The Tableau Project

This Term, Year one, Unit 2; the year one crafts at the Royal Central school of speech and Drama (RCSSD) have been given the task of making a tableau of Pride and Prejudice.

What is a tableau I hear you ask?

If we refer to our great friend google a tableau is….”a group of models or motionless figures representing a scene from a story or from history; a tableau vivant”, thank you google and oxford dictionary. 

So we are tasked with making a still of a scene from the Keira Knightley and Matthew Macfadyen (please excuse me whilst I swoon) Pride and Prejudice film.

The tableau we are creating unfortunately does not include the wonderful Mr Darcy; but does include six women’s costumes and one man’s costume.

Here we see all of the Bennet family sitting at breakfast. This scene comes the morning after the Netherfield ball, hosted by Mr Bingley, and just before (#SPOILER ALERT) Mr Collins proposes to Elizabeth Bennet, who we see above in the brown dress.

In the Year 1 Costume Construction course there are 12 girls, we are not making Mr Bennet’s costume, as we do not do male tailoring until later on in our 3 years at the RCSSD.

However as there are six female costumes we have been put into pairs, and shall work on those pairs to make the final dress. As costumers we must, keep to budget, keep to time, and work effectively as a team.

We will be making our costumes from the beginning, drafting pattern blocks, making toiles (AKA mock ups) and fitting these perfectly to our actresses before moving on to our final fabric, in time for the Tableau week beginning the 1^st of March.

We are into our third week now on this project, the first two weeks before we were given our partners and our makes we were doing research to help us understand the context of the period of costume we are working from, as well as other areas of craft. So as well as looking into costume of the period spanning from about 1760 to 1810 we also looked and researched in to the architecture and interiors at this time. This was to help give us an understanding of the other branches of crafts; the scenic constructors, prop makers, and scenic artists.

This is certainly an interesting period of time to look at, this was a  time where fashion was evolving from Georgian style to a new Regency style, and a lot of the clothing over this time shows that transitioning period, neither regency or Georgian. The changing evolving style can be seen more in the changing coats that men wore, but can also be seen in the way that the waist line on women slowly creeps up to just under the bust to later become known as the empire line.

However enough of me wittering on about historical things; if you wanted to know or learn more visit some of the amazing houses around London like; Kenwood House, Apsley house or Osterley Park, all are owned by the Nation Trust, and these are definitely some of my favourite houses to visit.

You could also visit some museums, the V and A and the Geffrye Museum are great places to go and are FREE!

You could take a look at my research file in you really wanted to, but I would say visiting these places first hand is much better than taking a look at a few pictures and comments….just my opinion.

So good luck my project partner, the rest of the costume constructors and the year one crafts students, here we begin  our work.

Let the Tableau work  Begin! x