METAPHOR AND IRONY 2 - Divadlo.cz

Helena Anýžová
Helena Anýžová, costume designer, was born in Pilsen in 1936. She has also
worked in film, and occasionally as an actress. She shared in the work of
production teams which implemented action scenography processes in the 1970s
and 1980s. Even if this trend pointed towards a striking - even dominant - share
for costume in how productions appeared, the concepts of Anýžová's costumes
always had more of a light and subtle effect, with a slight whiff of sensuality. The
designer respected the figure of the actor and, for the most part, let the natural
proportions remain, only slightly adjusting them by the arrangement of fabric,
detail and accessories. A simple charm, a subtle humor and a playful comedy was
expressed through these not excessively striking stylized interventions. Her work
with the set designer Jaroslav Malina was important for her vision of the
production as a whole, since he laid emphasis on the (contrasting and harmonic)
interdependence of set and costume. Although the means of expression of her
personal style did not change in essentials, she expanded and relaxed their range
(in connection with the tide of Post-Modernism of the time). The designs for
Mozart's opera Bastien et Bastienne (1999), full of casual coquetry, possessed a
lightly veiled eroticism and above all a subtle but sophisticated sensitive humor
and irony. For Emil František Burian's Paris Plays First Fiddle (2002), which used a
ballad by Francois Villon, Anýžová created costumes which in some cases forsook
the modesty of a sensual suggestion, and ventured into erotic literalness.
A graceful Gothic line echoes in the drawing of figures with a hint of movement,
in the more robust stylization of the masqueraders (“decorated” with phallic
symbols); however, a sprightly, quackish histrionic quality is also implemented,
suitably warming up the stone environment of the Gothic castle of Hukvaldy
(where the production took place).
26