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.