Short description:

Costumers at Work: The Collaborative Creativity, Emotional Labour, and Technical Skill of Costume Creation explores the various forms of work carried out in the costume workshop by the myriads of skilled professionals who transform ideas and sketches into the wearable costumes seen on stage.

Long description:

Costumers at Work: The Collaborative Creativity, Emotional Labour, and Technical Skill of Costume Creation explores the various forms of work carried out in the costume workshop by the myriads of skilled professionals who transform ideas and sketches into the wearable costumes seen on stage.

Costume work, as collective, collaborative, and material labour produced by a predominantly female workforce, has been long overlooked by the performance industry and those who study it. This book exposes the inherent tensions between theatre?s strict hierarchies and collaborative ideology and how these inform the structures negotiated day to day by costumers as they carry out their work. Through close attention to their work, the book establishes costumers? work as collaborative and complex, a creative and emotional labour that contributes to enhanced storytelling, actor performance, and audience experience. Using extensive ethnographic observation conducted over 14 months at three professional theatre costume workshops around Australia, combined with extant interviews and research from across the globe, Costumers at Work provides explicit theories and guidance about the behaviours, skills, and communication modes that make costume collaboration more effective and enjoyable.

This book is written for costume researchers, practitioners, and students of theatrical costume design and construction, along with theatre scholars broadly.

"Taylor offers a compelling account of the work of costume technicians, revealing rich complexities. Integrating diverse theoretical approaches with Taylor?s deep professional knowledge, this book is both an important contribution to costume literature and a template for reconceptualising many other ?hidden? disciplines of theatre."

Professor Nick Hunt, Rose Bruford College, UK

"Costumers at Work masterfully highlights the intricate, often overlooked art of costume making. Drawing from her extensive practice experience, the author reveals the collaborative, nuanced process behind costume production, honouring the unseen labour and creativity of costume professionals. This book is a vital read for anyone seeking to understand the true value of costume work."

Sofia Pantouvaki, Professor of Costume Design, Aalto University, Finland

"This is an excellent (and important) book that makes a welcome contribution to our understanding of the complex and nuanced costume realisation process. Its strength is in both the rigorous theoretical framework within which the research is situated, and the successful quantifying and analysing of ephemeral and subtle phenomena that are extremely difficult to measure."

Toni Bate, Course Leader, MA Costume Design & Making, Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts, UK

Table of Contents:

1. Costumers in the Workshop and Beyond  2. Learning in the Costume Workshop  3. Creative Costumers  4. The Emotional and Social Dynamics of Costume Work  5. Building Trust, Building Costumes  6. Collaborating Through Materials  7. Collaborating Through Language