Berkoff - Greek - Costume and Make-Up

Costume and make up are a vital part of Berkovian theatre. Both elements can add to a piece but too much of one can easily throw off the piece's balance.

Costume 

From what I have seen, the costume that Berkoff usually uses, particularly in his plays that take place in London, consists of suits, white shirts, and braces. This can be seen in the image below which is from a performance of East:

Also shown in the image is that each character has a defining feature/piece of costume that lets the audience know who they are playing. We decided to emulate this within the piece - I brought in short length, white dress shirts for myself, Maya, Izzy, and Marlon. Underneath this, we wore black bottoms and black/white shoes. For Kathryn, as the main character, she wore a white shirt and also a jacket which showed that she was Eddy. For my character piece, I chose a scarf which had a floral pattern, showing that my main character was Mum. My costume can be seen in the image below: 

The black base allowed for an easy transition into the Sphinx as shown below. It also shows a large difference between what Kathryn is wearing compared to what we are, making the scene visually interesting to look at.

Make-Up

Berkoff's make-up is generally dome so that it emphasises parts on the actors face that they move the most. He usually does this with a white background, black eyebrows, and black lips with the occasional black around the eyes and red cheeks. Some ideas that I found are:                                                                                           

 The bottom image appears to have excessive black make up which may detract from any facial expressions made. The top image is certainly much more suitable for Berkoff as it allows for facial expressions to be highlighted but not made lost.













The make-up that we decided on can be seen in the following image (please excuse the awful drawing):

Initially, we wanted to use white face paint to make the entirety of our faces white, however, the day of the performance we realised that this may destroy any/all of the facial expressions we were making. We still decided to have black face paint on our eyebrows, as eyeliner, and on half of our lips to accentuate those features. We have a marked differnece on each side of our face for those actors who were playing as the Sphinx. We decided this because it enhances the feminity of the Sphinx but also the masculinity of the other characters that we play. The feminity can be seen by the elongated eyeliner, the rose coloured cheeks, and the red face paint on the other half of our lips.