One thing that seems to have missed me along the theatre DNA chain of my existence is love of costume. For years I took zero interest in it, just wore whatever they gave me, and if it was good, then good, and if it was bad, I just decided to be better than my clothes ( and took careful note of the costumer for future reference/avoidance).
As the shows flew by, and enough good and bad costumes flew on and off, I came to realize that costume is a visual aid to character, and character is MY job, and that costume better serve the creation of my character as I see it (along with the director, of course)--
So, nowadays, I take a keen interest in it, and if the costumer and I differ as to what my character wears, then, sorry, but I win. It isn't about looking good, or cool, or even interesting--it's about looking right, it's about an audience member seeing me on stage and without explicitly thinking it, accepts it as right. If the audience has to think too long about whether a character would really wear something, or question why that choice has been made, or even if they think "what a really interesting costume", then they've exited the flow of the play, and the costumer have made it about themselves, and that's anathema..............................
And while I'm at it, I feel that way about directing and directors too. I've been badly directed enough over the years that I've developed a hard shell of callouses--I often boast that I'm director-proof. This doesn't mean I don't accept direction--far from it, I love getting direction when I'm an actor, I need it, and thrive on a real give and take with a good director. But I'm not a meat puppet, and I won't do something that runs counter to what I've landed on as vital to the character I'm portraying-- I'm very suspicious of flashy direction for its own sake, and sacrificing a true moment for a cool stage look.
I think a problem most theatre directors run into is the fact that the theatre director is, at best, third on the hierarchy of importance, after the play (and playwright ), and then the actor. They are confusing theatre directing with film directing, in which the director is the straw that stirs the cocktail, and the writer is usually treated as something that's stuck to the bottom of the director's shoe. (This lack of importance attached to scripts is a main reason why I decline almost every offer of film work. I'm not enough of a narcisicst that I need to see my face on film--I want to be in a good story, with true characters. And that's surprisingly rare....Not getting paid is another reason :)).
But theatre directors serve a different function than film directors, and I for one appreciate a theatre director's work if I'm not aware of it-- I love it when the elegance of blocking and scenic picture and focus of theme just seems to occur naturally on the stage. I don't want to be aware of the director when I watch a play.
Think about it-- we rarely say, I'm going to see director Mark Mann's new production--we say we are going to see, to name a recent show of mine, The Merchant of Venice, or we say, I'm going to see Amanda Phillips, or Christopher Austin, or Matt Hermes, in The Merchant of Venice, ( to name but a few members of that worthy cast). And that's how it should be! It's also why I don't like to lurk around shows I've directed. I know when I've done a decent job, and that's enough for me--I don't need the praise. I'd rather the actors got it.
The Canadian TV series Slings and Arrows, about a Stratford-like theatre festival, has a recurring character named Darren Nichols who is the archetypal humbug theatre director, from his thickly-knotted scarf ( Hey!!when did theatre people all start wearing scarves??? It must have been in the same memo that said everyone must say thank you to praise by bringing the hands together in a praying gesture, and then slightly bowing...) to his pretentious diction, and his "high concept" approaches to plays ( his production of Romeo and Juliet had the characters wearing weird chess piece costumes, while he exhorted the actors to never touch or show love).
There are a few such directors in central Ohio, many of them grad students or recently gradded students--but there are older ones as well. My pals and I will often hear out such a person's ideas, and look at each other, blinking " Darren Nichols" in Morse code. Along with "SOS".
I've actually had a director get impatient with me because I delivered a line as intended by the playwright--she actually said, " That's just a stupid playwright telling you one thing--I'm the director, telling you another." And she made cuts to the script to make the line be more about her concept.
This is what I mean when I say some stage directors think they are film directors. And this is a relatively recent film thing. In the golden days of Hollywood, films often had an "untouched by human hands" kind of feel--it was about story, and star, and not always in that order. Since then you get the director as auteur, to the point where you are never allowed to forget that Quentin Tarantino is the behind the camera of any of his films.
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| examples of GOOD costuming--helping to define character |
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