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The costume fitting room has long been considered an essential space in developing a character, with many actors crediting the fitting as a critical stage in creating or understanding their character. In these spaces, characters and costume designs emerge and evolve. This article argues that active in this emergence are actors, designers and costumers and the costume itself. This research explores the costume's agentic nature in the performance-making process, using ethnographic observation of Australian theatre costume fitting rooms. It evidences the multiple, disparate and sometimes surprising elements that impact character portrayal and design development. The agency of the costume as a creative partner is currently a topic of debate in costume research. Leaning into this conversation, this article draws on Karan Barad's perspectives of new materialism to argue for greater consideration of the costume's influence and value in forming a performance work. Recognizing this contribution and the affective power of costume prompts a challenge to the structures and practices surrounding actors and costumes and how they intra-act. The article concludes by reflecting on the implications for current industry rehearsal, production and costume practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For this special edition of Scene, award-winning Australian set and costume designer Christina Smith was invited to reflect on her experience of resuming work on Melbourne Theatre Company's Berlin after a year hiatus due to COVID-19 lockdowns. In the form of a reflective note from the field, Christina examines the unexpected discoveries and unlooked-for liberation that came from being forcibly untethered from her creative process. Raw and personal, this note offers one designer's journey out of isolation and back to the stage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As the Prague Quadrennial of Performance Design and Space 2019 (PQ19) drew to a close, Australian designers, researchers and educators gathered to discuss the impact of PQ on our scenographic communities while querying the evolutions and challenges facing design practice. Australia's vast geography made this event a unique opportunity to bring together leading experts from multiple states and capture contemporary perspectives. At the midpoint between the 2019 and 2023 gatherings – a time of global pandemics, political unrest and educational transformation – this article offers the outcomes of this roundtable as a unique snapshot of the state of design practice within Australia through the lens of the Quadrennial. The roundtable was themed around Australia's presence at PQ19, the effects of PQ19 on those present and the ripples to be felt by those at home, and what attendance illuminated about current developments and concerns in practice, teaching and research. Led by practitioner-researchers Tessa Rixon and Madeline Taylor, the roundtable featured both the curators of Australia's country and student exhibits; award-winning set, costume and lighting designers with diverse experiences from national opera to independent theatre; and educators and researchers from the nation's top universities. The resulting discussion presents a unique perspective on the gaps and weaknesses in the design education, practice and research; first-hand insights on the challenges and opportunities available in both exhibiting and participating in the PQ; and the need to actively promote and privilege diverse voices and a multiplicity of representations in the process of claiming a 'national' scenographic identity. The roundtable was the first to capture multiple expert first-person Australian perspectives on the PQ while simultaneously contributing to the ongoing international discussion of performance design through the lens of artists, educators and researchers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article considers the effect of World War I on Charles Ricketts' work for the stage as an avant-garde set and costume designer. It looks at his cosmopolitan designs in the context of European symbolism. The first part of the essay focuses on Ricketts' symbolist manifesto 'The art of stage decoration' (1913). The essay then examines his designs for three Shakespeare plays that toured Le Havre in 1918 to entertain the troops. I argue that, in the aftermath of the war, Rickett's symbolism became the lens through which he assessed the complex political landscape of the 1920s, and suggest that his stance against realism politicized his practice and explains his interest in Mussolini's fascism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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In this article I investigate why two shows from different television genres in two different countries resort to nearly identical costume choices to convey villainy. I argue that that the directors, writers, and costume designers for the US science fiction show Stargate SG1 and BBC's Merlin use orientalist tropes of the veil as exotic, oppressed or threatening as costumes for their non-Muslim characters because of the centuries-long association in Western culture between Muslim veiling and the Other, while differentiating between acceptable and unacceptable headgear and face coverings. I draw on Said's Orientalism, Hall's Encoding/Decoding, medievalism, and the theory of the ethnonormative viewer to make this case. The "veil" has become an iconic negative sign in the West wholly distinct from meanings given to it by veiled Muslim women themselves. I suggest that anti-veiling ideology in Western publics stems in part from negative connotations given to it in television shows like Stargate SG1 and Merlin. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Interactive costumes enrich performance concepts and means of artistic expression. However, their creation challenges costume designers and technicians because they demand expertise in interaction design and electronic engineering. This article aims at empowering performance professionals to exploit the full potential of interactive costumes by discussing the creation process from the creators' perspectives. Insights from expert interviews highlight that costume design combined with interaction design underlies the profile of interactive costume designers, whilst costume construction combined with electronic engineering underlies the profile of interactive costume technicians. Together, these profiles are capable of creating interactive costumes if complemented with expertise in e-textiles and body-centred design and development approaches. The findings suggest that teamwork between disciplines is essential, resulting ideally in transcending disciplinarity through shared practices, and using diverse methods, materials, and knowledge. All of this might evoke a paradigm shift in the practice and education of costume creators and other respective professions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Though predominantly known for her Surrealist painting, Leonor Fini (1907–1996) was also a prolific designer of sets and costumes and produced scenographic work over a period of 28 years from 1944 to 1972. Having lain in the shadow of her male contemporaries, in recent years she has come to greater and greater prominence, but her work as a designer remains relatively unknown. This may well be due to enduring hierarchies of 'art' within art history that accord scenographic design a lowly status. Or perhaps it is because many of Fini's projects made at least some use of period costumes and sets rather than innovative, avant-garde aesthetics. Whatever the underlying reason, this article aims to address this neglect and presents a ballet synopsis by Fini from approximately 1938–1939; one which never made it off the page onto the stage. It offers an English translation of this document, which has never been published to my knowledge, and seeks to situate it in the larger context of Fini's work; specifically in terms of her engagement with the metamorphic body and the role of costume in achieving this metamorphosis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An active member of CSA since the 1970s, Dr. Abby Lillethun has served on the Board of Directors, chaired the Stella Blum Research Grant, and has been a member of many committees, including planning committees for national symposia, the Millia Davenport Publication Award Committee, and the Endowment Committee. The fellow honor, the highest bestowed by the Costume Society of America, recognizes Abby Lillethun's outstanding contribution to the Costume Society of America and to the field of historic dress and costume. [Extracted from the article]

Scholars have made great progress in exploring individual eighteenth-century drammi per musica as events (departing from the more singular focus on the work as captured in a musical score), and the singer often stands at the center of such an event. We have long known that composers took into consideration singers' voices when composing scores, but we also have gained insight into how singers could hold sway over the hiring of other cast numbers and determine the choice of repertory. Such case studies often focus on famous castratos -- as stars, they could extract concessions of many kinds in exchange for their services as lead singer. Until now, it has been assumed that singers standing lower in the operatic hierarchy -- second and third men, for instance--had little influence. This assumption is, however, belied by a newly discovered cache of 119 letters from agents, singers, dancers, instrumentalists, and the costume designer to the impresario of the opera Il Farnaspe, staged in Siena in 1750. This essay examines the information we can glean about the production from that source in the context of the history of musico-dramatic performances in the city. Opera flourished in Siena during the late seventeenth and early eighteenth century under the sponsorship of a powerful expatriate clan, the Chigi, who understood how to exploit festive occasions and the sociable enterprises surrounding them as expressions of senesità, or the Sienese way of doing things. In 1750, it was not the Chigi who were in charge, but rather another powerful local clan, the Sansedoni. The most compelling information on the production comes from a hitherto unknown tenor, Cesare Grandi, originally cast as third man in the opera. Over the course of six months, he wrote nineteen letters to the ostensible impresario of the production, Francesco Sansedoni. The letters show the singer negotiating on his own and his wife's behalf, and then on behalf of a much more famous castrato, Gioacchino Conti, who he wanted cast in the lead role. They demonstrate that it was Grandi who had had the greatest impact not only on who was engaged for all the main singing roles, but also on who was hired to enlarge the local orchestra, what opera was chosen, and when it was scheduled. He also oversaw the revisions to the libretto and the score, supervised the music copying, and made decisions about costumes. Cesare Grandi's letters allow us to observe the mechanics of putting together an eighteenth-century Italian opera seria at close range and in real time. They reinforce much of what we already know about the prevalence of the pasticcio (even when not indicated as such) and the unreliability of the libretto as a faithful record of every performance. Most important, however, they demonstrate that we might want to look in beyond the usual suspects to understand who might have influenced the most basic decisions regarding the choice of work, casting, scheduling, costuming, and musical score of a mid-eighteenth-century Italian opera. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]