Thinking Through Costume

Thinking Through Costume

Costume is the glue that brings workers at the theatre together. To think deeply about working with and making costume at the theatre is to trace a map of social relations – between designer and maker, maker and actor, actor and dresser, dyer and tailor, tailor and designer. This book offers a detailed account of how costume is made, worn, used and designed backstage at the National Theatre, London, and in doing so, suggests that performance can be newly understood once we take account of the people who make it. Drawing on interviews with a wide range of 'costume workers' – tailors, dyers, buyers, managers, dressers, actors, designers, stage-managers, critics – this book argues that thinking about how costume is made and worn can offer us new paradigms for thinking about the theatre event more generally. Arising from the author's role as the curator of an exhibition on costume and a book of photography for the National Theatre (September 2019), the book benefits from Monks's collaboration with the NT and her access to its production teams and processes, including the workshops, rehearsals, wardrobe department, technical rehearsals, hire department and presence in the wings during a show. For students and fans of theatre and fashion, this is a book that draws back the curtain on processes rarely seen to illuminate the role of collaboration, of experimentation and technique, of the institution, and of culture and memory in the creation of costume.

Thinking Through Theatre and Performance

Thinking Through Theatre and Performance presents a bold and innovative approach to the study of theatre and performance. Instead of topics, genres, histories or theories, the book starts with the questions that theatre and performance are uniquely capable of asking: How does theatre function as a place for seeing and hearing? How do not only bodies and voices but also objects and media perform? How do memories, emotions and ideas continue to do their work when the performance is over? And how can theatre and performance intervene in social, political and environmental structures and frameworks? Written by leading international scholars, each chapter of this volume is built around a key performance example, and detailed discussions introduce the methodologies and theories that help us understand how these performances are practices of enquiry into the world. Thinking through Theatre and Performance is essential for those involved in making, enjoying, critiquing and studying theatre, and will appeal to anyone who is interested in the questions that theatre and performance ask of themselves and of us.

Thinking Through the Language Arts