Ursula Production Blog. Part 1

So after much work finally Ursula is dead and I kind of see where Placida was coming from. I am of course talking about the production of Ursula that we have just finished working on. As a team of stylists we were asked to collaborate with the live production course at Southampton Solent University and create a new interpretation of the Howard Barker play Ursula. Tasked with creating a heavily stylised look for the 11 actresses and 1 actor involved, we were given 3 weeks in which to pitch the idea with a following four to create/beg/borrow and steal whatever we needed whilst keeping within our tight budget.
The collaboration was organised between the director, Matt Fletcher, and Fashion Styling course leader Andrew Markham. Matt came to us with a few ideas of his own regarding the overall presentation of the play, having it somewhat traditional in it’s appearance, but asked that we essentially fill in the blanks. We were to take into account the source material as well as the location, the performers requirements, staging, time restraints, script restraints and of course our budget. With all this we got to work.
We started out by reading through the script several times in order to get to grips with the complexities of the story as well as the language. We also used this time to pick out key points that we felt could be interpreted through the use of styling. Within Ursula there are a lot of themes that could be used such as the nature of religion, virginity, death, fear, betrayal and beliefs. When researching Howard Barker, the writer of Ursula, he writes he plays with the idea that they are set within the realms of his ‘Theatre of Catastrophe’. He talks about theatre as if all stories told should not have a happy ending, ‘nobody likes a happy ending’, and he’s right. Catastrophe creates far more of a spectacle than happiness ever did. With that in mind we set out trying to create a look that captured all these elements, as if the styling was another character in the performance.

Ursula Production Blog. Part 2

At first I was apprehensive of the direction being taken with the play and thought the idea of a modern day interpretation of a play meant exactly that, modern day. When researching into the history of previous performances of Ursula they all seemed very similar and I felt like we were going down the same route. Yet as a professional and as part of a team you have to take on board other people opinions and that of the director commissioning this work. With the use of our research into the themes within the play we ended up working towards a New-Romantic inspired look but using ideas of being bound, restricted and pure brought on by the idea of virginity. Matt had asked that the style be noir in tone so we worked on the costumes being black and white in colour with splashes of red to denote impurity.
With colours sorted we set out on the individual costumes for the cast. Within the play there are four main characters and the rest come under the bracket of the nuns. This meant we had to have five distinctly different costumes. Added to this was one major costume change for the character of Placida so in total we had six different designs and thirteen costumes. Largely the cast were portraying nuns so it meant that they all had a similar look. The decision was made that we wouldn’t make them look strictly like nuns but would carry certain elements across into the costume design. The idea was to have them in full-length clothing that was restricting, in the similar vain of a Japanese kimono, with white gloves and a black obi. They were also to wear black snoods, similar to the hoods that would be worn by a nun, to cover what had decided to be plum red wigs to further the new romantic idea.
With our template done we set out to differentiate the three nuns with the big part in the story by using character traits as our reference point. In the play Ursula is described ‘…that her hair is yellow, Ursula’s, yellow as the plumage of petals’. This means that her hair colour was already defined for us but that we wished to further distance her from the others image, simply by using lace gloves and having her costume slightly looser to create the idea of freedom. Placida’s costume choice was far more influenced by the look of a nun or matron, and of course she has a major costume change towards the end of the play in which she changes into a full-length blood red ball gown. Leonora’s costume was exactly the same as the rest of the nuns but we roughed up the material to further the idea that she was a vagrant. Finally we had to come up with a costume solution for Lucas as in the script he swims the estuary naked twice, but in the play he was not to be naked. We solved this by having the actor wear black wet look leggings and bare chest with shimmer. This was also accompanied by a dinner jacket for the rest of the performance.
I think overall the costume design was strong and fit in with the brief and the initial concepts although I thought that the costumes felt a little cheap, although we definitely worked well with what we were given and on the budget we had. I think we also worked well on over coming issues related to people’s different body shapes sharing costumes.
The make-up and hair for all the nuns continued the new romantic theme with a slight Japanese geisha twist. Cheeks were air brushed on to create a clean sharp look of various shades of pink dependant of the character, whilst the eye make-up was kept simple with a single eye line along the top eyelid with mascara. The look was finished off with red lipstick to denote the loss of virginity of a specific character. Finally there were the three different coloured wigs cut into bobs, black being for Placida, blonde for Ursula and plum red for the rest of the nuns. Lucas’s look was simply to create a more masculine look with accentuated cheeks and smokey eyes finished off with dyed black hair that was slicked back.
Overall I thought the make-up process was well done apart from a few hiccups the straightening of the fake hair wigs, the confusion with mixing a large batch of colour for the cheeks and the henna tattoo, all resulting in extra work being created but in the end working out fine. Out of all the creative work put in I thought the make-up was by far the best.

Ursula Production Blog. Part 3

The night of the show was hectic but in an organised way. Each of the four nights of the production were taken charge of by a separate styling team, ours had Zina in charge. Our team was tasked with the first night of the production and so nerves were on edge whilst waiting for the performers to arrive for make-up and hair. The six of us in our team each had our own station to work on the cast, each station being for a different make-up process. We had two stations for foundation application, two for the cheeks make-up, one for the black displaying Leonora’s blindness and the final one for eye make-up. Once all the basics were done we asked the cast to get changed into costume for us then to apply wigs and sort and style them ready for the show. We had a few first night issues with the make-up process in particular the problems caused by the badly mixed colour for the cheeks. One of the other stylists made the mistake of mixing a silicon-based colour with non-silicon based colour whilst trying to create a batch of the right colour. The problem being that the two don’t mix and what we had was blocking up all the air brushes leaving them needing extensive cleaning and also wasting a lot of product. Luckily we were ready any issue and finished the whole process with plenty of time, making sure to communicate to the other groups of this issue so that they could avoid it.

From here we all left for the theatre hall and set up backstage with any equipment we might need for re-applying make-up and hair when the cast come off stage during scenes. Backstage got a little heated at times with a few diva moments rearing their head from certain cast members but as a styling group we managed to work on the task at hand without distraction. We had a few first night issue’s with costumes breaking or timings between the cast coming off, then going back on again but in all we received positive reviews and I felt proud of being a part of the experience.