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Studies in Costume & Performance 3.2 is now available
Monday, December 10, 2018

Studies in Costume & Performance 3.2 is now available

Intellect is pleased to announce that Studies in Costume & Performance 3.2 is now available! For more information about the issue, click here >> https://www.intellectbooks.co.uk/journa…/view-issue,id=3657/

Contents

Costuming the body politic

Authors: Suzanne Osmond 
Page Start: 145

RuPaul’s Drag Race: A study in the commodification of white ruling-class femininity and the etiolation of drag

Authors: Caroline Hodes And Jorge Sandoval 
Page Start: 149

This article explores the spectacularized commodification of the queer body that takes place in RuPaul’s Drag Race. In appropriating the political history of drag culture as both social commentary and activism, RuPaul’s Drag Race silences the resistance to hegemonic gender binaries that is characteristic of the origins of radical drag. Drag Race commodifies the body through performances of drag that simultaneously attempt to subvert as they reify and fetishize hegemonic expressions of white, ruling-class femininity. This brings into stark relief the continuing relevance of both bell hooks and Judith Butler’s early theoretical interventions into the world of drag. Our examination of RuPaul’s Drag Race will draw on these insights by putting them into conversation with Catherine Rottenberg and Matt Sparke’s work on the embodiment of neo-liberal market ideology in a way that speaks to Ali MacLaurin and Aoife Monks’ conceptualization of the everyday through what Marcel Mauss refers to as techniques of the body. It is our contention that through the manipulation of physiology, the contestants in RuPaul’s Drag Race render corporeality a form of costuming that simultaneously etiolates drag and commodifies the body. Instead of subverting gender norms, the show’s capacity to create and disseminate legitimate and illegitimate modes of embodiment both reinforces and continues to shape already existing social hierarchies at the intersection of race, class, sexuality and gender.

Objectify me: Thing theory, Deborah Voigt and the Little Black Dress


Authors: Annie Holt 
Page Start: 167

This article examines the notorious firing of Deborah Voigt from Covent Garden in 2004 – on the grounds that her body would not suit the costume design – and her triumphant return four years later after undergoing bariatric surgery. It reads Voigt’s fascinating 2008 YouTube video in which she works out her creative differences with the costume (a Little Black Dress [LBD]), now animated and endowed with a male British voice. Both the situation and the video blur the line between costume and body, and between human performers and objects. This article applies recent object theory – especially the work of Latour, Brown and Bennett – to costume design, and places this research in dialogue with feminist theories that examine the relationship of female bodies to objects. I suggest that it is not the costume–object that exerts surprising ‘thing-power’ in this situation; rather, it is Voigt’s body itself, which becomes a ‘thing’. This incident shows us that the materiality of the performer’s body (qualities like size, sex, skin colour) can become an actant in the mimetic process. Usually, costumes work to erase the gap between the actor’s body and the ‘character body’ – a term I borrow from costume design practice – but in this situation, the LBD apparently cannot close the gap between Voigt’s body and the role she was to portray. This separation creates a new space for thinking about the relationship between onstage objects and subjects, and their possible collapse into the costume–body. This article ends with questions for further research: could object theory function as a trap door into a new kind of power for female stage performers – or is it just a trap?

The costumographer: Revolutions in performance pedagogy

Authors: Lorraine Smith 
Page Start: 179

This visual essay reflects on the impact of costume on dance performance practice and pedagogy, focusing initially on the author’s professional engagement with experimental costume pedagogy and the impact this had on subsequent work. Discussing the transformation of her creative practice through interaction with costume, and most recent collaborative costume performance project Elizabeth & the Three Sisters, the text proposes the term ‘costumographer’ as a new definition for choreographers and performers working with costume as starting point and principal focus of the performance. It highlights the effect costume can have on the understanding and implementation of the moving and performing body, as well as the devising process and brings awareness to the lack of real costume experiences in dance education, advocating the importance of sharing pedagogies and artistic practices to critique and develop interconnecting art forms relating to performance.

Commedia dell’Arte masks today: Old forms and new commedia

Authors: Olly Crick 
Page Start: 197

Commedia masks have achieved iconic status in some theatrical circles, though recent interviews undertaken for my ongoing Ph.D. thesis reveal that contemporary teleological practice relates to the purpose to which each individual re-creator conceives commedia, and not necessarily to the historical model. A commedia mask is identified as always being a specific role or stock type. These stock types, or ‘tipi fissi’ (fixed types), are, however, recreations or re-imaginings of the original Renaissance masks, and yet the purpose to which they are being put is, self-evidently, contemporary and performative. Using these historical masks, other than in the sense of Brechtian historicization, to make contemporaneously engaged theatre falls short due to a mismatch between contemporary and historical culture. Out of this mismatch arises then, the questions of who or what the masks represent today, and how new types can develop? Historical scholarship tended to focus on the individual mask, but I currently propose that contemporary Commedia dell’Arte masks be considered primarily as an ensemble or ‘set’, rather than as a collection of individuals. The performed function of this interdependent grouping is to comically communicate to an audience activity within the ‘set’, with the ‘set’ being defined as a purposed reflection of a society. This allows the genre to progress into areas of comically directed social and gender interrogation, promoting evolution within the mask set, rather than accepting the constraints imposed by their use as a mirror of Renaissance society to mirror our own. This analysis presents a theoretical framework to aid ongoing contemporary explorations into the form, purpose and design of the genre’s masks. In this article I employ three terms to describe the genre: ‘Commedia dell’Arte’ to describe the historical form, Guilia Filacanapas’s neologism ‘Neo-Commedia’ to describe the genre’s recreations since 1945 and ‘Commedia’ to include both or indicate the genre.

Book Report

Authors: Peta Tait 
Page Start: 211

Costume in Performance: Materiality, Culture, and the Body, Donatella Barbieri (2017)

Event Review

Authors: Deepsikha Chatterjee 
Page Start: 215

Ancient threads and steps from India meet in Philadelphia
Brindabani Jatra: Weaving Dance & Divinity, Madhusmita Bora and Bhabananda Barbayan, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, 21 April 2018

Exhibition Review

Authors: Susan Ingram 
Page Start: 223

Exhibition: 26th Annual Art of Motion Picture Costume Design, 6 February–7 April 2018