The Costume Supervisor’s Toolkit

Supervising Theatre Costume Production from First Meeting to Final Performance

Rebecca Pride

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9781138182608
• eBook ISBN: 9781317294726
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Theatre

The Costume Supervisor's Toolkit explores the responsibilities of a Costume Supervisor within a theatrical, opera or dance production company. Rebecca Pride provides an insight into all manner of processes, beginning with a definition of the role, and offers explanations of the timeline from the first design meetings, leading all the way up to managing fittings and final rehearsals. This how-to guide outlines best working practices, including building a team and creating a Costume Bible, whilst also providing helpful resources such as sizing guides, a list of useful addresses, and case studies from renowned theatrical organizations.

CHAPTER 1
What Does a Costume Supervisor Do?

Costume has always been an intrinsic component of the live theatre spectacle, because people are always at the center of it, and people generally have to be dressed. As Pamela Howard confirms: ‘The human being is at the center of live theatre, and both the director and the scenographer start working from the actor – the most powerful living element in the space.’¹ Even if the actors are naked, or virtually naked, in a production, there will always have to be consideration of how that staging requirement will be managed from a practical point of view, and that responsibility will rest with the costume department, and ultimately the costume supervisor. If the actors involved in a production did not have costumes to wear, they would be without a significant part of their actors’ toolkit, and one might conclude that they would not be going onstage as their character, but largely as themselves. Essentially, the designer has the responsibility to create a feasible ‘back-story’ for each character in the script they are working on, and each decision about each element has to be thought about, found or made and then fitted to the actor. Without costume, the audience might not be able to see each nuance of the actor’s performance so clearly and a major element of the story-telling process would be missing or lost. Actors know this instinctively, and the sensitive and wise nurture the working relationship with their designer, costume supervisor and wider costume team.

It is the live nature of theatre that makes the work of all the people involved so exacting and complex. Unlike the film industry, where a scene can usually (if not at a financial premium) be re-shot if something goes wrong or is overlooked, theatre has only one chance per performance for success, when all the components will work together in the correct order and at the right time. This harsh reality necessitates a high level of teamwork and rehearsal, and the precise organization of a group of performers by the director, designer, lighting and sound designers, stage management, costume dressers, wig team and backstage crew.

The success of a production also depends on all the theatre practitioners working together for a common creative goal for many months and weeks before the show opens, with a focused and coherent collective vision for the play or ballet or opera they are working on. Theatre is an artform that is completely collaborative, and the work has the best outcome when all the skills of the team are combined to create what appears to the audience a seamless whole. It is only when every member of the creative team learns how to communicate effectively that the performance can have the best possible chance of success. The collaboration should not be seen as completely top-down, with the director or designer wielding their authority. It is far better if the lines of communication flow in all directions, up and down between the team. As Anne Bogart states in Rosemary Ingham’s excellent book From Page to Stage (1998):

In the theatre, we often presume that collaboration means agreement. I believe that too much agreement creates productions with no vitality, no dialectic, no truth. . . . I do not believe that collaboration means mechanically doing what the director dictates. Without resistance, there is no fire.²

That said, it is a universal truth that the buck stops with the director, and as one of the practitioners I interviewed for this book explained: ‘It is vital to remember that the director outranks pretty much everybody!’³ Making sure there is little or no conflict within the creative team requires great skills of diplomacy from all the heads of department, production management, stage management, lighting, sound, scenic and costume, so that the ‘fire’ Anne Bogart describes can be preserved. Everyone I spoke to in my research interviews reiterated this point: that exceptional levels of emotional intelligence are required by the costume supervisor in order to get the best of out the workroom team and in their interactions with the costume designer and the actors. This book will attempt to examine and highlight exactly what the skills required are, so that any costume supervisor will have the toolkit of these skills at their fingertips for any kind of production.

THE THEATRE TEAM STRUCTURE

There is a very precise hierarchy within the costume shop and the wider theatre workplace, and the lines of working communication are detailed in Figure 1.1. For larger theatres and university costume shops, there will be many staff members, all with specific and defined roles. In smaller theatre departments, there may be many less, with temporary and freelance staff employed when the need and budget allows. It is usually the costume supervisor’s role (in association with the production or technical manager) to employ and decide on the team required and then hire them for each production. There may be occasions when you are

Figure 1.1 The theatre team diagram

Figure 1.2 Freelance and permanent staff: creative, facilitators and the executive

employed as a freelance supervisor. Indeed, this is the most prevalent employment status. Figure 1.2 indicates the overlap between the permanent staff at a theatre (the executive) and the creative team (who are usually freelance too). The supervisor is placed in the central section as a facilitator. It might be useful to consider Figures 1.1 and 1.2 together to fully understand the lines of communication within the theatre and costume shop.

DEFINING THE ROLE

The costume supervisor’s role is to work with the costume designer and the costume shop team in the organization of the building or construction, buying or renting of all the costumes for a production. The costume supervisor is the manager of both human and physical resources. Together, the costume designer and supervisor are essentially responsible for transferring the costumes from drawings in a sketchbook, on a page or in a photograph to actual realized costumes on the stage. This will usually require sourcing fabrics and accessories for costume drapers and stitchers to then make into new original costumes. It may also require hiring, adapting or buying items to combine with existing costume stock held at the theatre. It’s a very difficult balancing act for all parties, with the costume supervisor producing and delivering finished costumes that are as close as possible to those imagined by the designer, as well as the director and actors. These costumes also, needless to say, have to fit perfectly. Even if the play or design indicates that they are meant to be ill-fitting, this effect will not have been created by accident. Working effectively with the designer and learning how to interpret their ideas and emotional and creative connection with the production in question requires that the supervisor be a ‘consummate tactician; bridging the gaps between the designer’s imagination and the costume makers, and between the designer and the actors’.⁴ It is no surprise then that the great film costume designer Deborah Nandoolman Landis describes the role in a very useful way, albeit in the context of the film industry, as: ‘The managing director of the costume department and the close partner of the designer’.⁵

Figure 1.3 Outline costume designs for The Women, designed by Rebecca Pride for the Arts University Bournemouth (2014)
Photograph: Margaret Maguire.

Costume designers are very busy people, and their workload on even a quite small-scale production can be enormous. If they are responsible for all the major scenographic elements, including the set, props and costumes (as is usually the case in the UK), then they are expected to be a highly skilled architect, historian, draftsperson, engineer, fashion and fabric expert – as well as a great communicator. They are usually too pressed for time to spend days and days drafting fully realized costume drawings, and may well prefer using photocopies from their research material, with lines overlaid to indicate the specifics of their particular vision for the character. Often, a costume designer will only have time to produce an outline of a sketch (see Figure 1.3). When I designed a production of the classic American text The Women (1936) by playwright Clare Boothe Luce at the Arts University Bournemouth in 2014, I felt that I needed free rein to decide colors and fabrics on my busy sourcing expeditions, so I simply drew quick outlines, with added photocopies of reference images, for my costume supervisor, Milly Barter, to start to work from. This process was very liberating for both myself and Milly, as we could be more responsive to any fabrics or hired costumes available without the constraint of too many specifics. The play (directed by Gareth Corke, with the set designed by Sam Edwards), is located in New York in the late 1930’s, and the all-female cast represent a snapshot of life for women from the very richest to those who look after them as beauticians and household staff. Clothing is key to the narrative, and as the set was designed with a tight color palette, I wanted to respond to the fabrics available when I was on my sourcing expeditions, not design beforehand with strong preconceived ideas.

The designer might occasionally present their supervisor with fully rendered, colorful and precise costume designs that are full of detail, with seam lines and surface decoration fully drawn and considered (see Figure 1.4). However, sometimes the designer will just have the time to scribble on a sheet of lined paper while in a taxi on a shopping expedition: the age-old apocryphal analogy of the design drawn on the back of an envelope is often not that far from reality!

Figure 1.4 Fully rendered costume designs for the ugly sisters in Cinderella, designed by Wayne Martin and Amanda Hambleton for Oxford Playhouse (2016)
Photograph: Margaret Maguire.

Some designers may prefer to create a collection of digitally sourced images in the form of a considered mood board for the costume supervisor to work with (see Figure 2.2), choosing very effective ways to co-ordinate all the digital technologies at their fingertips, such as Pinterest and Photoshop. By creating a complex individual style of mood board, rather than the traditional analogue method of drawing every detail by hand, they naturally need to rely on the support of the costume supervisor to help them achieve the translation of their vision from reference sources or minimal sketches through to stage costumes. This often – and indeed should – results in close collaboration, as Carol Lingwood, Head of Costume at the National Theatre in the UK, explained to me:

I think a lot of designers see their costume supervisor almost as an associate designer; their right-hand person and trusted sounding board – someone to throw ideas around with. A lot of designers like to work with the same supervisor again and again because of they have this pre-existing collaborative visual and creative shorthand. This can also save a lot of time and money.⁶

Even if there are no costume sketches available, only minimal or very elaborately presented costume designs, the supervisor must work closely with the designer to provide ideas and to access the resources within the costume shop, to help them style and source all the costume elements. It is an unwise costume designer who does not recognize the contribution a cost...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Foreword
• Acknowledgments
• List of Contributors
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: What Does a Costume Supervisor Do?
• Chapter 2: Different Types and Genres of Production
• Chapter 3: Developing Good Communication Skills
• Chapter 4: Setting up Your Team
• Chapter 5: Budgeting
• Chapter 6: First Rehearsal and Creating the Costume Bible
• Chapter 7: Sourcing: Construct, Hire or Buy?
• Chapter 8: Managing the Rehearsal Process
• Chapter 9: Tech Week
• Epilogue
• Appendices
• Glossary
• Production Credits
• Useful Addresses
• Bibliography
• Author Biography
• Index