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Artweeks
In the heart of every theatre company,
there’s a fashion designer, responsible
for designing the costumes worn during
a production, and these outfits often go
beyond fashion into the realms of fantasy
dress, animatronics or period costume, either
designed from scratch or partially made from
existing items of clothing. The choice of
clothing , textures, colour and trimmings all
convey information about the character from
age and nationality to status and personality.
And in Oxford, Nomi Everall is that person,
a key part of the team at Magdalen Road’s
Pegasus Theatre, where she designs both
sets and costumes for Pegasus productions,
translating flat designs on sheets of paper
into three dimensional creations. She creates
entire characters of fabric, decoration and
trimmings, a task which requires practical
dress-making skills as well as imagination,
resourcefulness and ingenuity.
Her sets also leap, alive, from original
sketches, often towering twenty feet tall
and for a week during May (17th, 20-26th)
as part of the Oxfordshire Artweeks festival,
Pegasus Theatre are opening their doors to
show, alongside a range of permanent art in
their offices that the public don’t normally get
the chance to see, a display of Nomi’s work
which includes her design ideas intricately
and colourfully drawn and a photo display of
her creations on stage.
Where fashion
meets performance
Words by Esther Lafferty
Does your mood determine your choice of outfit in the morning?
Does your character show itself in your accessories? My guess
is that you’re answering yes! So where does fashion end and the
performing arts begin? And how are the clothes you see on screen
and on stage chosen to portray not the essence of the wearer but
to symbolise the character from the script?
It’s also a chance to see both
costumes, props and some of the small-scale
3D models created from the two-dimensional
set designs which are then reproduced at
full size to provide a backdrop for a theatre
show. Last year, for example, for the Pegasus
Youth Theatre show ‘Dream On’ Nomi totally
remodelled the auditorium, turning it into a
courtroom so the audiences sat as if they
were a jury, and the actors emerged from
five metre tall filing cabinets. More recently,
Nomi’s team have been working on a modern
production of Arabian Nights, the classic
stories of Sinbad, Aladdin, and Ali Baba
amongst others, the costumes and set
integral to these performances.
And just as these Middle Eastern tales have
been much-valued over the centuries, so too
has the art of theatre design: before the 19th
century designing great court spectacles
and theatrical scenery was a side-line to
many great artist’s primary work and even
Leonardo da Vinci is believed to have turned
his hand to the challenge.
Pegasus (Oxfordshire Artweeks venue 281)
Magdalen Road, Oxford OX4 1RE
Rhinoceros model box
Rhinoceros finished set
