“Whatever you do, don’t spill the sacrament.”
That wonderful phrase came from a book I just read; The Blue Touch Paper by David Hare. He was directing one of his plays and was explaining what he liked about what an actor just did and the actor said that to him. David Hare said it changed the way he directed and made him less of an instructor and more of a collaborator. As he puts it; “The most powerful elements of the theatre will always be beyond description. They’re there in a moment and then they’re gone.”
Can a costume designer become a collaborator too? I mean how can we spill the sacrament? We seem to be so far down on the totem pole that it would seem impossible, but unfortunately we can. We can be fairly powerful in our ways of killing the mood; mainly by making the actor feel uncomfortable in their costume, by making derogatory comments about their bodies or otherwise making fun of their character in a play, or by actually making them physically uncomfortable in their costume. There are ways that everyone in theatre can spill the sacrament, even us.
One of my favorite directors, Dennis Bigelow said that he never paid attention to costume designers until it dawned on him how powerful they are. That made me laugh, but it’s true. We have as much power as anyone and more that most to affect the actors by how they look and feel and move. Once you grasp how powerful you can be as a designer it changes the way you look at your work. It’s not all buttons and bows or dirty undies and shlepping around to the thrift stores. Costume designers can wield and immense power over the production and it behooves directors and actors and costume designers to take that seriously.
Costumier 