Join the Impact Fan Club and receive the latest news and exclusive specials: Enter your email address below and click "Hit it."
(We don't trade email addresses with anyone. Ever.)
Theatre terminology: costume
posted by Cheshire on Thu, Jan 24, 2008
in theatre terminology
Someone ended up on the Impact site last week by searching Google for "theatre terminology - costume," and I thought, Why, that does sound like something worth looking up. Turns out that the word is only about 300 years old and comes from the French for custom, in the sense of what someone customarily wears. So what did Shakespeare call costumes if the word wasn't invented yet?
I should have asked Melissa since she's got the PhD, but I had Maggi Yule, Berkeley Rep's costume shop manager, handy, so I asked her. According to Maggi, actors pretty much wore their own clothing onstage, regardless of the time period of the play -- the concept of a costume designer didn't arise for a couple hundred years. I looked around online a little for corroboration, but there's surprisingly little.
Can anyone add to this discussion?