Improvisation in Costume Design: The Production of Androcles and the Lion

Abstract

Costuming a period play such as George Bernard Shaw’s Androcles and the Lion is associated with diverse challenges of which identifying and employing materials needed to build similar costumes for use is a major challenge to the costumier. The purpose of the paper was, therefore, to identify ‘non – conventional’ materials which were to be used to build costumes for the play, Androcles and the Lion, written in 1912, set in ancient Roman civilization but staged on a contemporary Ghanaian stage. The play was written with both Greek and Roman characters. Library resources, archives, the internet as well as data from interviews conducted, constituted primary and secondary data on the kind of costumes used during the ancient Greek and the Roman civilization and the materials that they were made of. Based on the data collected, other alternative materials found in Ghana were used to improvise the Greek and the Roman costumes for the performance of Androcles and the Lion on a contemporary Ghanaian stage.

Keywords: Improvisation, Costume, Theatre, Non – conventional, Greek and Roman costumes