The theater is a place where reality is intertwined with a fabrication, where contrasts of epochs, incredible stories and new heroes are born. The action that confronts the viewer is the result of the huge work of the creative team, from the director to the makeup artist, from the costume designer to the lighter. But acting is almost always emphasized or created by a theatrical costume that adds charm and identity to the images.

Have you ever wondered how a costume is being created, which sometimes speaks of a hero without any extra words? The button or the handkerchief, dress or tailor is nothing accidental on the stage. And of course it’s interesting: how exactly are the costumes of heroes born?
The creative process is constantly raging behind the scenes of the theater – laborious work on its preparation. The hero on the stage is not only the fruit of the author’s imagination or fantasy. In each performance, the main director and artistic director must build their creative vision, their own image. They themselves invent the details that create the color of the theatrical performance. Once the director of the theater, Natalia Rostova, designed for the production of “Babia”, came up with all the details of the wardrobe of the actors on lacing. Pants, vests – absolutely all clothes are laced!
The director of the theater, Peter Avramenko, in addition to acting, brings his vision to the process of creating a hero costume, changes the emphasis in detail, beat them to their liking. When creating costumes for the characters of the play “Viy” the idea was born to dress all actors in the most “old” products – historical, worn out. This is no accident: such a move – the desire to convey the “penetration” of that era. For this artificially “outdated” costumes of heroes, sewn from new modern materials, so that it was impossible to distinguish vintage garment from the newly sewn. Such a journey in time contrary to all the rules of sewing.
But first, the materialization of creative ideas is a costume designer: creating sketches of dresses for each play. Then during the rehearsal period the sewing workshop of the theater customizes suits for individual measurements for each actor. At the final stage of the preparation of the performance and the general rehearsal, the actors go to the stage already in stage costumes to feel every detail, connect with them and feel harmoniously in front of the viewers. And here it is necessary, as they say, to protect the figure!
His part of work, painstaking and creative, skillfully performed in the sewing shop. If the directors in costumes swell the lively spirit, then there is a “body”, each part is thoroughly sewn, each line, each loop. The most sophisticated techniques of execution, but very interesting in terms of creativity and work, are historical costumes that create the atmosphere of the era. They are massive, vivid and expressive, and are as monumental as the images themselves.
An important role in costume designers who carefully watch suits, prepare them for a speech: clean, iron and carry on the dressing rooms just before the show.
A special attitude to costumes-long-lovers, such as costumes from the play “For Two Hares”. With intermittent performances, this spectacle has been collecting the audience for over 40 years, and although the costumes have been updated several times, without neglecting the laws of modern fashion, their individual parts are carefully preserved to this day.
But it is quite natural that even the most expressive and most magnificent costume becomes so on the stage thanks to its unsurpassed and virtuoso performance by its actor. The classics claimed that the theater began with a vishak. Probably because before the performance begins, the actor removes a costume from the hanger – the fruit of the collective work of the whole collective.
The start of the new theatrical season is set early in the fall. The scenery is created, the roles are distributed, the most incredible suits are sewn, which means that the inspiration and observation of the new stories in the best traditions of Zhytomyr calls on all the residents of the city the creative team of the Zhytomyr regional musical and drama theater.
Translated by Aliona Matushevich