COSTUME AND MAKE – UP IN THEATRE PRACTICE: An Appraisal

Theatre performances are often understood to consist of two major components - the literary and the visual components, or more specifically, the writing of and the presentation of a play in the Theatre. The playwright creates his story and characters in words, while the theatre artists must re-create the play in the theatre in visual terms. It behoves on the theatre artists to make the ideas, characters, story and dialogue, visible and audible by converting the playwright’s creation into theatrical performances. The playwright’s words are only symbols for his ideas and it is very possible to interpret such symbols in a number of different ways. The theatre being all encompassing consists of experts in the different units or components, such as, dance, acting, stage and set design, costume design, lighting design and acting and each expert will have a different interpretation about the stage presentation of the playwrights ideas, words, dialogue and directions. If the interpretation of one of any of the experts in the theatre environment is presented on stage, the audience would take it as the true recreation of the playwrights’ script. But if the entire expert’s interpretations are incoercively presented, there would be a cacophony of ideas on stage.