Theatre Design & Technology - Fall 1997 - 27

costume. As manr of the conrentions for opera
Ilere established during the Ming dynasty
(U68-16'H I.D.), the last rule of the H;U1
people Irho constitute the majority of the
population. their clothing stYle contributes the
to bulk of costumes used in traditionaljing/II.
The Manchu Irere the rulers of the Qing and
last dynasty (J 6-H-1911 I.D.). ;U1d their costumes became the basis for foreigners ..-\n example of this distribution of dress occurs in Si
Lang !"isils bis .I/olbel'. from a Song dl'l1astY
storr. Si Lang. a Han Chinese noble from the
court of the Song emperor. Iras captured br
the barbarian inraders during a battle. When
brought to the rebel court. Si UU1g charmed
the Empress DOII'ager who chose to marl'\' him
to her daughter. rather than execute him. The
piaI' begins fifteen years later. Si Lang is noll'
dressed as a Chinese noble in a mang. the garmentworn by most male roles for formal court
appearances, with the addition of the costume
pieces conventional for a foreigner, Irhite fox
tails, or bll/i wei, attached to the back of his
headdress. (Fig. 21) While his foreign status is
portrayed br adding a piece to the t~1Jical stage
dress, his barbarian wife has a costume completely different from Han Chinese dress. She
wears a qi pao, or long narrOlr robe with
standing collar and asrmmetrical closing, and
a distinctive butterflr hairst\'le, both from dress
codes of the Qing dynast\'. When the two appear onstage together, although their symbols
for foreign dress have different lerels of completeness, the audience understands their respective ethnicities and the current situation.
While jing/n costumes share with EuroAmerican costumes the goal of communicating
the character to the audience risually, these examples indicate that how character is communicated is approached quite differently.
Theatrical costume stYle in Europe during the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the same
time when the roots of the conventions of
jing/II were being developed. actually had
more in common Irith )ing/II dress than does
the current approach to Euro-American costume design. In the sixteenth century in England, during the life of Shakespeare, for
example, the playcrs of a historiClI drama
might wear a drapc or brcast plate ore I' their
contcmporary dress, and supernumeraries
might appear in unmodified contemporary
clothing. an example of drcssing for the role
rather than the period. Although this combination docs shOll' an intcrest in portra~ing
historica.J distinctions, it also indicates the
same disregard jing/II costumes have for

limiting period representation to a single point
in time. In examining illustrations of eighteenth centun costume of England. historical
dress appears as modified rersions contemporan clothing. another technique of jing/II
dress nOlI' seen in the metamorphosed nonperiod specific garments. In the scripts of
Shakespeare. season and location II-ere
more also likelr to be indicated br spoken
lines than clothing, in the same war that these
elements are prorided br the script rather than
the costumes in thejing/II. ("WeU, this is the
forest of Arden." Rosalind sal's in As YOII Like
ft. Act I!. sc. iI', 15)

The 1110wment tOlyards historical accuracr in theatrical dress in Euro-American theatre began in the first half of the nineteenth
century. From this point. the approaches to
costuming in China and Europe direrge more
noticeablY. Euro-.-\merican cosnUlle design
practices continued to eroke towards historicitr and unique costumes for each production,
IIhile jing/II costumes became stYlized and
conventionalized. For the most part of this
centurr. with the rise of realism and historicity,
before post-modernism deconstructed time
and place. Euro-AmeriGUl costume designers
would start Irith the time period, the region

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Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Theatre Design & Technology - Fall 1997