Dress Parade Mary Barton

The dress parade for Mary Barton took place in the rehearsal studio which the actors had been performing in. The challenge of this session was to manage the actors in their costumes together with their changes. The director is always distracted and not overly interested in costume, which meant that my job of managing the situation even more challenging. To add to this a number of costumes for the minor characters had not been discussed at the design stage and an image had not been generated. This was the first time I was able to get the directors opinion on these costumes. After focusing the director and organising the actors the process of looking at the costume could start. Many of the costumes were as they were in the designs and the director seemed happy with the realisation. Even the minor characters which had been a concern were successful with just a little change of hat here and there. The character of Esther did however cause a few problems. Though the costume had been realised the director and the actor both felt that the way the character had developed did not suit the costume which she was wearing. It was identified that the costume seemed to heavy in weight and too clean. We considered breaking the costume down but it was still felt that it would not be appropriate for the character who was a down and out alcoholic prostitute. It was decided at this stage that the costume needed to be revised and a new costume would be looked at at the technical rehearsal. Perhaps the design had not shown the weight of the fabric on the character. Or perhaps the communication both verbally and visually had been miss interpreted, or perhaps the character had further evolved in the actor’s realisation. I was not overly concerned as I felt it was an issue which could be rectified. With this in mind I will interview this actress at the post research stage.