METAPHOR AND IRONY 2 - Divadlo.cz

Marie Franková
Marie Franková, costume designer, was born in Kopidlna in 1944. From 1961-77
she studied stage design with Professor František Tröster at the Theatre Faculty of
the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague, where she later taught costume design
(1990-2000). She also works for television and film. Her cooperation with the set
designer Jaroslav Malina, for whose sets she designed costumes from the end of
the 1960s, was suited to her stylistically aggressive view of theatre. With him she
experienced the era of action scenography (the 1970s and 80s) and the tendency
towards the designed quality and newly transforming “Mannerism” of the 1990s.
As a pupil of František Tröster she always had a feeling for costume which was
primarily sculptural, like a three-dimensional object, capable of functioning as an
equivalent component of the stage space. She chooses colors in relation to the
material, shape and dramatic function of the character, expresses through them
an aggressive belligerence, a passionate accent and various attitudes of humor
(robust and also intellectual). She applies her clear-cut stylization chiefly in
originally conceived historical costumes, whose stylized historical attributes are
combined with fashionable contemporary elements and textile techniques.
Costumes of majestic proportions for Molière's Don Juan (1988) were created as
a collection of mourning garments, “royal” and ostentatious, whose solidified
grandeur left their mark on a harmonized production and its space. The costumes
for Sophocles' Oedipus (1996), supplemented by tall, almost fantastic heads, turned
the chorus into majestic statues, supporting the barbaric monumentality of
Jaroslav Malina's architecturally conceived set. The characters of Gogol's The
Inspector General (1999) provide examples of the modelling of actors' figures into
caricatured but still human shapes. The playful and cruelly joking deformations,
supported by an ironically cheerful combination of colors and the use of flexible
material, turned the costume into a pictorial anecdote underscored by quaint wigs
and hats.
36