts as a divine communicant between the living and the dead.

012 INSPIRATIONS

013ANDRE KERTESZ

014

015

“Each element has its own par-ticular relation to the drama and plays its own part in the drama. And each element, the word, the actor, the costume has the exact significance of a note in a symphony. Each separate costume we create for a play must be exactly suited both to the character it helps to express and to the occasion it graces.” -

Robert Edmond Jones

016When attempting to create a piece that looks natural, flowing, soft, peaceful, or calming, organic shapes are generally the shapes of choice.

017

018

019

CONCEPT PROPOSAL

In the play “A Bacchae” by Jay Miller the character of Dionysus interpreted by Chris Bailey is presented to the audience as a very self-absorbed Canadian man, dressed up in black and white. Being the God of the grape harvest, he first appears to be in a drunk state, nervous, unsecure, still fun, sensitive, and attractive but very evil. And as the play goes along you start to feel his pain and suffering and the emotions he experienced while being trapped in his own body.

I have chosen to design the right arm of the costume for the character as it represents a powerful device to control people. We all use our right arm to physically interact with oth-ers, shake hands, wave at somebody, sexual intercourse or even to injure people.

Then I have decided to focus on the infectious side of Dionysus. Infectious as he spreads his power and control on people’s mind to draw them into madness.

Taking his right arm as a device to spread an infection, I assumed that he was the first one infected by his own evilness. I wanted this infection to take the form of a distortion, a distorted skin more precisely.

So to represent this distortion I have designed an arm made out of a black vacuum formed plastic and black latex. The organic plastic shape is to represent his infected skin wraped in a latex outfit which is to represent the lust and masochism of the god. I have worked on the duality and contrast of those two materials one being solid, shiny and sharp but still curvy and smooth and the other one being very stretchy, matte and flat. We will notice that their assembly has created some sort of a shield that can also stands for his protection.

By morphing those two materials using velcro in order to design my costume, I tried to express my view of the badly damaged inner side of the character.

021MAKING PROCESS

022

It is a technique that is used to shape a variety of plas-tics. In school it is used to form/shape thin plastic, usually plastics such as polythene and perspex. Vacu-um forming is used when an unusual shape is needed.

The process involves heating a plastic sheet until soft and then draping it over a mould. A vacuum is applied sucking the sheet into the mould. The sheet is then ejected from the mould.

Here you can see that the simple mould has been placed in a vacuum former and a compressed poly-styrene sheet has been placed above it. The polysty-rene has been heated and then vacuum formed to the shape of the mould.

Thermoforming is one of the oldest and most com-mon methods of processing plastic materials. Vacuum formed products are all around us and play a major part in our daily lives.

VACUUM FORMING

023

024

025

Different forms experimented with the vacuum former, and a replica of my arm made out of clay used as a mould to create these organic plastic shapes to scale.

027PHOTOGRAPHIC ESSAY

028

“I was a very small heart…

029

nearly invisible...

030

so much so if you tried to notice me you would not be able to...

031

I was undetectable… for my own protection.” - Dio by Jay Miller

032

033

CLOSE UPS