Costumes can provide the audience with a wealth of information in a play. As such, an audience can identify characters based on the costume in a play in different ways. For instance, costumes can reveal characters in social status, occupation, personality, and the historical time for the setting. While revealing a character’s social status, costumes that suggest wealth, power, or privilege can indicate a high-ranking character. In contrast, simpler or more modest attire can indicate a lower-status character. In terms of character occupation, costumes can signal a character’s profession, such as a police officer or doctor (Wen et al., 2019). In the play provided, there are six photographs where costumes are used to show different characters’ personalities and convey information. In the given photographs, costumes are used to represent character relationships, professionalism, power dynamics, and period, and the audience can tell these characteristics without necessarily following the play.
In the given pictures from a play, the character’s costume can help to deliver information to the reader through hints about their social hierarchy or wealth. For example, Algernon’s costume presents him as a flamboyant individual, while Jack is more presentable. Algernon’s costume presents him as flamboyant with flowered blazers, a pink half-coat, and more colorful pants. The colorful dress presents his personality as stylish, exuberant, and confident. Through these pictures, Algernon’s colorful jackets, waistcoat, and suit may be near to the colors of the female costume, which can emphasize his femininity.
The costume also gives him decent financial status since he can afford to dress in luxurious clothes. For example, Jack’s outfits are always formal evening wear or classic black tie tuxedos with a white shirt and a bow tie. In contrast, Algernon always wears light and vivid colors but never in formal evening wear as Jack does. Apart from it, Algernon’s clothes present him as striking, stylish, and modern for his age, which makes all the young men around him admire him. Costumes in plays and drama scenes often show connections or relationships between individuals. For instance, Gwen and Jack have a connection or relationship since they have matching pocket squares and ties. This can be shown by the fact that both costumes’ colors match, giving a romantic feeling. The similarity suggests that they are close and have common interests. The costumes connect Gwen and Jack and show their closeness. The connection could be that of friends and a close relationship or that of lovers.
The other idea that the audience determines from the play by looking at the costumes is the time. In terms of Algernon’s costume, he is different from the men of that error. It can be shown through his dress’s pasty colors, which may be compared to the bride’s pink blouse and its lightness compared to Jack’s black suit. The costumes also portray their relationship through gender as well as gender roles. Algernon not only looks like a girl but dresses like a girl, too, because he has long hair. His choice of clothes suggests that he is different from the other men around him, which could make him stand out from the crowd could show how different he is from the men around him.
In conclusion, a character’s costume in a play can convey important information to the audience and play a significant role in character development and storytelling. It can provide insight into a character’s social status, occupation, personality, time period, and mood or theme. By carefully observing the costume design, the audience can gain a deeper understanding of the characters and the story being told, enhancing their overall experience of the play.
Reference
Wen, Z. A., Lin, Z., Chen, R., & Andersen, E. (2019). What. Hack: engaging anti-phishing training through a role-playing phishing simulation game. In Proceedings of the 2019 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (pp. 1-12). Web.