At the beginning of our process in creating Every Rose… we decided to play on everyone’s individual strengths to achieve the best outcome. From the start of our process, we had the idea of using a well-known story and bringing a twist to it. By using a familiar story we hoped it would attract a wider audience, and the added twist would be intriguing. After researching into most fairytales we settled with Cinderella but wanted to give her a new lease of life.
Everyone knows the story of Cinderella being bullied by her stepmother and sisters, however we wanted to show the revenge Cinderella would dream of performing. This idea of dreams made us think of the possibility of setting the play in one of Cinderella’s dreams. Dreams are usually associated with the surrealistic genre so as a group we agreed on exploring the world of surrealism. This was extremely challenging as we discovered it was difficult to create a surrealistic performance effectively. Surrealism is described as the ‘creative potential of the unconscious mind’ (Oxford Dictionaries, 2016), which dreams consist of. When discussing dreams we discovered that they contain snippets of events and then skips to the next. With this idea in mind, we agreed to combine a mixture of genres that would not usually be associated together in a comedic manner.
Every Rose… was performed at Lincoln Performing Arts Centre on the 18th May. After a couple of panics the night before regarding costume, I adapted them appropriately to achieve a more positive reaction than I received previously. The company was pleased with what I managed to achieve overnight and it is fair to say so was I! The performers felt the costumes and makeup were tailored to each character’s personality and like Edith Head explained, ‘until we finally slip into the costumes does everything come together,’ (Jorgensen, 2010, p. 13). The show certainly did come together and the reaction we received during and after the show was phenomenal. The laughter that was heard and the smiles that were seen from both the audience and the company summed up the whole performance.
As a team, we worked incredibly well together and I think this really showed throughout our performance. If we were to repeat this process again, as costume designer I would have shown the costume to an audience outside of the company to get critical feedback on whether they corresponded with the play and the characters. By doing this I would hope to avoid last minute changes. Although I did have a night to adapt costume, luckily I was able to make changes and the performers looked incredible. A crucial aspect of designing and creating costume is to ensure the performers are comfortable with their costumes. The performers did feel comfortable and it allowed them to still perform to their highest ability. Overall I am very proud of what I created with costume and makeup and have learnt a lot throughout my process.
Photographed by Phil Crow
(Flickr, 2016)
Works Cited
Flickr – Photo Sharing!. (2016). Every Rose. LPAC Lincoln University. [online] Available at: https://www.flickr.com/photos/61839232@N02/27001497772/in/album-72157668477406316/ [Accessed 23 May 2016].
Jorgensen, J. (2010). Edith Head. Philadelphia, PA: Running Press.
Oxforddictionaries.com. (2016). surrealism – definition of surrealism in English from the Oxford dictionary. [online] Available at: http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/surrealism [Accessed 23 May 2016].