From Page to Stage: Doctor
The Doctor of Lev Tolstoy’s The Fruits of Enlightenment, played by the wonderful Ella Green, was a really interesting character to design for and was quite a challenge as the character developed and changed drastically during the rehearsal process which meant that the costume was designed twice.
The initial design pulled from the world of beauticians and plastic surgeons, in a very sleek and feminine look. They would slide with ease into the high fashion world but with a professional edge that made it clear that their role was usually outside the house. The designs moved between a tight fitting blue dress with a doctor’s coat and stethoscope and a beautician style jacket but with a high fashion edge to it. The look was very clean and clinical. However, with the regards to the character Ella and Robert, the director, were really struggling to bring out the comedy in the character as a female. She was clean cut and professional but it seemed difficult to pull depth out of the character when many of the lines, originally intending for the character to be male, were they spoken by a male character would come across as much more leering and creepy. While experimenting with the character in rehearsals Ella took it in the direction of a male character that was overly confident, arrogant and leered over women. Ella did this amazingly and it brought so much humour to the character it was difficult to keep a straight face during rehearsals. Of course, this did mean adapting the costume quite drastically.
I really struggled to create a costume that fit in with the rest of the extravagance, while still remaining true to the character that Ella had created. Finally, one of the assistant directors, Pema Clarke, suggested that he have a cape and this sparked the whole final design for the character. It meant that underneath the cape the Doctor could still have a simple, sleek, black suit, but he could fit into the weird and wonderful world of the rest of the characters with an obscure and brightly coloured cape. Orange was a colour that I had not had a chance to use with any of the other characters and I thought using it really brought the attention to the Doctor whenever he was onstage, which was definitely the effect the Doctor would be looking for from his outfit choice. Once I’d been looking at the cape as well I had drawn a lot of inspiration for the look from Lucius Malfoy in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, designed by Lindy Hemming. This is also where I drew inspiration for what to do with the Doctor’s hair. Ella had quite long hair and we were unable to get her an appropriate wig in the time that we had, so we slicked it back and tied it in a long ponytail down her back, which we experimented spraying orange, although that ended up not quite working. The ponytail and slick back hair definitely helped add to the creepiness of the character.
With make-up I worked with Angie Peña-Arenas, who had researched drag kings as there were a number of female actors playing male roles, but on top of this we added orange UV face paint above her eyes in an almost eagle-like shape to give the suggestion of him being a predator. On top of this we gave him a thin moustache above his top lip which I think further added to his creepy look.
The suit was luckily found easily in the UEA costume store and the cape also came from there, however, it was originally a skirt that buttoned down the front. One of the costume makers, Rosa Caines, added a ribbon trim that we already had in the costume room. The tie was originally going to be orange and we found one in the costume store but the costume team and I discussed that the orange tie may be a bit too much orange all at once and they suggested instead a blue which worked wonderfully as a contrast and the orange tie was used like a ribbon to tie back Ella’s hair.
This was a really challenging costume to develop but by the end it was one of my favourites that was created and I think it worked perfectly alongside Ella’s hilarious performance and fit in well with all the others onstage.
Comments