From Page To Stage: Victor
This week we are back in The Wonderful World of Dissocia, looking at the mysterious Victor played by the extremely talented Bobbi Nunes. This was such an intriguing character to explore and design for as Victor bridged the gap between the world of reality and the world inside Lisa’s mind. They are eccentric and dramatic but appear inside of reality.
With the initial design I wanted for him to come across as if he may just be normal with some eccentric traits. With researching it, there was an idea that he may look similar to Sigmund Freud, to give suggestion of his psychological origins. On top of this, he is Austrian which gives Freud and Victor another link. Freud is always pictured in a three piece suit with a pocket watch. From this, I decided Victor should be seen in a suit, I wanted to add a bit of pattern so wanted the suit to be pinstripe, that way it was still ordinary but had a bit of something different to it. In the initial design I thought it would be a great addition to give them a bold pair of glasses to add to his eccentricity a la Professor Trelawny in Harry Potter (designed by Jany Temime). On top this, he is a watch maker, so I wanted him to be absolutely covered in watches, this would give him that alternative and whimsical edge that would suggest to the audience that there may be more to this character than first meets the eye and give the suggestion that they perhaps do not belong in the world of reality.
As rehearsals went on with the show the character developed from the initial slightly eccentric man from Austria into a character more similar to Professor Trelawny so the design developed into a more eccentric and wacky costume. The idea of the suit started to become looser and we started to think about doing something slightly more like a traditional psychic or something similar. Although as the rehearsals went on the character came back to being closer to the original look so we went back to being closer to the Freud-style look.
To create this look Saskia and I looked through the UEA costume cupboard. We found a white shirt and a beautifully patterned grey waistcoat and pinstripe trousers that worked really well. We wanted Victor to be like an old man so we gave Bobbi a walking stick which really helped add to her characterisation. To finish off the look we gave her a large overcoat which I think worked better for the character than just a blazer. We still wanted to maintain them wearing loads of watches so we made little fake pocket watches out of cardboard and paper and strung them along on pieces of string to go around Bobbi. I’d luckily used the same technique previously for The Fruits of Enlightenment when creating the costume for Marya Ignatyevna, the psychic who I also covered in pocket watches made of cardboard. I wanted to add talcum powder and wrinkles to Bobbi’s hair and face to age the character, but to aid with costume changes as Bobbi was multi-roling throughout the show, we unfortunately weren’t able to do that. I think the costume worked well in the end.
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