What should you consider in the design process?
Appropriateness of costume design for childrens theatre.
The personality of the character- reflect in the colour, size, shape, creativeness of the costume etc.. what social status does your character have?
Actors measurements
The physical movements of the character amd therefore the impact on the costume.
Suitable materials/fabric for the type of style of costume.
What period is your story set?
Creating a backstory for your character
Things to consider :
1 - Age
2 - Social Status
3 - What period it is set in
4 - Where its set
5 - Gender
6 - whether they are a vilian or a hero
We have just been given our character for the next two weeks, and our character is AN ECCENTRIC CHEF.
We have made the chef's age 40. We have also named the character Carlos, we used this name as we wanted alliteration 'Carlos the Chef' this helps children to remember his name, and makes it catchy for children's theatre.
We wanted to set this in now a day as we believed this would help the children relate, as its easier to tell a story which is slightly unrealistic and in a made up world.
His social status at the beginning of the story starts off being upper class, when his restaurant decends and ends up closing as does his status. His social status then changes to lower class but is brought up to middle class the same as all the villagers.
Storyline
One day there is this Italian Chef, he's miserable and this reflects in his meals. As the village people turn against him as he is rude to his customers (he believes he is better than everyone else) he turns into a sad chef. One day the critic comes to to the restaurant and realises where his buisness is going wrong, he sits the chef down and tells him to shut the restaurant down and says open it when you find your inner self. The chef searches for his inner self across far lands and realises that his misery came from the dishes he made and that he was rude to the villagers, he decided that he needed to be re-inspired with cooking, so he helps all the villagers with cooking their meals for free, they then find him happy and eccentric and they help him get his restaurant back, he now lives a happy life in the small village of Townsville asternd him and his customers are happy.
The main moral of the story is help others and they will return the favour. But there are also small moral stories such as, treat everyone equal you are not higher or lower as anyone so treat them the same. Furthermore; be yourself.Costume Ideas
As we are looking at childs theatre we have to make sure that the approiate costume fits the style of the play. Childs theatre stereotypically has bright colourful costumes which is easy for children to understand who is what character and what they play. As we are representing a chef, we have decided to go for the typical chef hat, so children can recognise the iconography of chefs usually portrayed in childrens shows, theatre and programmes. We have decided not to use bright colours even thoguh it will attract childrens eyes, it may be hard for them to understand what sort of hat it is if it isnt in the traditional white.
We needed to make sure that the hat would be suitable for movement and not fall off. This is always a task when hats and wigs are used in performances. A way around this can be fasten the hat using hair grips to the actors hair however the hat is made so that it will fit comfortable on their head.
In a ideal world i wanted to wrap to make it all out of white material. However, as we were on a budget a way around this was to make the base of the hat out of white card, this still does work affectively and makes the hat stay up right. The card is wrapped in white material. We then tried a few ideas and ways to get the hat to stay upright and to make it big and poofy. The first way we tried was by blowing up a balloon and fastening it to the card. However in the middle of me fastening it to the card it popped and i feared that this could happen on stage especially under hot lights, this could be a serious safety hazard. Furthermore, as its a costume for childrens theatre the last thing you want is to scare the audience which a balloon popping. So i then thought about scrunched up newspaper, but comprimised with one big sheet of plastic then scrunched into the correct shape for a chef hat. We will then wrap the plastic in white material so it has the affect of a chef hat.
On the left is a photo of our layout and of our hat, if we were sewing the hat then i would have drawn out all the templates for each different part of the hat. The diagram shows what materials were used and where on the hat.
On the right is our finished product of our eccentric's chefs hat.
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