How different is styling for a movie from styling for a play?

We get backstage access to find out more about the process of costume designing for plays

Two months ago when I saw Rajat Kapoor’s Hamlet the Clown Prince on stage, I was intrigued by the costumes the actors wore, which mainly included mis-matched separates, colourful hats and big clown feet. The comic element in this reinterpretation of Shakespeare’s tragic play can, of course, be attributed to the script and the performances, but for me, it was the costumes that brought it all together. When I spoke to Mansi Multani, the actor who played Ophelia in the play, she shared an interesting nugget. “The main investment in this production were the big clown shoes that were bought in 2008. We closed the play in 2022 and for these 14 years, we’ve been wearing the same shoes,” she said.

When you think of theatre, opulent sets and exceptional actors may first come to your mind, such as in Disney’s Beauty and the Beast or Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton, but to get to the core of characters, it’s the costumes that make them who they are. In order to understand what goes behind-the-scenes in the costume department, we took a sneak peek into the lives of some theatre actors and costume designers.

Stage versus screen

One common factor between styling for films and theatre is that it is essentially about storytelling through the medium of clothes. “The difference lies in the technical details like colour, fabric, strength of the fastening, longevity of the material and wearability,” says costume designer Pallavi Patel, who has worked on plays like There’s Something In The Water and movies like Torbaaz. “If you want to highlight a detail on stage, then it needs to be in a colour which has a higher contrast, or as something that catches light. In films, on the other hand, you can use tone-on-tone and bring out the details even in close-up shots,” she explains.

Although movies employ a team of stylists and costume designers (sometimes a different stylist for each actor within the same movie), when it comes to theatre, more often than not, the production director or an actor with a knack for visual design procure the necessary costumes. Prerna Chawla, an actor who stars in Naseeruddin Shah’s Aurat! Aurat! Aurat!, and who previously worked in the costume and production department, believes that it also depends on the scale of the production. “I do end up using my clothes every now and then on stage, but in recent times I’ve seen a dedicated team of stylists and designers even in theatre,” she says. Unlike movies where you can yell out “cut” if there’s a wardrobe malfunction, costumes for theatre are more practical, functional and conducive to quick changes as there is no time between long scenes for costume mishaps or alterations. There is also a higher occurrence of upcycling and reusing of clothes in theatre, which is hard to say in the case of films.

But what happens to the costumes of plays that go on for years at a stretch? Multani, who stars in a play called Stories in a Song, confessed that she has been wearing the same costume on stage for the play since its inception in 2011. “Between me and another actor who covers for me in my absence, the costume has been altered numerous times, depending on how our bodies have changed over the years,” she says. “This single costume has journeyed with us all over for 10 years, which is so beautiful because it lends this idea of expanse and malleability. You couldn't find it in films and their big budgets,” the actress explains.

Money matters

Remember the opulent costumes Hrithik Roshan and Aishwarya Rai Bachchan wore in Jodhaa Akbar? Costume designer Neeta Lulla, who won a National Award for the movie, spent about ₹2-12 lakhs for each outfit for the lead actors, and that’s excluding the cost of pearl and polki jewellery both of them wore. The overall budget just for the costumes of the film is estimated to be about ₹40 crores.

When it comes to theatre, Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark, a musical based on the legendary comic superhero, remains the most expensive production in the history of theatre, with a production cost of $75 million. In 2019, when Baz Luhrmann’s 2001 film Moulin Rouge! got a Broadway musical iteration, costume designer Catherine Zuber created 200 one-of-a-kind costumes for the show, with about €4 million (approximately $4,457,628) spent on the clothes. While the international stage productions and movies have equally jaw-dropping budgets, in India, there’s a stark difference between the resources available for movies and those for theatre. Chawla, on the other hand, insists that it’s hard to compare two completely separate mediums of storytelling. “A small indie film, just like an experimental play, will have smaller costume budgets or no budget at all. Comparatively, a commercially sponsored live show will have a larger budget than a small play, just like a big-banner movie,” she explains.

But stage actors like Multani, who have also worked in movies, believe that when it comes to costumes, it’s not the budgets but the script that plays a bigger role. “The script can really make you understand what you’re trying to convey with your clothes; whether it’s demanding, whether it has limitations, whether it is possible to do with less? Theatre really cracks these areas very well as compared to films,” she says.

Considering the amount of actors, crew and work involved in it, let me ask you a question: what’s more easy to style: movies or plays? If you’re thinking plays, Patel has a counter argument for you. “There is a misconception that because theatre is observed from a distance compared to a film, which you can see from your laptop or phone, it’s easier to design costumes for a play. But the real essence of the character is revealed when you figure out a way of showing small details on clothing from a distance on stage,” she says.

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