"Breaking Down"

No, not what you might think!

I'd never considered this before, but it stands to reason: in crowd scenes there is a range of social levels, with the majority being "middle-to-poor," "poor," or "very poor." Costumes, of course, are made of primarily new materials. So it would look rather strange on stage if the entire crowd - think 100 or so people - were to be dressed in fabric that was just off the bolt.

Enter "the break-down room." It's a ground-floor room that was originally a kitchen, so it conveniently has sinks, cement floor and brick walls, and stainless steel counters. "Convenient," I say, because "breaking down" involves water, "applied stuff," and fire. Ruling the directed chaos is Janet, here pictured explaining to us newbies what's involved:

Quite a few of the shiny new fabrics had to be dyed, giving just that subtler "read" that older clothing often has. In the process I learned that most things can be dyed, even the most synthetic of synthetics, using the widely available Dylon dyes. In the picture below, an example of a shiny white-read fabric (left) dyed to a much subtler and more interesting range (right):

For the poorer classes we assumed that clothing will be a) worn and torn, and b) dirty. So we wore and tore - stitch-ripped, tore, mended badly, attacked the cloth with sandpaper. Two examples of wear-and-tear:

Adding "dirt" is really the fun part. We took costumes out into the courtyard and literally rolled them through whatever grime was out there. We made them wet and THEN rolled them in the grime. For very resistant synthetic fabrics (some could indeed, to paraphrase Dave Barry, "withstand a direct nuclear attack without change in composition or function"), one person might pull the fabric through grime while another would stand on it. We dried costumes while they were wrung as tightly as possible, to create wrinkles.

And when all else failed, we used....

Samples are always a good idea when you're going for true mud on lycra:

Which of course is important when you're making Adam and Eve, being created out of mud if indeed the director decides not to stylize the Creation story too much:

Some of the costume makers were not enthusiastic "breakers down" - and I have to say, I counted myself among them. I did go participate for a day, and turned some pristine costumes into credibly poor outfits. It's not my favorite work, however. At the same time, I'm glad I learned this new skill.