re what can be seen to the folk in the cheap seats:
We attended a performance of Madame Butterfly with a large college group.
Sitting way up in heaven at the Benedum, we had an excellent view of all
the scene changes andd an especially goodview of the right side prop table
for most of the show!
Kathleen
----- Original Message -----
From: "Abel, Cynthia" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "Historical Costume" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Thursday, May 03, 2007 3:45 PM
Subject: RE: [h-cost]Theater vs Historic (was:new Butterick pattern
Also in the theater, on top of budget limitations, there is also the
consideration of what is going to be seen by the audience, both in the
front row and the "cheap seats" Lighting, director's vision, and just
the present-time aesthetics also play a big part.
Costume budgets have always been a relatively small part of the total
budget in historically-set films. In the multi-disc DVD version of Room
With a View, costume designer Jenny Bevan remarks on the difficulty on
working with small budgets and what you can even source--she mentions
that during the '70's everything was polyester. What the costume
designer or costume department wants to do and what ends up on stage and
screen has almost always been a compromise.
We have to remember that mass-market pattern suppliers are marketing to
a wide audience and what will sell is what comes first. So what is
relatively easy to make and looks attractive to the modern eye trumps
authenticity more often than not.
What most of us couldn't afford to today is the amount of money people
in the past had to spend on a single outfit. One noble person's single
ensemble,during the reign of Elizabeth I, for court wear, could cost as
much as a Porshe or more today. And would we want to have to work with
lengths of expensive fabrics as narrow as 21" wide?
Cindy Abel
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