On Sep 25, 2006, at 7:42 AM, Catherine Kinsey wrote:
That is what really bugs me, when a production claims to be
historically accurate but so glaringly misses the mark. Also I have
mellowed a bit with age and at times can grudgingly forgive a
production
that does not claim to be historically accurate.
In part this is probably because I have also recently been exposed to
some of the theatrical attitudes about period costuming. I helped
costume a production of Moliere's The Miser this summer for one of our
oldest community theaters. I knew we couldn't afford to be period (and
in fact pushed it out about 100 years for pattern availability) so I
was
calling it period 'style'. The director still insisted on calling it
period costumeing and we had several good natured arguments about the
semantics of our chosen terminologies :).
Since I am a theatrical costume designer, I don't mind stylistic
deviations from history. God knows we see more Shakespeare productions
in costumes from other periods than we see them in Elizabethan dress.
But the whole movie must exhibit the same style then, not just the
costumes. I think that is actually one of the reasons I work in
theatre and not film, in order to be able to create a stylistic
production from a conceptual viewpoint. You don't see that often on
film. I don't very often design plays that need to be totally
historically accurate. When you get into your modern realism it
becomes more important, but even then there are exceptions.
If I am trying to be historically accurate, which I am at the moment,
working on a realistic play set in the 1950s, it always bothers me to
put a costume piece on stage that shouldn't be there. Like, in this
case, men wearing crepe soled shoes. You tell them they have to supply
their own dress shoes, and that's what they think dress shoes are these
days.
Sylrog
_______________________________________________
h-costume mailing list
[email protected]
http://mail.indra.com/mailman/listinfo/h-costume
