The first production meeting and meeting the designer

This afternoon we had our first production meeting for The Canterbury Tales and meeting the designer to find out what she would like from the project. Lauren, the designer, worked on the designs for this production during her SDP the previous term and is now realising the designs for this unit, I have added Laurens designs to this blog in order to gain a greater understanding of each character, however these designs are copyrighted to Lauren Holman and may only be used with permission from her. Lauren has explained she would like these costumes as historically accurate and close to the medieval period as possible. Natural materials will be used and dyed to accommodate the designs, each of us will need to pitch in to make each costume work and teamwork shall be essential to create the final garments. Each actor/ actress shall have one base costume and throughout their various roles, they shall drape and tuck material and add other items to the outfit to define the role there playing. 

After meeting the designer we had a very important task to do, splitting up the designs for each maker and assigning due to preference of the designer. I put myself forward to take one of the principal female costumes, Wife of Bath and another female character called Maylin. The Wife of Bath was quite a risk for me as I have never worked on a principal females costume before and have only produced male garments which have been used as a secondary character. That being said it was agreed I would work on Wife of Bath however not marlin as it was felt that Wife of Bath  was a large project which would involve a lot of technical skill. It is one of the trickier costumes to make.


I shall approach this costume as a two piece outfit rather than a one piece outfit. If I split the dress into a tunic and skirt it shall enable the actress to have more freedom to move as well as for comfort. If I research into medieval dress, the shapes, style and detailing added I will be able to draft a toile which will work to both historical accuracy and the designers work.