What does supporting ‘sustainable practice in costume production’ in a HE context mean?
Reading Thinking through making: What kinds of learning take place when HE students engage with creative arts technicians? (Cleary, 2024) and Thinking with costume and materials: a critical approach to (new) costume ecologies (Pantouvaki, Fossheim and Suurla, 2021)
Pantouvalki, Fosseim and Suurla (2021) propose costume as extra-material, and take an ecosomatic approach to the medium to it’s design and production. Their paper explores the idea of costume thinking and the use of bio-based materials. This material thinking informed approach highlights the link between the ideality and materiality of costume. The design and realisation of a costume has a cultural, ecological, and human impact.
“…it is imperative that we connect the thinking with the making in costume to move towards new costume ecologies and acknowledge that costume thinking entails thinking with materials…” (pg. 203)
An enactment between maker and material, this article suggests to me that our approach as technicians must be one that allows for and encourages critical reflection and connection through the use of costume making materials and processes. Within the remit of technician, this cannot be taught explicitly, but as described by Verity Cleary (2024) critical thinking (and therefore critical costume and material thinking) can be and is supported within this role.
Reading The ethical turn in sustainable technical theatre production pedagogy (Garrett, 2021)
Garret uses the United Nations definition of sustainability to describe what he means when he discusses it – “development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the abilty of future generations to met their own needs”
He goes on to explain his own journey in recognising the need for the development of a sustainable curriculum that moved beyond metrics, and towards “qualitative and ethical” approaches which focus on social responsibility.
Reading Sustainability in technical theatre pedagogy and practice (Zezulka, 2024)
The author discusses ways of embedding sustainability in design and production.
One example used is a task in which students were asked to look at the portfolio of professional designers in their field of interest, and consider and reflect on what it shows about the ethics of the practitioner. This was deliberately done at the end of the second year, ahead of a final third year, in which they would ready themselves to present their own work and portfolio to industry.
This modelling could be applied to costume production processes, in the form of sharing of project plans/costume bibles, or of costume portfolios.
The paper discusses the idea that ‘industry practice is not always best practice” (pg 442) and that this should be discussed with students.
Human sustainability
The discussion about sustainable working practices and time management and workload is very interesting. The discussion here centres around the power that education can play in resetting acceptable working hours in theatre, which currently, are still untenable and intense.
The tension lies between needing to prepare students for industry, by mirroring its practices, and challenging the productivity and ethics of this. In this paper, a project is referenced in which a more limited time during a production period required students to be more efficient when they were in tech.
There is more to be looked at here in relation to my own context. This academic year, students can no longer stay late in the costume studio. This is of interest because that means that they cannot stay, unsupervised for the additional 3 – 4 hours per day they used to. This limitation may prove to be very beneficial for these reasons. However, this then means that planning time properly is integral.
Material sustainability
This talks about the creation of a circular economy, and how ideally everything in a sustainable show has had a previous life. This is something we already do to a huge extent within the costume department, largely due to cost limitations.
We have not only preserved the costume store this year (after taking data on the cost implication to students if they do not use the costume store, but hire elsewhere) but also continue to collect, store, and distribute materials which are collected from productions that have leftover fabrics and materials. Verity began this initiative in order to allow students who are unable to afford to purchase their own materials to have costume realisation materials available to them. Over time, this has built up into a large collection, which we can also draw upon as a team for the delivery of workshops, with very little budget available to us for this.
There is also a scrap recycling system, whereby no fabric is every thrown away unless it is very small and unusable – in which case it is taken to a textile recycling scheme nearby.
The theatre green book
The theatre green book is a guide for more sustainable practices in theatre production. This is something which could be proposed to the head of technical, or the head of production at CSM.
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Reading Putting The Theatre Green Book into practice (Downton, 2024)
This paper looks at barriers and motivators for educators to utilise the Theatre Green Book in pedagogic settings, through analysis of three semi-structured interviews. Key themes emerged.
Working collaboratively
This paper suggests holding meetings with a cross section of relevant staff, including senior management as well as technical staff on the groud, in order to ascertain principles and goals collectively, and join up thinking.
Storage
Similarly to one example presented in this paper, there are obvious benefits to storing materials and costumes for future use – but the issue is always one of contention, in the bid for space across the institution. Keeping the costume store, and having its value recognised has been an ongoing project for my colleagues, and myself when I began my role as a costume technician. Perhaps it is worth asking students about how they use the costume store, and whether they think it should be expanded. Perhaps another intervention could be in addressing the contents and storage of the costume store, and finding ways to fit more into the space, while maintaining it’s usability.
Time
“In the deadline-based world of theatre, time is always a precious commodity” (pg 434). This paper also addresses the issue fo industry standards, being unsustainable from a human perspective. One interviewee lamented how the short production process means that it is impossible to maintain sustainable practices, which invariably require more time.
This speaks to the issue I have encountered, in which students only have a very short amount of time to work on their costumes, and end up buying things new from amazon when the costume store isn’t open.
The theatre green book asks predictions to build in time for the exploration of more sustainable practices and materials, as well as a ‘green card meeting’, in which these options are discussed. Perhaps I could offer to hold sustainability meetings/consultancy as part of the costume realisation process (as well as suggesting green card meetings to management).
Creative Phase and Senior Leadership
Here, the politics of decision making power is discussed. This links up with the themes of de-prioritisation which I have been exploring in relation to costume being seen through a patriarchal, colonial lense.
One interviewee discusses being at the mercy of the head of production, and what they value. The paper discusses the issue that then ay still occur, even if those in charge do decide to prioritise sustainability in curriculums and project briefs. The design of the process must allow time, space, and budget for sustainable practices, and often there is a disconnect from this.
One interviewee lauded the benefits of offering carbon literacy training to students. This is something I could investigate at CSM, and advocate for, but that could not be actioned and reflected on within the scope of this project.
Student influence
This paper discusses the influence of having green captains, and that hunger for these things from students can affect real change in course delivery. However, the transience of students does preset an issue. This could perhaps be soemthing which is technician led, but would need to be integrated into curricular activity in collaboration with academic staff.
Money
This paper discusses how difficult it is to be firm about not allowing things to happen unsustainably because budget wont allow. Really, this is about expectation and prioritisation, as discussed by Beer (2021) and Pantouvaki et al (2021).
References
Cleary, V (2024) Thinking through making: What kinds of learning take place when HE students engage with creative arts technicians?’ in Art, Design and Communication in Higher Education. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1386/adch_00087_1 (Accessed on: 22 October 2024)
Katy Downton (2024) Putting the Theatre Green Book into practice: sustainability, pedagogy and the conservatoire, Theatre, Dance and Performance Training, 15:3, 429-444, DOI: 10.1080/19443927.2024.2380840
Zezulka, K. (2024) ‘Sustainability in technical theatre pedagogy and practice’, Theatre, Dance and Performance Training, 15(3), pp. 415–428. doi: 10.1080/19443927.2024.2369633.
Garrett, Ian. “The Ethical Turn in Sustainable Technical Theatre Production Pedagogy.” Theatre Topics 31, no. 2 (2021): 179-186. https://dx.doi.org/10.1353/tt.2021.0034. Project MUSE – The Ethical Turn in Sustainable Technical Theatre Production Pedagogy
Pantouvaki, S., Fossheim, I. and Suurla, S., 2021. Thinking with costume and material: A critical approach to (new) costume ecologies. Theatre and performance design, 7 (3-4), pp.199-219.
Beer, T (2021) Ecoscenography : An Introduction to Ecological Design for Performance, Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore. Available from: ProQuest Ebook Central. [24 October 2024].