Lately, costume making has been a real wellspring of characters/caricatures. Yesterday I wrapped a thin twin futon mattress around me as pants and wrapped a blue wool blanket in a loose band around my middle and immediately felt like one of the old women in the triplettes de belleville. i'm going to give a performance tomorrow ontop of the tischman stage for my light movement and clothes class unless maintenance has foiled me. (they found my futon and blanket up there and thought I'd been camping out, and now they've informed my professors that no one is allowed up there).
Last week, I developed a very specific character through a bathrobe, and from that an elaborate story. The bathrobe is thin cotton in blue and white stripes, long to the ankles with mini kimono sleeves. I was consciously in the process of designing a "costume" for class and I put a bundle of tulle in my sleeves. Instantly felt as though I was a stuffed doll with porcelain arms, and I moved them as such. I moved them as such because they really felt that way... (this statement can be more specific but i'm not sure how yet). I moved my arms as though I was this doll and I put them up in front of me. I followed an urge to flop my hands back towards myself as though I had to keep them sterile and instantly I became a entire character. I felt as though I was a horribly embittered priest/doctor, who is disgusted by his congregation, filled with hatred for them. He is disgusted and filled with shame and remorse about it, because his belief in God , his oath to God, requires him to love them. The one minute performance I gave was of him walking towards the surgery he must perform on one of the members of the congregation.
For this character I removed the tulle and painted my forearms deep blackblue, which against the painted lightorange of the rest of my body provided the same sensation in my arms as the tulle had.
Also from this costume I had an image/was an image/embodied the feeling of some images from Ingmar Bergman's Fanny and Alexander. I thought of the awful priest and how sparse his home is, how disgusted he is with people and himself.
From the kimono i thought of Noh theater and my face I kept distorted like a mask. In my movements during the performance I thought of Butoh.
I am amazed at the distance one can be sent just by the lines of a costume.
The constructing of a costume on the body is in the same vein of sensation as drawing a character. The "cartoon's" personality is conveyed through the lines, their movement wight and shape. In a costume, in this costume for example, the weight and angle of my futon legs tilted my back, the folds of the blanket became my belly, and the quietness of the materials became my demeanor.
