The Costume Supervisor’s Toolkit

CHAPTER 1 What Does a Costume Supervisor Do?

Costume has always been an intrinsic component of the live theatre spectacle, because people are always at the center of it, and people generally have to be dressed. As Pamela Howard confirms: ‘The human being is at the center of live theatre, and both the director and the scenographer start working from the actor – the most powerful living element in the space.’¹ Even if the actors are naked, or virtually naked, in a production, there will always have to be consideration of how that staging requirement will be managed from a practical point of view, and that responsibility will rest with the costume department, and ultimately the costume supervisor. If the actors involved in a production did not have ...