The China Masques

This production has been in the planning since before lockdown but due to Corona everything had to stop before I was even properly underway with the designs - however thanks to filming, we are back on for a preview. 

We sorted all of the costumes between the two lockdowns, and they were handed over more then a week before the new lockdown started. All government recommended safety advice was strictly adhered to! Filming by the company of two, single household, is underway and they are filming everything themselves in lockdown.

The company was contacted to film two of the scenes to be aired through a University, and with the scenes selected it was on to me to costume our two person cast (from the same household) from the fantastic stock wardrobe! This is a massive hoard of costumes from previous productions, theatre stock sales, hire house sales from all over the country and back in February I was able to get in there with Michelle Yim of Red Dragonfly Productions to begin categorising them for hire so I was very familiar with the stock. The characters to costume were - an Usher (Robert Cecil), the 'Chinese Post', the Master (merchant) and a shop boy.

For the Usher Robert Cecil, the Chinese Post and the shop boy there were costumes in stock that only needed at best minor alterations to look the part, however the merchant needed a a compilation to look the part. 

For the Usher costume, we had a reference portrait of Robert Cecil that we wanted to emulate, however he had the very unfortunate habit of wearing only black, and mainly velvet from the look of the fabric, for every portrait of him for the time period we were looking at. This had the two unfortunate side effects of firstly hiding the details of what he was wearing which made it difficult to get the exact look and secondly, in getting the exact look it meant that our cast member would look like a black mass on camera. To mitigate this I decided to still use black but to get in different textures, such as satin and dupion, to give differences in the fabric that could be picked up by the camera and make his limbs and silhouette much easier to distinguish. The aspects of this costume that I made were the added dupion sleeves with white cuffs onto an existing velvet Jerkin, and a cape of cotton velvet lined with satin.

Ross during fitting between lockdowns trying on his Robert Cecil top half- you can just see the cape, and of course the Jerkin with its added sleeves!

The Master costume was far trickier as he needed a 'Gown', preferably with a fur collar, and in the end looking through the stock I realised that one of the velvet Victorian/Edwardian dresses, when shortened, would give the perfect look with a 'fur' collar added and the buttons covered. I tacked up the skirt to knee length, covered the buttons with strips of velvet to make the transition back into a dress easier, and added on a 'fur' collar from the 'fur' collars in stock. I also made the hats for the shop boy, Master and Chinese Post.

Ross as Master from the first part of filming

The hat for the Chinese Post was also an interesting one, as this is not in fact a representation of what Chinese messengers or dignitaries would have worn at that time but instead is a representation of what the Western world believed that the Chinese wore, as demonstrated in a painting from the time by a European artist of a 'Chinese' man. 

Michelle as Shop Boy from the first part of filming

I am waiting to hear about the how the rest of filming is going as it is set to end before the 20th of November, but hopefully more images of the costumes and the Chinese Post soon!