Theatre Design & Technology - Summer 1988 - 16

the collaborative effort had discovered for the entombment. As the Chorus gave her final speech about the action
of the piece and the futility of tragedy, the actors playing
Antigone, Haemon, and Euridice walked into the stretch
projection screen from the rear. This, when combined with
appropriate back and cross lighting revealed their frozen,
entombed fomls in a striking picture. A final slide projection of Antigone's face brought the production to an end.
This scheme was enthusiastically accepted and Malina
now turned his full attention to costumes. The costumes
were to be contemporary and, for the most part, were to
come from the kind of clothing that the actors were accustomed to wearing in their everyday lives. For example,
an agreement had already been reached that Creon would
not look like the preliminary sketch IFig. 13) but would
rather go in a more simple, direct, and open direction
[Fig. 141. As Malina remarked about the preliminary
sketch for Creon, "Sometimes it is very easy to decide on
what you don't want to do. The difficult thing is to find out
what you do want to do."
After some preliminary sketching for Creon, the Reponer, and the Aide, Malina visited rehearsals and met
with cast members. Malina and Willis wanted Antigone to
appear frail, small, and not capable of defending herself in
this society. She also had to have a sense of timelessne s
about her. They felt that these qualities in Antigone could
be expressed not only through her costume, but also
tluough the comrast between her and the Guards. The
Guards' costumes (Fig. 151 emphasized an impersonal,
implacable, dangerous, and concealed quality; the costume for Antigone (Fig. 161 emphasized her opelmess and
vulnerability. The use of a T-shirt with the show title and
logo for Antigone was a theatrical stroke that Malina
suggested. Malina was afraid that it was perhaps toO obvious and was only, as he phrased it, a "one-to-one metaphor." For lalina the use of metaphor was vital in the
design process, but the metaphor always had to be capable
of expansion and transformation even up to and including
the possibility that it might change into something that
would negate its first form. At this point it becomes,
according to Malina, a "broken metaphor" and is even
more theatrically powerful. In this he made an essential
and valuable distinction between a metaphor and a symbol. For him a symbol was never capable of this kind of
expansion and therefore was of limited usefulness in theatrical expression. His reservation about the costume for
Antigone was that he felt that he was coming very close to
the use of a symbol. if that were true, he felt, the costume
for Antigone would not aid her in her work, but would
become a difficult obstacle for her to o\·ercome. The costume would perhaps not aid open communication; it
might actually make communication difficult or impossible. Ultimatel); it was decided to go ahead with the costume as designed. The validity of the decision was proven
in performance.
The costumes for Ismene IFig. 171, Haemon, the Nurse,
the Reporter, the Aide, and Euridice (Fig. 1 Iwere finalized
quickly follO\\'ing the decision concerning Antigone. Final
critical costUme discussions were focused on the Chorus.
Malina's sketch IFig. 191 placed the Chorus in a "fashionable-slouch" look. While there was agreement that the
swagger and bravado that the costume conveyed was appropriate for the Chorus, Willis wamed some additional
elemem that would remove the Chorus even more from

TD&T'SUMMER 19BB

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