A painters' theatre arose after Diaghilev's presentation of the Ballet Russe in 1909 in Paris. The brilliant palettes and well-coordinated decors (of Bakst, Benois, and Roerich) were praised. Nathalie Goncharova's design for Le Coq d'or in 1914 was unprecedented in its use of vivid colours, chiefly shades of red, yellow, and orange, with other colours for discordant emphasis. The forms of the costumes and their decorations were based on Russian folk dress (of fairly recent times, though transformed and made uniquely of their epoch by the jagged influence of Cubism). Avant-garde artists of many of the flourishing movements of modern art--Cubists, Constructivists, Surrealists--brought about an acceleration of innovation in design concepts, which in previous centuries had evolved gradually throughout Europe.
Appia, Craig, and Diaghilev led others to experiment. Meyerhold's 1907 production of Leonid Andreyev's play The Life of Man, with expressionistic costumes designed by Theodore Komisarjevsky, was purely mechanical in its design. The German advocates reasoned that since the actor man is enclosed in the space of the stage, either the stage must be arranged according to the illusion of reality so as to fit the natural man or the natural man must be transformed to match the cubist and abstract space of the stage.
As modern dance evolved, its rapid rhythms and pace offered the costume designer new challenges and scope for original work. The productions of Merce Cunningham and Alwin Nikolais in New York City presented unique shapes that attempted to express the exploration of time and space. Nikolais made his costumes part of a total stage design, a theatrical abstraction of the way he saw man--as part of a socioeconomic mechanism, an agreeable but not a central part. Accused of dehumanizing the dancers, he maintained they are rather an expression of a greater state of being for man, of the experience of living in a world of motion, sound, colour, and action, which strongly affects them and is affected by them.
The rise of the American musical owes much to the close collaboration of the composers, writers, and choreographers with the designers. In a musical the costume designer's task is manifold. The designs must capture the spirit of the music and lyrics, interpret the period, heighten the characterization of the actors, and help the dancers in their varied, often athletic routines. The costumes for My Fair Lady (1956) and West Side Story (1957) were especially successful in these respects.
The radical creative talents of Brecht created new production concepts and styles; the clothes worn conveyed to the audience in a satirical fashion not only a characterization of the wearer but also his social status. Another compelling force in contemporary experimental theatre, Jerzy Grotowski, conceived his production Akropolis at the Polish Laboratory Theatre as a poetic paraphrase of an extermination camp. There is no hero and no individuality among the characters. The costumes were bags full of holes covering naked bodies, and the holes were lined with material suggesting torn flesh; wooden shoes covered the feet, and anonymous berets the heads.
A form of 20th-century pageantry can be seen in the designs of Tanya Moiseyevich for the simple thrust stage of the Tyrone Guthrie Theater, Minneapolis, Minn., and the Festival Theatre, Ontario, Canada. For the brilliant productions of these theatres, with their deft handling of large crowd scenes, highly skilled costumers are engaged each season. The costumes and props that they make enhance the productions' limited scenic elements, recalling the style of the Greek classic theatre and that of Japan. The growth of such regional theatres in Europe and the United States has afforded many opportunities for costume designers. Most of the opera and repertory companies that operate in larger cities have their own well-established costume workshops.
