Choosing and making the costumes may seem like a secondary part of preparing a performance, but there is actually a huge amount of work and thought involved. After all, clothes tell us a lot about people: sex, age, personality, and occupation are signalled by what we wear and how we wear it; we 'dress up', or 'dress down' depending on our mood or the occasion. Coming up with a costume that complements a character can therefore be a very creative and collaborative process involving the designer, wardrobe supervisor and the actors. When director and designer Melly Still was
planning the design, she made
drawings of the costumes while trying to make her designs simple, practical and suggestive.
Lynn Ferguson describes her
role as wardrobe supervisor, the collaboration it entails, and the necessity to gauge what costumes are feasible given the limits of time and budget. She talks about some of the
challenges of costuming, firstly the sheer number of costumes needed for a large-scale performance, the elements that make up each one, and finally making the costumes easy to put on and take off.
Alterations to costumes, like an extra pocket to hide a prop, are made during rehearsals.
The Beast in 'Beauty and the Beast' was one of the harder characters to costume. Director and designer Melly Still wanted to
portray the Beast character as a primal man, by stripping away humanity rather than adding on layers of costume. In order to do this, a lot of work had to be done on actor Jack Tarlton, who plays the Beast, to transform his appearance. He talks about the process involved in
making fake teeth for the Beast, from the thought that went into deciding specifically what they should look like, to going to the dentist to get a cast made of his teeth, to
getting the teeth fitted. Choosing and creating costumes can be very exciting. Lynn Ferguson talks about the
rewarding aspects of her job, from the excitement of finding the perfect fabric for a costume to seeing the wardrobe come to life in the final performance. Many
costumes in Beasts and Beauties are hired rather than made and are rented from
the great costume warehouse at Bristol Costume Services.