My project as it stands

As per my study plan, in which I come up with a character and create the costume for the character, I had a bit of time trying to come up with a character and a concept I should work on. I had decided I wanted to make the character fairly different to my own personal self, so it would therefore show a difference in sense of body, personality, behaviour, etc.etc. I decided the character should be a boy, given that it is opposite my gender, they would be in a position of power – as I am not in a position of power, and due to the fact that I enjoy history, I felt that I would like the character to have a historical basis for their being. Originally I had decided that I wanted the character to be based in the military in the regency-era – around about the period of the Napoleonic Wars, 1806-ish up to 1815. This is because I wanted to make a costume I would enjoy to work on, and I have a particular love for the military uniforms of this era. I have done a lot of research into the historical period before this project and was trying to decide between making a uniform based on a real uniform, or to re-interpret it to suit my own character-world which I wished to base it off.

The picture on the left was a made-up design, based off a Austrian military officer uniform, but interpreted in my own way. The picture on the right is a design from a later-period photograph of a British Hussar – I have a particular fondness for the somewhat eccentric designs o f Hussar uniforms from any period, and especially like the addition of the fur lining. I prefer the Hussar uniform, however, one concern for me was whether or not in the video projects I would be doing in Phase 3 of the project, would it eventually mean that I would have to find a horse for the videos?

Based off Austrian Napoleonic Regimental designs.

Based off a British Hussar Regimental uniform.

In the end however, I decided that I would perhaps like to make a character from a period of history I do not know much about, as I wanted to learn more about costume from certain periods, and I have made several uniforms from the Napoleonic War era already.

After much consideration I came up with the decision to make a costume from the Jacobean era, as I had an idea for a character which I felt would be interesting to research for and develop via videos, which would be interesting to me, but might also be useful and insightful to people watching the videos. I have decided to make a character who is a Jacobean stage actor, who specifically plays the parts of women on stage. This would therefore be helpful considering as much as I make myself look masculine, I will be unable to change my voice convincingly to sound male, yet part of the reason these actors played women, was because their voices had not broken, and sounded quite high and feminine. I also felt making a costume from this period would be new, interesting and experimental, as I have never made a Jacobean costume before.

I am visiting The Globe in London on the 23^rd of March to have a look through their costume department and hopefully do some research into the actors of the period. If possible I will take some photos to help me work out some designs for a costume, which I will hopefully be able to work on once I return from research purposes. As well as this I hope to gain further insight into actors who played women parts, society’s views on them, whether there is an issue with gender and gender representation and so on. If possible, I may even take a look at some of the female costumes they would wear, and if I have time, I may indeed make an additional female costume of a part that my character might be performing on stage, and appear in one of the videos as this actor character performing this female character on stage.

I feel the various levels of play at hand as well as gender variation confusion and play would be interesting to look at and discover, and I think it would be interesting to see if people who asked me questions on my video on Phase 3 would maybe ask me questions relating to my own personal gender, or the character’s gender.

Currently I have numerous books in which I am researching early views of drag, early theatre, Jacobean theatre, costume of the period, gender and society’s views and actors of the time who played these particular parts. The collective research will be added at a later date, I have chosen not to go too in-depth at the moment until after my visit to the Globe, as I do not want my costume and character design fixed and unchanged while I go and unearth further research which will be gained from my visits to the Globe and numerous other places with archives.