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Costume

 

For our costume design, we wanted to establish that the numbers in the box; 11, 136, 248, 335 and 502 were all unified and experiencing the same circumstances through sharing the same costume, in a ‘uniform’-esque style. We chose dungarees as each of the women that the numbers represent were active in the style of their lives, encapsulating the utilitarian energy perfectly through dress. Moreover, when the numbers are living their day to day lives in the box and telling the stories, they are often quite mobile, meaning that overalls are likely something that the characters would have favoured and decided to adopt permanently, due to their comfort and practicality. 

 

Due to the amount of time the number characters have spent in the box, and the way in which the audience witnesses them carry out menial tasks in order to simply fill their time, we decided it would make sense for the characters to have personalised their dungarees, which allowed for their personalities, (as well as memories of the women that they represent), to be symbolised by accessories and decoration on the costume.

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We decided on our basic costume design, such as dungarees of different colours and pins etc, very early on in the process, however after the cancellation the festival we furthered these designs, adding greater detail and embellishment to each character's design. Below are some conceptual sketches, made after the cancellation of the festival, showing how our costumes would have looked.

11 costume.jpg
136 costume.jpg
248 costume.jpg
335 costume.jpg
502 costume.jpg

The character's have "final objects" that have stayed with them from when they arrived in the box, and thus they treasure and try to protect. 136 has an aviation pin, 248 has her wedding ring, 335 has her paintbrushes and 502 has a hairpin. However, the most prominent example of this is 11's bicycle necklace.

 

This necklace is the last thing 11 has left, and so it is very important to her. Everything else she has ever treasured and cared for has expired. This object also sets up 11's eventual disappearance at the end of the play, as she has stated multiple times throughout the play that when the necklace goes, she won't be far behind; 11 notices that the necklace has eventually left the box in scene 9.

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Click the button to go to the Amazon page, where we were going to source the dungarees from: 

From the colours listed, we were going to have:

11 - Grey

136 - Blue

248 - Pink

335 - Khaki

502 - Green

 

 

We were keeping a running list of the props required for our show throughout the process. However, as some of the script was written after the cancellation of the festival, some of this props list was created after as well.

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Props List

 

Scene 1

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  • Saucepan

  • Wooden spoon

  • Paintbrushes

  • Lots of odd socks

  • Hairbrush

  • Stamps

  • Notepad

  • Pen

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Scene 2 - Annie Londonderry

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  • Long skirt

  • Lots of random objects to rifle through when looking for the bike

  • Bag of granola

  • Foldable umbrella

  • x2 Large golf umbrellas 

  • x2 Smaller umbrellas

  • Something for each country

    • America - mini flag on stick, Lady Liberty headband

    • France- paintbrush, pallet, beret, baguette

    • Egypt - cardboard pyramids

    • Flags painted onto paper - Israel, Yemen, Sri Lanka, Vietnam, Singapore, Japan

    • China - Great Wall of china painted on a long sheet of paper

    • Russia - vodka bottle

  • Box labelled Europe

    • Sweden - Ikea box

    • Denmark - Viking hat

    • Germany - beer

    • Switzerland - Toblerone

    • Italy - bag of pasta and a cardboard pizza

    • Spain - bottle of Sangria

    • UK - tea bags

  • Tiger shadow puppet

  • Torch

  • Small toy cat

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Scene 5

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  • Paintbrushes

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Scene 6 - Lilian Bland

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  • Straw hat

  • Binoculars

  • Camera

  • Postcard

  • Poster for ‘aviation meeting’ - folded into paper airplane

  • Notebook and pen

  • Cardboard box full of sheets of paper

  • Foldable umbrella

  • Leather flying helmet

  • Flying goggles

  • x2 Trellis panel

  • Empty whisky bottle

  • Hearing trumpet

 

Scene 8 - Mary Beale

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  • Large cardboard picture frame

  • Apricot

  • Cardboard cutout of rolling hills

  • Monopoly money

  • x2 Tiny gift boxes

  • x2 Party poppers

  • Archbishop hat

 

Scene 10 - Annie Edson Taylor

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  • x5 Splash zone rain macs

  • Papers with barrel designs on

  • Tape measure

  • Large wooden barrel

  • Toy cat

  • Very large blue sheet

  • Inflatable barrel

  • Blue balloons

  • Inflatable fish

  • x2 Spray bottles of water

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Scene 11

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  • Saucepan

  • Wooden spoon

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A note on props

A lot of these props are used in multiple scenes, for instance the foldable umbrella used in scene 2 is also used in scene 6. When props are not being used, they will either we kept off stage or in loose boxes on the stage and thus form part of the set. It is specified in the script where characters get their props from, whether it's off stage or they're on stage in boxes.

Sourcing props

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Many of the props we were able to source ourselves from our own homes, as a lot of them are household objects. However, some of them did require sourcing. Here are were we sourced the main props:

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Very large blue sheet - this sheet is the width of the Aphra seating, and we would have created this by sewing together a budget pack of blue bed sheets

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Large Wooden Barrel - a member of our company works at The Canterbury Tales and was given permission to use a human sized barrel they have in storage

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Two Trellis Panels - a member of our company has these in their garden and was willing to use them for the production

SevenGeese Theatre Company

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