By Annabel Catherine Hannah Malone
Introduction
For my final major project, I chose to create costume designs for a stage adaptation of the old tale The Epic of Gilgamesh. I wanted to do something related to poetry in some way, and whilst I was researching epic poetry, I came across the epic. As one of the oldest tales in history, it intrigued me so I decided to try adapting it into a play. Initially, I wasn’t sure of what period I wanted to set it in - I dabbled in historical costume of the time when Gilgamesh lived, but ultimately decided to set it in the contemporary. This is due to lack of information on the period I was looking at and I did not want it to hinder my creativity. With all of this historical knowledge knocking about in my brain, I took a lot of inspiration from that period in my designs. I didn’t set the play in any specific location, as I felt like it would take away from the story - whilst it is contemporary, it is fantasy, so a mystery surrounds the environment and the characters that live in it. For my final designs, I used a combination of different mediums – acrylic, pastels, photoshop - to add colour and bring them to life I order to communicate my ideas.
