Karen Nicholson

Quick-change artist Leopoldo Fregoli runs backstage mid-costume-change helped by costume technicians

Karen Nicholson is a London-based design historian, and costume practitioner, whose research focuses on popular performance from the nineteenth century to the present day. Taking an inter-theatrical approach to the material culture of performance, she centres on costume, stage technologies, and their design and operation, exploring labour structures, the creative / technical practices, and embodied knowledge of those who work within the performance space.

Her research interests build upon her career in costume for performance working within the international live music touring industry. After compiling U2’s costume collection as part of their wider archive project, she became interested in how close investigation of performance-related objects reveals a narrative and heritage often different, or more nuanced, to that already in the public domain.

Over 2022 and 2023 she will be working with Arcade Fire and Muse on their respective international festival, arena and stadium touring shows. She aims to integrate her design history practice with that of her costume and touring work, to explore new ways of preserving the heritage and legacy of the contemporary, in addition to historical, performance industries.

IMAGE: Screenshot of Leopoldo Fregoli’s short circa 1898 film, Segreto per Vestirsi (con aiuto), (Secrets of dressing (with help))

Italian quick-change performer Leopoldo Fregoli, runs backstage mid costume change, attended by waiting costume technicians. Source: Leopoldo Fregoli, Segreto per Vestirsi (Con Aiuto) [1897-1899], Secret of Dressing (with Help), [1897-1899]’, Cineteca Nazionale, CMI (Il Cinema Muto Italiano) <https://www.ilcinemamuto.it/betatest/segreto-per-vestirsi-con-aiuto-fregoli-n-25/> [accessed 28 March 2022]

Handmade brick and wooden mould, on table, with two brickmakers around a table in background

As a live entertainment industry professional, the pandemic-related global shut-down of performance in 2020 offered an opportunity for reflection and study. I had long been fascinated by the roots of the contemporary entertainment industry, and driven by a broad interest in interpreting the material culture of performance. This guided my research interests over the course of the V&A/RCA History of Design MA, which began with exploring historic theatrical scenographic technologies, their impact and influences both onstage, and within wider societal contexts.

My first essay traced the historiography of limelight from its development as a tool for early nineteenth century military surveying. This now obsolete lighting technology, used as the first theatrical spotlight, played a role in the professionalisation of technical theatre workers, eventually becoming known, via semantic drift, as a metonym representing the whole performance and celebrity landscape.

My second essay closely investigated a souvenir flag from the Clara Butt-Rumsford concert at the Royal Albert Hall on 13 May 1916, that represented a high-water mark in the career of the ‘Voice of the Empire’ singer.

The research explored how she created and leveraged her celebrity using powerful patronage, international touring and the symbolism of the British Empire, aided by developments in photographic printing technology; it further examined the use of flags within performance as both expressions of nationalism, and planned audience participation. This reinforced the soft power of the British Empire, enabling Butt-Rumsford, via product endorsement, to successfully monetise her brand.

Brickfield Newham, was a public engagement collaboration between V&A East, VARI, St. Austell’s artist-led brickworks Brickfield and University of East London’s Performing Arts department, supported by Newham Heritage Month, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and Arts Council England.

This was the opportunity to be part of a project devised around embodied knowledge and socially aware performance. Designed to raise awareness of problems and challenges facing historical and contemporary London urban communities, it demonstrated the ways learning through embodied knowledge can have real resonance and impact.

Circling back to costume, a desire to locate the roots of my own professional practice culminated in my dissertation topic. Using previously un-researched costumes and performance production material alongside early film, contemporaneous press, performance histories, theatrical memoirs and anecdotes, the research rediscovers the historic costume genre of quick-change as seen on the British music-hall and variety stages.

IMAGE: Handmade brick, made in 2021 by Brickfield Newham maker, using a traditional wooden brick mould ( photo credit © Karen Nicholson 2021 )

Upper body of a creased black evening suit, opened to show internal network of strings for quick-change functionality.

Quick-change performer Mr Hymack's black evening suit costume, opened to show internal quick-change string technology – Source: The Davenport Collection, Cambridge, Unknown Maker, Mr Hymack Evening Suit Quick-Change Costume, circa 1910-1916, Black and White Textile with Metal (Photo credit © Karen Nicholson 2021)

Pencil-drawn sketch on lined paper showing quick-change string network for a costume

Quick-change artist Mr Hymack's pencil drawn diagram of strings design for the back body of a quick-change costume – Source: The Davenport Collection, Cambridge, Quinton McPherson, Costume Technology Diagram in Exercise Book, Hymack, SS Mauretania, 1909, blue card and lined paper (Photo credit © Karen Nicholson 2021)

Capturing the spirit of the age which foregrounded dynamic motion and rapid change, quick-change acts were a sensation on the turn of the nineteenth century British music-hall stage. These frequently solo routines of multiple rapid costume changes linked by narrative, music, or song, combined aspects of acting, comedy, illusion, magic and mimicry; they exemplified the synergies that underpinned much music-hall and variety performance. Highly entertaining, and at times astonishing, the quick-change artist became a popular act and was extensively performed during the first three decades of the twentieth century. However, although these performances are now only fleetingly recalled, traces that surface in other cultural mediums give insight to their past stature.

The second line of T.S. Eliot’s 1930s children’s poem ‘Mungojerrie and Rumpleteazer’, is one such example, ‘As knockabout clowns, quick-change comedians, tight-rope walkers and acrobats.’ It is possible to visualise the other three kinds of performer and their performative stock-in-trade; there exists, perhaps in the collective consciousness, the image of a pratfalling knockabout clown, a pole-balanced tight-rope walker, or a back-flipping acrobat. Furthermore, these popular performance styles persist to this day. However, the quick-change comedian was the exception. Yet, to be worthy of inclusion in Eliot’s list, this seemingly extinct performer clearly must once have enjoyed the popularity and visibility of the other three.

Quick-change took on spatial and active meanings for me during my professional career in costume and performance. The quick-change area was a private stage-side performer space, sometimes a solo retreat for a mid-show breath, sometimes an intense blur of limbs and clothing; then, the quick-change was also a performed moment, a rapid, choreographed costume-change interaction between performers and costume technicians. However, in neither of these contexts did the combination of quick-change and comedian become visible and comprehensible.

In this dissertation I explore that absence. However, I look not just at those disappeared performers, once so familiar that they warranted inclusion in a child’s poem written by a celebrated poet, but also those bodies hidden behind that of the performer; the absence, and omission, from theatre histories of those theatre workers with whom, utilising now obsolete costume technologies, the performer collaboratively created the performances seen on stage.

Karen Nicholson

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Royal College of Art