Equinox
Costumes, 2015Croatian National Theatre Zagreb
Responsibilities
Development of the narrative approach
Concept design
Specifying and selecting materials
Creative oversight of realisation
Collaborators
Director: Igor PisonSet designer: Nicola Minssen
Light designer: Claudio Rojas Wettig
Musical director: Nikša Bareza
Costume assistant: Petra Dančević
Production: The HNK costume workshops
Context
Equinox (orig. ‘Ekvinocij’) is an opera by Ivan Brkanović. It is set in a fishing village on the Croatian coast. The place is marked by economic decline. ‘Should I stay or should I go?’ is the question that shapes the characters’ thoughts and actions.
Audience
The production was geared towards an audience of culture lovers with an interest in contemporary issues and music from Zagreb, wider Croatia and Slovenia.
Challenge
To connect emotionally with the audience, the characters had to relate to their lived experience.
To transport the narrative, the costumes had to communicate the characters’ social status and personal traits.
To ensure the characters remained recognisable across the entire length of the auditorium, the costumes had to account for a range of viewing distances between 9–20m.
Solution
The director, the set designer and I placed the narrative in the early 2000’s, not long after the end of the Yugoslav wars.
My costume design took inspiration from the fashion of the time and place. I employed a slightly simplified stylistic language to draw out the characters’ key characteristics.