The image that was being portrayed to me was a person laying on a bed, whom you could not see, as she was covered in a large pile of clothing. Then during the scene she was to sit up and look like a Clothing Monster sort of thing.
Before I went and watched the rehearsal the first image that popped into my head was the junk lady in the film Labyrinth, which David Bowie starred in. I did a quick research of this online and watched the scene when the junk lady appeared. I had an image of the actress, upon rising from the bed, being hunched over like the junk lady, with a large pile of clothes on her back.
I went and watched the rehearsal and in the scene the actress playing the part laid on the stage close to the audience. She first was facing face down on the floor. She kicked her legs up behind her, proceeded to roll over, bent her knees and slightly lifted her head up as if talking on a phone, then finally rolled back over.
On considering what I was being asked, I felt the suggestion of a pile of 'party clothes' would not be lying on a bed at a party, that it would rather be a pile of coats, jackets and cardigans and the likes, that had been discarded by the party goers.
I also felt the items of clothing could be attached to a bedspread or the likes and possibly so not to have too much weight on the actress, to pad out the pile of clothes underneath with pillows or something similar, that was lighter in weight. After talking to the Costume Tutor about the scene and my idea, she went and conveyed that to the Director. On her return she said the coats would be too heavy and that the items needed to be lighter in weight and strange looking, such as on odd sleeve and scarf and shirts cut in half. The Director also preferred the Costume Tutors original idea of attaching the clothes to a piece of dark blue muslin cloth.
The muslin cloth had to cut in the middle then stitched back together along the 2 longer seams, so making it shorter but wider, as originally it had been one long, narrower length.
I was given a bag of old shirts by the Tutor, which I preceded to cut sleeves from some and the remaining part of the shirts I cut in half.
I also went and found colourful scarves, bow-ties and shawls to add to the bundle.
I pinned all these items, using safety pins, onto the blue muslin cloth. Around about the centre of the cloth I had pinned a gold shawl, that was very lightweight. It did all look very strange but apparently that was the affect that was wanted. I went and showed the Director and she appeared to be happy with it. She wanted to be sure that the actress would be able to see through it and I tried it on over me and the part that just had the gold shawl showing was fairly see-through, the rest not so where the other items of clothing hung.
The picture above shows me under the pile of clothes, taken at different angles. The actress playing this part was to be crouched under the pile and slightly rise when the phone rang and not lie down as she had during the rehearsal.
After speaking to the Director I went back to the costume room and stitched on the inside of the muslin cloth, a circle of white cotton in the position where the actress was to place her face, so she would be able to see through the part where only the gold shawl laid on the blue muslin.
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