From Page to Stage: Righty
I adored working on Gemma Aked-Priestly’s The Cupboard. It was such a creative and interesting world to get the opportunity to design and definitely brought some exciting challenges. The general brief was to animate inanimate objects with Victorian styling. The character I began with was the domineering Righty the boot, leader of the inanimate objects in the cupboard of Jack the Ripper. The challenge here was to give the sense of a boot without overdoing the look, while still giving a sense of the period. A starting point for this was to look at Tim Burton’s work as it gives an alternative twist to the Victorian style which felt perfect for the show.
The costumes for The Cupboard went through two design processes, initially for a fifteen minute section of the play to be shown at the LET Showcase, where I was designing for Buffy Iannucci, and then for the full show in Edinburgh where Ellie Whittaker took over the role. In the initial designs all of the costumes were a little more heightened, particularly with the make-up and hair looks. I focused on the idea of the laces in the boot, noting this as the central feature of the boot. I wanted there to be a lace running all the way from head to toe. I decided to keep the majority of the costume black to keep with the leather boot and initially had a dark red lace to give a suggestion of blood – after all she was the boot of a serial killer. We adapted the ribbon to black for the Edinburgh show to move with the darker tone that the script had developed between the showcase and the final show.
I initially wanted to continue this lacing into the make-up and hair. For the LET Showcase we put plaits in Buffy’s hair to continue this intertwined look, but we adapted this to give more of a natural look, keeping the hair in the bun for the Edinburgh run. The make-up was also adapted from having laces around the eyes and boot holes in the cheeks to a Tim Burton inspired look to give a sense of continuity between the characters in the cupboard.
To create the look I started with the skirt. I got a simple long skirt and added grommets all the way down to lace the ribbon through. This was a fun new skill to learn and I enjoyed adapting the skirt into its new form. For the initial look I purchased a fake leather corset to continue the lacing up the outfit. The corset unfortunately had to be changed for the final show, but Ellie luckily had the perfect corset-style top to fit with the character and add to the darker look for the Edinburgh show.
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