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C L A S S I C A L R E C E P TI O N S I N L A TE T W E N TI E T H C E N T U R Y
D R A MA A N D P O E TR Y I N E N G L I S H
ESSAYS ON DOCUMENTING AND RESEARCHING
MODERN PRODUCTIONS OF GREEK DRAMA: THE SOURCES
ESSAY 3: THE USE OF SET AND COSTUME DESIGN IN
MODERN PRODUCTIONS OF ANCIENT GREEK DRAMA
Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones (2001)
In this essay, I will discuss the importance of set and costume design in
contemporary productions of Greek drama and will demonstrate the fundamental
importance of design to any given production, both within the creative process
and in performance. I draw on examples offered by contemporary set and
costume designers and I try to categorize and explain their decisions wherever
possible. Of necessity, I have limited my choice of productions, designers, and
directors to a set of (around) a dozen examples; all of these can be found
catalogued in the database.1 It is hoped that the reader will be able to apply the
basic ideas expounded here to a fuller range of productions than those alluded to
in the text.
Set and costume design is just one area of the theatre’s ‘visual systems’ that
affects the creation and reception of a play. Sets and costumes are created within
a specific theatrical space for a specific period of performance. The notion of
theatrical space is, of course, very important in the understanding of set and
costume design.2
THEATRICAL SEMIOTICS
There are two major design components that make up the visual semiotics, or
design, of any performance: set and costume. These design elements reflect the
themes and mood, style, and emotions of a play, as well as indicating the
historical or geographic context of the production. The design of a play can be of
fundamental importance to its conceptionalization by a director or, conversely,
the director’s initial conception of a play can force the design (or the designer) to
work in a particular way. In both cases, the design is open to another level of
reception as it subsequently acts as a communicator to the audience. The
audience reception of the design can be an important factor in a director’s choice
of the visual elements of a production, as the experience of theatre director
Richard Foreman, for example, suggests:
Often, I’ve developed the visual aspect of the performance to a
point where it becomes the major emotional element affecting
the audience.3
Design is closely allied with the discipline of semiology - the science of reading
signs - which is, according to Foucault,
the totality of the learning and skills that enable one to
distinguish the location of the signs, to define what constitutes
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them as signs, and to know how and by what laws they are
linked.4
In other words, semiology (in a theatrical context) is concerned with the way in
which meaning is developed and conveyed from the time a director (assuming
that it is the director who makes the initial decision to stage a particular play)
first reads a play to the moment when it is interpreted (in various ways) by the
audience. Semiology cannot concentrate simply on one system of signs (like that
which, say, governs the set or the costumes) because it needs to identify a body
of signs making up a Gestalt that signifies a whole. Design elements (like set and
costume, but also lights and props) need to be read together and incorporated
into the bigger picture of theatrical space, audience layout, acting style, music,
poster imagery and so on.5
A stage design properly conceived and executed should express the core
meaning of the production. Set and costume designs are not just a collection of
images, they are the expression of mood, the presence that enhances and
comments on the performance. Design creates dramatic action, causes tension in
a visual form; it is a signifier of performance meaning. Design is an integral part
of the whole production process; it is disheartening to see designs which lack
coherence and are given a poor second place in any production.
This is not to say that costume and set design has to be elaborate or expensive.
Some performances are staged without set or created environment, and while
this may be due to budgetary considerations and/or technical availability,
sometimes it is a conscious decision on the part of the designer and/or the
director.6 A simple design can be tremendously effective as long as there is strict
unity between the design and other aspects of the production. The set and
costume designs (by Christopher Barreca and Chigeru Yaji) for Mark Ruker’s
production of Birds (1998), for example, were extremely simple but wonderfully
effective, using masses of white balloons to create the clouds in Cloudcuckooland,
and everyday household objects to conjure up a wide variety of plumage for the
bird chorus (DB ref. no. 1006).
When all the visual elements combine, a sense of design is born and the full
impact of the theatre experience can be interpreted (in various ways) by the
audience.7 In this essay, the focus of attention will be drawn towards the set and
costume designs of a series of productions, but where they become crucially
important to the overall design, allusion will be made to lighting and properties
too.
THE ROLE OF THE DESIGNER
In 1980, in a rare article on the importance of stage design to the success of a
production, a popular Sunday newspaper magazine noted, 'The theatre designer
is a comparatively unsung hero in British cultural life'. 8
While it is true that there are few theatre design superstars (there are, of
course exceptions like Edward Gordon Craig, Jocelyn Herbert, John Napier, Theoni
V. Aldridge, and Maria Bjornson), the role of the designer within the theatre
business is one that commands (for the most part) enormous authority and
prestige.9 Much of the designer’s authority stems from the fact that he or she
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must share in a production’s creative process with the director, supporting,
adjusting, augmenting or vetoing his/her creative decisions. The designer may be
the first person to visualize the ‘look’ of a production, or may be called upon to
help realize the director’s initial vision; ideally the two people will work together
in mutual artistic harmony to create a single vision. Of course, the director always
has the final decision over the production design; it is the director, after all, who
has to work within the designated theatre space and within the parameters of the
design decisions.
The close partnership that is expected to develop between the director and
the designer frequently results in the formation of close working relationships that
continue over many years. The director John Barton worked closely with designer
John Napier for many years, while Peter Hall, and, indeed, Tony Harrison,
established an excellent working method with designer Jocelyn Herbert. While
some directors prefer to design productions themselves, it is far more usual to
find a director collaborating with a designer, or even with a team of designers.
But the director-designer relationship can be very complicated and work on
several levels simultaneously. Many directors like to have the designers at close
hand during the rehearsal process, to the extent that the designer is encouraged
to attend rehearsals in order that he/she will be able to comment on the
picturization and blocking (i.e. the physical movement of actors on the stage) as
they develop, or discuss issues of design practicalities (the angle of the rake of
the stage, the number of steps on the set, the length of a costume’s train).
SET DESIGN
Set designers orchestrate visual elements such as line, form, colour, mass, and
balance. Ideally, the set should always help the performers by providing them
with an appropriate background for creating mood and atmosphere and provide
them with a workable apparatus. The role of the set as an apparatus for the
performers’ physicality was fundamental to Actors of Dionysus’ production of
Bacchae (DB ref 2534), in which the steel scaffolding set acted as a climbing
frame for the energetic clamberings of Dionysus and his Maenads.
A good set design should fit the theatrical space to its best advantage and
complement the costumes and the lighting, although a set design might also be
crafted in such a way as to provide a deliberate contrast to the costumes. The set
design should challenge or endorse the visual aesthetics of the audience,
encourage creative blocking and picturization on the part of the director and the
cast, and serve the needs of the script. All in all, the set design must reflect the
artistic vision of the production.
Therefore, the set designer (with the director) has to consider whether the set
should be a naturalistic, realistic or authentic recreation of a particular location
(imaginary or otherwise), like a temple, palace forecourt, or a seashore, or
whether it should be a more abstract (or even surreal) interpretation of the same
location. There is also a possibility that the designer might employ both
naturalistic and abstract elements for the design; this might include the
incorporation of the architectural elements of the theatre space itself. Each of
these choices will affect the audience’s perception of the production and the
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performer’s use of space. These decisions have to be decided early, as any later
mistakes could prove costly, both in terms of time and finance.
An example of the merging of abstract, naturalistic and architecturally
imposed design elements can be found in the Living Pictures Productions’ staging
of Euripides’s Andromache (DB ref. no. 2535). As figures 1, 2, and 3 suggest, the
action of the play was set on a beach and used a sand-strewn floor-cloth to
emphasize the fact.
Fig. 1
Fig. 2
Fig. 3
This gave a naturalistic feel to the stage floor, which was in contrast to the shrine
of the goddess Thetis which had an abstract and minimalist beauty, created as it
was from a simple raised rostrum, white plaster herm of the goddess, and one
overhanging bow of a tree which provided a sense of being outdoors and allowed
the lighting to create an interesting play of shadows on the stage floor. The
performers played out the drama against the back wall of the theatre, which was
left undecorated save for painted gold lines on a set of two double doors, which
served as grand entranceways into the ‘palace’ beyond. 10
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In the initial design stages, certain important decisions have to be made by
the designer and director. They need to decide whether the set should be
coloured or monotone, and, if coloured, whether there should be a limited colour
palette. The designer needs to decide about the interplay of light and dark on the
stage and question the appropriateness of using, say, large bright open spaces
and dark secluded areas within the set. Moreover, the designer and director need
to decide whether the stage will be a flat surface or levelled with the use of rostra
or scaffolding to add height and visual variety to the stage picture.
The set establishes the frame of action on stage, using pictorial, plastic,
architectural or other means and the set can communicate a variety of meanings,
moods, and interpretations; chief among these is a sense of the historical period
in which the production is located. More often than not these days, however, in
the staging of a Greek play, the historical period is unspecified: David Leveaux’s
Electra (DB ref. no. 1005), for example, was described by theatre critic Peter
Marks thus:
designed by John Engels to exist in some fantastic limbo between
the classical and contemporary worlds – the set encompasses
fragments of Greek columns and broken pieces of modern
furniture.11
But sometimes a more precise historical period is suggested: Katie Mitchell’s
Oresteia (DB ref 1111 & 1112) had the look of 1940s Eastern Europe, The Actors
of Dionysus set their Antigone (1998) in the Late Medieval/Early Renaissance era
(DB ref. no. 282), and the Bloomsbury Theatre’s 1999 Lysistrata was set in 1920s
high-society (DB ref. no. 1049), while Toph Marshal’s Canadian production of
Helen was rooted in the 1930s (DB ref. no. 266). Other productions are even
more exact: Michael Ewans’ 1997 Antigone was specifically set in Bosnia in 1994
(DB ref. no. 829). It is very rare, however, to find a production of a Greek play
that specifically sets it in the time of its original composition and performance.
The set also informs the audience of the geographical location of the play (in the
city or town, in Sparta or Susa, etc). Greek tragedy and comedy usually locate
the action in a specific place; this may or may not be observed in modern
productions. Actors of Dionysus’s production of Oedipus the King went as far as
placing two large tapestry maps on the stage floor from which the audience was
able to pinpoint the locations of the play - Thebes, Corinth, and Delphi (DB ref.
no. 934). Peter Sellars’ The Persians of 1993 clearly established the setting in
Gulf War Iraq (DB ref. no. 208). As Benedict Nightingale of The Times noted,
Don’t be fooled by the occasional references to conquering
Athenians or by the characters’ classical names. Instead listen to
the smart bombs as they fizz overhead. . . . The bare Royal
Lyceum stage is, it seems, Baghdad during the Gulf War. 12
The set might refer to an exact place or location (such as a palace, a woodland,
or a seashore). Two productions of Euripides’s Ion are particularly noteworthy for
the detailed reconstruction of the ancient sacred precinct of Delphi. The first,
which was originally produced in Cambridge in 1994 and then toured in Britain
and Greece under the direction of Nick Philippou, was designed by Moggie
Douglas who cleverly created a huge white marble pediment of the temple of
Apollo which was crowded with mythological scenes of bending and falling human
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figures interspersed among chariot horses (DB ref. no.144). The second (big[ger]
budget) production directed for the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) also in
1994 by Nicholas Wright had a set which was described as
an impressive piece of archaeology, a literalization of Euripides’
text, beautiful but not so overwhelming that the actors would get
lost against it.13
The set consisted of,
reliefs which looked like museum casts … An altar, Mycenaean
style, hammered gold foil over carved wooden reliefs, Gorgons
prominent among them, raised on a stepped dais before a notquite doorway in the centre of the temple.(DB ref. no. 143). 14
The set design can also give an indication of the time of day, although this, of
course, was generally of little importance to the ancient Greek dramatists who
seem to have observed the constraints of playing in the open air during the hours
of daylight.15 Nevertheless, modern directors and designers often find an
appropriate temporal location for their settings. A 1996 production of a moderndress Lysistrata (designed and directed by Paul Atkins) set the action during the
course of a day (DB ref. no. 997). Likewise, the seasons of the year are rarely
specified in the ancient texts, nor in their modern realizations. However, Actors of
Dionysus’ production (2000) of Grave Gifts (DB ref. no 1113) set the action in a
bitterly cold winter landscape, while Katie Mitchell’s Oresteia seemed to progress
from summer to winter.
The set design can, with the aid of lighting, also hint at weather conditions:
while rumbling thunder is a common feature of modern tragic productions, few
are explicit about weather conditions in the stage design itself. In Silviu
Purcarete’s remarkable 1998 Agamemnon (DB ref. no. 941), however, the large
double doors within the side walls of the ‘palace’ set were used to good effect as
they periodically slammed open and closed with the force of a torrential storm
raging outside the palace.
Above and beyond providing the audience with an indication of the time and
location of the play, the set must create the mood and atmosphere of the
production. All designers hope that their creations will arouse an emotional
response in the spectator as it creates the correct atmosphere for the production.
The mood can sometimes be emphasized by the emblematic use of scenic
elements or a particular design facet which is singled out to stand as a hallmark
for a production. For Purcarete, for example, the emphasis was put on the bright
blue cyclorama that provided a background to his stark Agamemnon set. In front
of the cyclorama, perched in line on top of the ‘palace’ roof, were the silhouettes
of six black vultures, an evocative image for the precarious, decaying state of
Argos. The silhouetted birds of prey provided a visual key into the production as
the audience took its seats; they also became the production’s most enduring
image. Similarly, few spectators of Ninagawa’s Medea at the Edinburgh Festival in
1986 will forget the visual impact of Medea’s dragon-led fiery chariot appearing in
the night sky above the neoclassical pediment of the open-air stage building. In
this one colourful image, Ninagawa emphasized both Medea’s familial association
with the Sun god and his own Oriental background.
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The designer must ensure that the set and other design elements of the misen-scène either merge together to form a well-conceived unity, or, if desired, that
they diversify and clash, bringing deliberate discord. The purposeful correlation of
the design elements of a production means that all the theatrical visual systems
(set, costumes, lights, props, poster and programme design) work in harmony; if
a production, like David Leveaux’s Electra, is set in Bosnia in 1994 (see DB ref.
no. 829), then all the design factors must work together to convince the audience
that they are witnessing a sequence of events happening in a particular time and
place. It is not appropriate for a character to appear in ancient Greek costume,
unless the director and/or designer want to emphasize some discrepancy or
correlation between, say, past and present events. Katie Mitchell’s Oresteia, for
example, is a very good instance of the effective use of integrated design.
Pseudo-1940s Eastern Europe was reflected in set details, costumes, props, music
and dance, while high-tech digital gadgetry, like camcorders and microphones
and less imposing technical gadgetry like hand-held cassette recorders and old
typewriters, were merged together to create a unique visual system. Fused
together, these seemingly disparate elements created a unified whole which was
also reflected in the non-production aspects of the work, the poster and the
programme designs. The main image for the programme and the poster showed a
young girl’s dress, in 1940s style, trampled into the wet sand of a shoreline. In
the distance there lay a single little shoe. The image is meant to focus the
spectator’s mind on the tragedy of the young Iphigeneia, and the legitimacy of
her sacrifice is questioned by the photographs scattered throughout the
programme, where more items of her clothing are tagged and bagged like
evidence at a murder trial. The potency of the imagery is endorsed within the
production itself, where the bloody carpet that was spread on the ground for
Agamemnon’s hubristic entry into his palace was actually formed from dozens of
little girls’ blood-soaked dresses.
Sometimes, however, deliberate discord within the design elements can
amplify or confuse the mood or atmosphere of the production. Mnouchkine and
her design team interspersed some subtle but significant aspects of visual conflict
in the production of Les Atrides (1990-1992, DB ref. no 152). In Eumenides, for
example, the bullring-like structure of the set and Nathalie Thomas’s Oriental
kimono-like costumes for the three Furies were set off against contemporary
footwear – battered trainers and pumps. The footwear detail was small, but
deliberate and was meant to draw out the shared commonalities across time
periods and cultures.
RECENT TRENDS
It would appear that a healthy trend has shaped up since the early 1960s wherein
set design has been freed of its imitative (or representational) role and has
become an integral contributor to the performance as a whole. The design of
Greek tragedy in particular is certainly responding to the general trend of
innovative theatrical design. Broadly speaking, the typographic design elements
of contemporary Greek drama productions can be classed as:


Modern dress.
Modern dress war-zone.
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


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Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones
Modern dress, Eastern European (particularly popular in the late 1990s).
A nebulous thing called ‘Timeless’ which is often an
amalgamation of styles. This ‘look’ can be achieved through the
thoughtless and imprecise amalgamation of styles. Alternatively,
of course, ‘Timelessness’ can a carefully created design
statement which, through an amalgamation of styles emphasizes
commonalities or, conversely, plays-up disjunction.
A period-specific production.
Oriental, Eastern.
‘The Greek past’, i.e., a production where actors wear ancient
Greek style costumes and perform on Greek-inspired
architectural settings, but where they do not use authentic Greek
stage design conventions like masks, the orchestra, skene, etc.
‘The Greek past’ with authentic Greek production details, eg.
masks, ekkyklema, skene, the crane, etc.
Of course, not all productions necessarily sit comfortably in one or any of those
categories. Some productions may share different design conventions or merge
elements during the course of the performance, as we have noted with
Mnouchkine’s Eumenides.
COSTUMES
Costumes form a unique sign system of especial complexity since they are
decoded by the audience on a number of simultaneous levels: they are put into
action by the performers who impose gestures and movement on them, while at
the same time they are three-dimensional aspects of art and must be read in the
wider context of space, set, and lighting. The contextualization of all the aspects
of design can radically alter how a costume is used and read. When a white
costume is lit by a red light, for example, then it becomes red; when a black robe
is worn against a black background, the wearer all but disappears.
Besides these complexities, costume designers have an additional
responsibility because costumes do not simply form part of the overall visual
system, but they also have to reflect the status and individuality of different
characters. The costume designer and the director must conceptualize not just
the look of each individual costume, but also take special notice of how the
collective costumes work as visual signifiers in each changing moment of the
performance. In Living Theatre Productions’ Andromache, for example, the
predominant colours for the costumes were shades of red, orange, brown and
gold. The colours gave a unity to the chorus and to several of the main
protagonists. The costumes for the characters of Andromache and Hermione,
however, were allowed to stand apart: the Spartan Hermione was dressed in
several layers of brightly coloured purple, blue and green silks to emphasize her
wealth and vanity, while the Trojan Andromache, played by a black actress, was
dressed in a simple black sleeveless gown (see figure 3). Not only did the
blackness of her costume provide a sharp simplicity to Hermione’s ostentatious
Orientalist costume, but it also marked her out as a loner who was alien to her
red-orange-gold-brown surroundings. Andromache’s black skin and black costume
emphasized her foreignness.
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To begin the costuming process, the director has to determine the importance
of costumes in the hierarchy of visual systems within a given production: how
much weight and significance will the costumes carry? The director might decide
to dress all the characters in basic black costumes if the desire is to let the
script’s words and the actors’ physicality carry forward the characterizations and
the plot; alternatively, a director can rely heavily on costumes to provide a
layered series of signifiers. When Brook wanted to emphasize the poetry and
language of his production of Seneca’s Oedipus at the Old Vic, he dressed his cast
in black jumpers and trousers and simple black dresses (DB ref. no. 190). At the
other end of the scale is Mnouchkine’s Les Atrides in which the detailed costumes
added something very special to the production’s visualization. The integral
importance of costume in a production is very much at the root of Le Théâtre du
Soleil’s design and production theory, as Mnouchkine propounds to her actors:
Finish your costumes well. They can be your friends. They are
your enemies if they are badly made, if they don’t hold
together.16
It is generally noted that Mnouchkine has a special taste for costumes. She likes
them to be lively, rich, exact, finished.
The director and costume designer must determine which of the following kinds of
information they want to communicate to the audience through the costumes
(many concerns, it can be demonstrated, are shared by the set designer too.
Like the set, costume can locate the historical period in which the director has
opted to place the play. Interestingly, directors and costume designers seem
increasingly disinclined to place their productions in the ancient Greek world;
commenting on the production process of Les Atrides, Monouchkine maintains
that,
I didn’t want to consult documents on ancient Greece because I
was afraid of slipping into the old clichés of the Greek vases, the
togas (sic), the draping.
Jocelyn Herbert recollects that for the National Theatre production of the
Oresteia,
Peter [Hall] wanted the cast to wear clothes based on Greek
costumes but which didn’t look too Greek.
For Barton’s The Greeks, Napier describes his costumes as,
starting off as in indefinitely Homeric but became curiously
modern as the cycle progresses. That is not affectation, it is what
the plays seem to dictate. … Pylades … looks like the Palestinian
leader Yasser Arafat … I see Orestes, Electra and Pylades almost
as the Baader Meinhof gang when, sentenced to death, they
come storming into the palace at Mycenae. ‘Andromache’ … is
very Monty Python. … So where appropriate, the costumes go
wacky, with lots of cocktail skirts.
Costumes also stress the geographic locations of the play. Any kind of regional
costume, for example, can indicate that a character originates from a location
outside the setting of the main action. In Mitchell’s ‘Daughter’s of Darkness’ (the
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second half of the RNT’s Oresteia), Orestes and Pylades dressed in clichéd
Sicilian-type gangster suits (complete with tick drooping mustachios) to express
their (supposed) Phokian nationality. Lampito, the Spartan, is frequently dressed
in a different (usually somewhat ‘butch’) costume from her Athenian sisters in
Aristophanes’s Lysistrata.
One of the chief functions of the costume is to reflect a character’s
personality; this can either be reflected in a naturalistic approach to an individual
character’s taste in dress, or be a more symbolic reflection of character. An
Oxford Playhouse production of Iphigenia at Aulis, for example, dressed the
young princess in a short while cotton dress and delicate white veil, which
stressed her marriagability and her innocence (it reminded one both of a wedding
dress and a young girl’s confirmation dress). Her mother, Clytemnestra, was
costumed like a grand operatic diva in a green satin gown (DB ref. no. 966).
Actors of Dionysus’ Grave Gifts stereotyped Clytemnestra’s personality by
dressing her in a skimpy, sexy red velveteen dress that revealed ample amounts
of flesh; in contrast, the Clytemnestra of Mitchell’s Oresteia was elegantly but
modestly (not to say ironically) dressed in a late 1940’s Dior-style white summer
dress printed with bright red poppies. A picture of feminine respectability, the
costume was intended to conceal the queen’s ambitious personality and
passionate, man-like, ruthless drive. In Barton’s The Greeks, the vain self-centred
Helen was dressed for her Egyptian sojourn in nothing more than a bright yellow
towel, suntan lotion, and a pair of sunglasses. This simplest kind of ‘costume’
eloquently conveyed Helen’s narcissism and indolence and placed the story
squarely in the present day. Helen’s towel, sun-cream and shades also
highlighted her socio-economic status. Poverty and wealth, or feigned poverty
and wealth, can be effectively captured in costume. Accessories, like jewellery,
makeup and hairstyles sometimes make all the difference.
A costume designer should also attempt to convey any shifting emotions of the
character: in Cholë Productions’ Persians, for example, Atossa was first costumed
in a bright, ornate robe which she later set aside in favour of mourning black as
news of the Persian defeat reached Susa (DB ref. No. 909).
Costumes also give information about the season of the year and the weather
conditions in which the play is set, and help indicate the time of day. Such details
can be expressed through the designer’s choice of weight, decoration and cut of
the fabric and the layers of clothing worn by a character. Katie Mitchell’s The
Home Guard had a summer feel about it, and to endorse this, Clytemnestra was
costumed in a summer frock – a garden-party type of dress – set off with white
gloves and white stiletto shoes. Paul Atkins’ Lysistrata, as noted above, set the
action during the course of a day: beginning early in the morning, the Athenian
women appeared on stage, appropriately enough, in pyjamas; by the ‘afternoon’
they were in skimpy summer frocks, but towards the close of the play they
reappeared in slinky evening dresses. The transitions in time were echoed in the
lighting design too.
Costume should also convey a character’s profession or occupation.
Aristophanes’s sausage-seller should look conspicuously different from a military
general or an effete poet. Costume should also help both actor and audience by
alluding to a character’s age: A character like Iphigeneia should look noticeably
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younger than her mother Clytemnestra, and this can be achieved through a
combination of costume and make-up.
Costume can also emphasize the dramatic polarity or similarities of femininity
and masculinity. The gendered aspects of a production can be effectively
enhanced by costume: theatre babel’s Electra (2000), for example, depicted the
Argive princess in a heavy greatcoat and army boots (an image utilized in many
contemporary productions of the Electra story (DB id no. 2521)). It is a look
which stresses Electra’s removal from the normal ‘gendered’ constructions of
society. She is an unmarried virgin who, through her choice of masculine military
clothing, clearly has no aspirations to marry. The same production saw her sister
dressed in a young girl’s frock, plastic jewellery, sandals and ankle socks. This
emphasized Chrysosthemis’s dilemma: she is a young woman reaching sexual
maturity but unnaturally forced to lead the life of a virgin schoolgirl until her elder
sister marries. To create this impasse, the costume designer cleverly dressed the
mature actress in clothing far too young for her character.
Above and beyond the practical considerations of depicting character and
helping create a time and a place, costume also augments pageantry and
spectacle. Monouchkine has skilfully demonstrated this important and invigorating
aspect of modern performance and one that clearly has direct links with the
original productions of tragedy in Athens where, we know, spectacle was of great
importance.
After settling on a style and a purpose for the costumes, the designer must
explore fabric choices for each costume as well as for the production as a whole.
Different sorts of fabrics serve as signifiers for different states: coarse fabrics are
suitable to express poverty and barbarism; shiny and smooth fabrics point to
wealth, royalty or sexiness. Other costume choices have to be made, involving
details such as headdresses, wigs, jewellery, and makeup. All of these important
elements have to be drawn together harmoniously for the costume to work and
have dramatic effect.
An important consideration for the costuming of Greek drama is whether or
not to employ masks as part of the costume. For many people, masks are
synonymous with Greek drama, although in actuality, there are very few modern
productions that utilize this ancient aspect of costume. An exception is made by
Chloë Productions, a London based theatre company specializing in Greek drama
and theatre-in-education, who routinely opt to use masks. The company tends to
employ half-masks, as opposed to full-face masks, although the masks
themselves usually incorporate woollen wigs, which make for some elaborate
ancient hairstyles and complement the (mainly) ancient style costumes worn by
the performers (see Prometheus DB id no. 949).
Peter Hall’s Oresteia famously used full-face masks for all of its cast members
(in both speaking and silent roles). Designed by Jocelyn Herbert, the creation of
the masks occurred over a protracted time period. She recalls,
to start with we made some abstract and some more real, and
the actors were given them to try. We discovered that we could
make shapes which looked good in clay but, by the time we’d
cast them and made moulds and then the masks themselves,
they sometimes didn’t work at all. . . We tried various materials
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and we would have loved to have used leather, but it would have
taken too long to make as many masks as were needed . . . and
in the end we used four layers of muslin so the masks were light
and porous. The National made the hair, which was usually black
or dyed silk or cotton cord except for the Furies, for which we
used dyed string. . . . One of the problems was that each
character had to have an open mouth and that is such an
expressive feature. . . The masks for the old men of Argos were
originally going to be more abstract, using a wonderful African
mask as a base, but I realized that that wouldn’t work and that
they needed to be more naturalistic. . . . If you have a chorus of
old men even if they are not speaking all at the same lines they
are in effect saying the same thing; the essence of their
characters is that they are old . . . If I had sixteen different male
masks it would have been very confusing but by making them
similar I could enhance the telling of the story by strengthening
the feeling of age. . . Somehow, although the Old Men of Argos
were all in the same mask, they each looked slightly different.
True full-face masks, as used in the Greek theatre, force the actor to disregard
his own visage and to concentrate his movements upon his body; there is no
need for facial movement behind a mask; instead that energy is redirected to
other parts of the body. Full masks are also utilized in some forms of Oriental
theatre (like Noh and Balinese and Thai dance-drama), but it is predominantly a
make-up ‘mask’ that is worn by the Oriental performer: in addition to Kathakali,
Japanese Kabuki and the Peking Opera use elaborate make-up masks.
Mnouchkine has used Japanese Noh masks in her Shakespeare Cycle, but she
also displays a dependency on Oriental style make-up. Her production of Les
Atrides avoided the use of masks, despite their appropriateness for an Orientalist
production; instead she opted for heavy Kathakali-style make-up. Like Greek
masks, Kathakali make-up is highly conventional and symbolic: the audience
knows that, say, a character in vivid green make-up is good and heroic, just as it
knows that a type in black make-up is evil and destructive. Although Mnouchkine
rejects the idea that these Kathakali-inspired creations were based on Greek
masks (‘violent make-up’ is how she describes them), she recognized that there
were distinct mask-elements in this formalized make-up. An interview in a 1993
publication entitled Le Corps en jeu has her stating that:
The actors were helped by make-up/masks: I insisted on them
being masked, but I did not want opaque masks that would have
concealed their faces. From the first day of rehearsals, they
practiced Kathakali make-up, which both amplifies their
expressions and supports their performance. It is well known that
all Théâtre du Soleil actors have learnt to work with masks.
COSTUME AS A CHANGEABLE ENTITY
Costumes play an important part in contemporary staging of Greek drama,
becoming the ‘actor’s second skin’ that Tairov spoke of during the opening
decades of the twentieth century. Costume in contemporary theatre is a paradox
– it has multiple functions and goes beyond mimetism and signalling. A ‘good’
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costume reinterprets the entire performance through its shifts in meaning. As a
production shifts and changes and develops throughout the course of its run, so
the use of costumes develops too. The audience of Mitchell’s Phoenician Women
(1995) at Stratford’s Other Place (DB id no 211) saw a different set of costumes
to those subsequently seen by audiences at London’s Pit. During its transfer
period and re-rehearsal, Mitchell changed the look of the production in several
subtle ways which went (apparently) unnoticed by the critics. The production file
in the RSC archives testifies to the design changes: written in longhand, the
Stage Manager’s notes for the revival rehearsal on 3rd June 1996 reads,
WARDROBE. When breakdown coats?
1. There will be a new coat for everyone, each one being slightly different in
colour or cut.
2. Possible earrings or toe-rings.
3. All costumes need to look sea-stained.
4. The Theban costumes will be made of silk.
5. ETOCLES’ (sic) (Sean Murray) armour will now be metal (from Henry VI).
6. Creon’s costume will be less military with a swirly coat and no green
waistband. The coat (or double) will be used to wrap Menoceus’ (sic) body.
7. Teiesias’ (sic) costume will be more ragged with little feathers sewn on a
smaller gold crown.
8. Mante (Lise Stevenson) will have a poorer looking veil.
WIGS
Cut body-Painting.
1. Everyone’s hair will now be tied back.
2. Everyone generally will look paler & ill-looking.
3. The 2 messengers (Sean Murray & Dermot Kerrigan) need to be much
muddier.
For 4th June, the rehearsal notes read,
WARDROBE
1. Nose-rings are to be tried in addition to toe-rings (but not earrings).
WIGS
2. The tattoos may be cut.
3. Everyone (except Lucy Whybrow) should have dust/sea salt in their hair.
Examination of the production photographs and the costume sketches for the two
productions demonstrates that the design revisions were carried out for The Pit
revival. This is not an unusual theatrical practice; it demonstrates that design is a
changing and adapting entity, a creative expression that is as much liable to
change during the extended run of a production as is an actor’s performance.
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SUMMARY: HOW TO USE SET AND COSTUME DESIGN
The visual sign systems used by contemporary directors of ancient Greek drama
produce a wide range of meanings. Choices such as whether or not to use simple
or elaborate scenery and costumes, dark or bright colours, a large or small
theatre space, a lit or unlit audience, affect the meanings of the production and
audience reception. Set and costumes are individual visual elements that come
together to create a ‘design’. The director’s task is to orchestrate the separate
stands of the visual system into one harmonious whole and to gel it with other
performance aspects such as acting, music, and dance. Audiences are then asked
to receive, read and understand the visual dimension of the performance as a key
language component of the theatrical discourse.
References
Feral, J. Mnouchkine's Workshop at the Soleil: A Lesson in Theatre, TDR. 33/4.
(Winter, 1989) 77-87. [tr. Anna Husemoller.]
Foreman, R. 1992. Unbalancing Acts. New York.
Foucault, M. 1996. Les mots et les choses. Paris.
Goetsch, S. (1995) Ionized. Didaskalia 2/1. Online at www.didaskalia.net
Herbert, J. A Theatre Workbook. London: Art Books International.
Llewellyn-Jones, L. 2002. Understanding Theatre Space. Milton Keynes:
www2.open.ac.uk/ClassicalStudies/GreekPlays/essays/essaypage.htm
Marks, P. The New York Times. 4 December 1998.
Mikotowicz, T. J. 1992. Theatrical designers. An international biographical
dictionary. Westport CT: Greenwood Press.
Nightingale, B. The Times. 18 August 1993.
Szeeman, H. (ed.) 1983. Der Hang zum Gesamtkunstwerk. Frankfurt.
Wagner, R. 1850. L'œuvre d'art de l'avenir. Paris.
Wagner, R. 1852. Opéra et Drame. Paris.
Database reference numbers (DB ref. nos) are provided wherever possible, but
are only cited at the first occurrence of a production.
To access database examples given in this paper, go to the Classical Receptions
Project Website [http://www2.open.ac.uk/ClassicalStudies/GreekPlays/] and
choose 'Search The Database' from the side menu. Then choose 'modern titles'
and type in the title of the play you are interested in. One or more plays of that
title will then be listed. Click on the DB reference number (listed beside the title of
the play) that matches the one in this paper in which you are interested.
1
2
See Llewellyn-Jones 2002.
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3
R. Foreman 1992, 147.
4
M. Foucault 1966, 44.
That is not to say that this always leads to a Gesamtkunstwerk (‘Total Theatre’).
For this concept see, most famously, R. Wagner 1850 and 1852. See, more
recently, H. Szeeman, ed., 1983.
5
Contrast, for example, the design approaches and considerations of DB ref. no.
1115 (Theatre Cryptic’s Electra, designed by Matt Jason) with DB ref. no. 232
(University of Utah’s The Bakkhai, designed by Gage Williams (set) and Brenda
van der Wiel (costumes)).
6
7
That is not to say, of course, that all members of the same audience are equally
aware of the component parts of the design, or other staging elements (music,
movement, etc) that make up a performance. Some are only aware of a
‘complete picture’ and do not realize that the picture is created out of separate,
sometimes disparate, components.
8
Observer Colour Magazine. 3rd February, 1980.
9
For the work of these designers see T. J. Mikotowicz 1992.
The play was staged in London in August/September 2000 and was designed
by myself. The decision not to disguise the architecture of the theatre space was
made primarily for budgetary considerations. By adding gilding to the imposing
doorways, however, the visual impact of the space was maximized.
10
11
The New York Times. 4th December 1998.
12
The Times. 18th August 1993.
13
S. Goetsch 1995
14
S. Goetsch 1995.
In contrast to say, Shakespeare who, despite writing for an open air theatre,
puts an enormous amount of dramatic attention on issues of time, especially the
hours of darkness.
15
In J. Feral, Mnouchkine's Workshop at the Soleil: A Lesson in Theatre, TDR. 33/
4. (Winter, 1989) 84.
16
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