Costume and make-up design: using costume, accessories, hair and make-up to communicate character, status, age, period and personality, support the action and signal change, and communicate meaning to an audience (AO2, AO3).

What this dot point is asking

Costume and make-up design is how characters look: their clothes, accessories, hair and make-up, and what these communicate about who they are. Eduqas expects you to understand it as a design discipline (for the practical components and the written paper) and to use accurate vocabulary. This dot point sets out the tools of costume and make-up and how specific choices communicate character, status, age, period and personality, support the action, and signal change. It is assessed in the practicals (AO2) and in the written paper as a designer (AO3).

The tools of costume and make-up

Precise vocabulary is the foundation. The style of a costume signals period and character; the fabric and colour signal status and mood (rich fabrics and deep colours for wealth, drab and worn cloth for poverty); the condition (pristine, faded, torn, patched) tells the audience about a character's circumstances. Accessories carry meaning economically, a walking cane, a worn handbag, a uniform's insignia. Hair and make-up can establish age, health and period, or be stylised for non-naturalistic work. Naming these accurately, rather than describing clothes vaguely, is what signals the AO3 knowledge the paper rewards.

Communicating character, status, age and period

These are the jobs the design does, and they often land instantly. A character's first entrance tells the audience a great deal through costume alone: the cut and quality of the clothes place their status; the style and silhouette place the period; the way it is worn and the make-up suggest age and health; and distinctive choices signal personality, a bold colour for someone confident, a buttoned-up severity for someone repressed. A designer chooses these deliberately and justifies each by what it communicates, so the look does real work in telling the audience who they are watching. Where period matters, the design must be consistent with the world of the play, unless a deliberate updating is justified.

Supporting the action and signalling change

Costume and make-up also support the action and can signal change. A practical costume lets the performer move as the action requires; a costume can be designed to change on stage or across the play to show a character's journey, a crisp uniform becoming bloodied and torn, a bright outfit replaced by black, a layer removed to show vulnerability. Make-up can shift to show the passage of time or a decline in health. These changes are powerful because the audience sees the transformation, so a designer who plans how a costume or make-up choice develops, and times it to a turning point, makes the character's change visible. As always, the lift is purpose and effect: explaining what a costume choice does for the audience at a specific moment shows the understanding the higher bands reward.

Examples in context

A designer presenting a character who falls from power might begin them in a sharply cut, deep-coloured suit of fine fabric, immaculately worn, with a single expensive accessory, so the audience reads wealth and authority at once, then, across the play, move them into the same suit now creased, stained and missing the accessory, with paler, more drawn make-up, so the audience sees the decline without a word. The choices are specific (cut, fabric, colour, condition, accessory, make-up) and each communicates status and change, which a written answer would justify by its effect on the audience.

Try this

Q1. Name four things costume and make-up can communicate about a character. [2 marks]

• Cue. Any four of character and personality, status, age, period, and health.

Q2. How can the condition of a costume communicate meaning? [2 marks]

• Cue. Pristine, faded, torn or patched clothing tells the audience about a character's circumstances, such as wealth, poverty or decline.

Q3. As a designer, explain how you would use costume and make-up to present one character in the set text. [6 marks]

• What the marker wants. Specific, justified costume and make-up choices (style, colour, fabric, condition, accessories, hair, make-up) that communicate the character's status, age, period or personality, each tied to the effect on the audience, not vague description.