The Costume Project

Audiences learn about characters most directly through the spoken word - what the character says, and what is said about that character by others. But those who create these characters have other 'languages' they use to tell us who these men and women are. Character Studies has begun a series of special projects that will explore and explain these other methods of telling these characters' stories.

One of the least understood 'languages' employed in telling a character's story is the language of costuming. When Hedwig in John Cameron Mitchell's "Hedwig and the Angry Inch" makes a grand entrance outfitted in cape, plumage and frills, it is clear that this is a larger-than-life character. Sally Bowles, also an entertainer, presents a similar picture when she belts out her numbers on the stage of the Kit Kat Klub in "Cabaret."

But as is entirely different from the images that Prof. Harold Hill and Marion present to each other, based on their outfits, when they first meet, on Main Street, River City, Iowa, in "The Music Man." And Amanda in "The Glass Menagerie," changes her look when the Gentleman Caller visits, in the second act, in her attempt to revive her girlhood days, wearing the dress that lured seventeen suitors. Costume design comes partly from the suggestions in the text made by the playwright, but other influences, such as the time and place of the story, and the economic and social conditions of the character, also have an influence. We will look at these influences, and examine what various costumes tell us about who a character is, was and hopes to become.