Year: 2017

The use of costuming is often overlooked as an element within theatre and has been purely regarded as an added embellishment to the stage. However ‘we can consider the power of costuming to shape identity’ (Monks, 2009, 3), which proves an important aspect in the creation of characters within a show, offering the audience a greater insight into who that character is.

At this point in our process, we wanted each character to have a clear costume to display that person’s personality and to make it obvious that the focus of the show was now targeted on this particular character. Our show is centred around the key prop which is named as ‘The Wheel of Escapism’, which ultimately decides the structure of the show by randomly selecting which section will be performed at what time. Each section of the wheel had a different theme and a different colour, for example the food section would be a purple segment with the word ‘food’ written on it. This prop influenced each characters costume vastly, as the colours of each characters outfits had to compliment the colour of each section. This was to enhance the idea of the game show aesthetic we were looking into using as it implies that each character can be seen as a team competing to win this escapism game show.

The end result of the costume/prop ‘The Wheel of Escapism’ (Odonnell, 2017)

An initial sketch of ‘The Wheel of Escapism’ (Goddard,, 2017)

The logo for ‘The Wheel of Escapism’ (Odonnell, 2017)

Each characters costume symbolised their way of escaping through the assigned colours. For example, the character of Laura escapes through childhood games, such as building a fort in her run down adult flat to avoid her adult responsibility of being in debt. Hence Laura’s costume would be something that she would wear whilst relaxing at home, e.g. a dressing gown.

There’s a heavy use of colour applied to each characters costume apart from the two hosts character that were recently created. This was because the host characters were in charge of this world and held the power over the other characters, therefore the difference between them and the other characters needed to be apparent. To portray this, they were dressed in formal suits to signify their importance and their passive colours of black and white helped to emphasise the fact that they were not participating in the game show.

Sketches of the costumes for each character

(Goddard, 2017)

Works Cited:

Goddard, C. (2017)

Monks, A. (2009) The actor in costume. Houndmills, Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillian, United Kingdom.

Odonnell, S. (2017) Fragment Theatre Company. Lincoln: SO Photography.

Creating the name of a show or piece of theatre that had yet to be completed proved more difficult than we initially thought. Though we now had a basis for our show, a complete script was not yet complete and ideas were still being continuing altered.

Through the name of the show we wanted to indicate what the performance was about and what our theatre company stands for, without giving too much away. The name needed to hold a sense of intrigue for potential audience members to entice them enough for them to take an interest in without giving too much away.

Though we had a rough basis for our show, the theme of escapism, and an idea towards the fragmented structure, the rest was still in development and yet to be decided. This consequently made it more difficult to name as it needed to represent something that did not yet entirely exist.

When thinking about ideas regarding the name, the main theme that appeared to me, was the idea that ‘escaping’ is in some way leaving reality into what feels like a safer fantasy. This appeared ironic as theatre itself is a form of escapism for many people, including myself, as it helps to forget your own reality and become absorbed into the spectacle of theatre and the performance. As is the profession of acting as a person escapes their own identity to be become another through within a show.

‘Exit This Way’ came from the glowing, green sign obvious to see in the LPAC auditorium, the very setting the show will take place in. As ‘exit this way’ is a common phrase often used in everyday life, it occurred to me that escaping is something normal that many people do daily also. ‘This way’ also suggests there are multiple ways of leaving or escaping and not everyone does it the same, a key theme that is shown throughout our show.

Exit This Way sign that inspired our show’s name

(Exit This Way, 2016)

The imperative in the title also suggests escapism can be powerful and dominating over a person’s life. This is also portrayed throughout our own show as the character of the host appear to somehow own and construct this world that is built on the stage throughout the show and could represent someone’s own controlling thoughts.

We further tried to show this aesthetic through our poster for the show. The idea regarding the poster was to show the idea that the narrator had a greater power than the other characters in the show and had the ability to influence the way that people escaped. Working with our marketing manager, we decided that as our show was exploring the serious topic of escapism, however through a comical style, the poster and name itself needed to imply this.

Our finished poster

(Nixon, E, 2017)

Works Cited:

Exit This Way (2016) Exit This Way. [blog entry] 30 August. Available from http://nerissagolden.com/2016/08/exit-this-way/ [Accessed on 1st April 2017].

Nixon, E. (2017)