Costumes a Midsummer Night's Dream Is One Research Proposal

Costumes

A Midsummer Night's Dream is one of Shakespeare's most whimsical plays, and therefore this production follows in its spirit. Designing costumes for A Midsummer Night's Dream allows for total creative license, as the play takes place within a fantasy world replete with fairies. The overall impact is captured well by an artist at Duke (image credit: http://sites.duke.edu/midsummer/files/2009/12/Study_for_The_Quarrel_of_Oberon_and_Titania.jpg):

This image is a study for what Oberon and Titania might look like. The fairy queen and king here seem innocent. Titania is rendered more angelic than fairy-like, which is why I only appreciate this image as an overall impression of the extent of the fairy world created on the stage. I prefer the fairy world to be peopled thickly like this image here, meaning that the cast of fairies should be as large as possible for the venue.This image also shows the changeling.

The main characters are not fairies, however, so it is important to render them richly. First, we have the two female humans, Hermia and Helena. One of the key points in rendering A Midsummer Night's Dream effectively is to visually differentiate between the two sisters while still allowing for significant role confusion. Role confusion and the blending of the two women is a major theme of the play, and during the scenes in which Lysander and Demitrius mistake Helena for Hermia and vice-versa, the costumes will also summarily trick the audience. Shakespeare purposely named the two women only….....