From Page to Stage: Britney

In this week’s post we’re returning to The Wonderful World of Dissocia and looking at the character of Britney, played by the amazing Tara Burgess. Britney is the busy, seemingly ditsy waitress in charge of the lost property of Dissocia so it was really interesting to build her character. The scene that Britney is in was where Dissocia seems to reach its peak of strange behaviour and strange characters and I wanted to reflect that peak in having the most flamboyant costumes be in this scene, and Britney was no exception.

While designing her I wanted her to be in a mismatch of bright colours, to fit her in with the rest of the scene. On top of this, the way that Britney was being characterised was to make her not very good at her job and very casual so I wanted her outfit to reflect her casual nature, giving her just a zip-up hoodie and skirt. This further enforced the need for obnoxiously bright colours, as her outfit without the bright colours was relatively ordinary. I think Britney is also the character who, although she is still not making much sense, is making more sense than the rest of the characters in the scene so putting her in a more recognisable outfit, would help the audience to connect with her the most out of the obscure Lost Property scene characters.

To achieve the look Saskia and I were very lucky to find the perfect blue zip-up hoodie in the UEA costume store as well as picking up a bright orange vest top while out shopping. The final item of the bright skirt I had conveniently picked up a neon yellow skirt while sourcing for The Fruits of Enlightenment that never ended up getting used and it was a perfect fit for this show and for Britney.

I had originally designed for Britney to have a pair of bright trainers to go along with the rest of her outfit, but it was discussed as rehearsals went on that in the world of Dissocia to give some coherency between all the wacky characters and to make everything just a little bit off kilter that none of the characters within Dissocia should be wearing shoes. This obviously also applied to Britney so we did not end up adding in the trainers.

Overall, I think Britney’s look worked really well and Tara’s acting for the character was perfect to get across the idea of the busy but not bothered waitress who was also in charge of Lost Property.