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

What this dot point is asking

Costume and make-up design is the use of clothing, accessories, hair and make-up to communicate who a character is, their status and period, and how they change, while supporting the performer. OCR GCSE Drama expects you to understand it as a design discipline (for Component 03 and the written paper). This dot point sets out what costume and make-up design communicates and how specific choices signal character, status, period and change to an audience, often instantly and before a line is spoken.

What costume and make-up communicate

Costume is one of the fastest communicators on stage. Before a character speaks, their clothing signals their period (the era the play is set in), their status (rich or poor, powerful or marginal), and their personality and situation (neat and controlled, or chaotic and worn). Specific choices carry the meaning: the cut and quality of a garment, its colour (and what that suggests), its condition (pristine, faded, torn), and telling accessories. Make-up and hair add character, age, health and transformation. The principle, as with all design, is that every visible choice signals something, so choose with intent and know what each reads as to the audience.

Status, period and first impressions

This immediacy is costume's particular strength. The audience forms an impression of a character from the moment they walk on, largely from how they look, so costume is a designer's chance to establish status, period and personality at a stroke. Colour can be used deliberately (a single character in red among greys draws the eye and may signal danger or difference); condition can show circumstance (a fraying hem signals decline). A designer thinks about what the audience should assume about a character on sight, and dresses them to deliver it, then lets the play confirm or complicate the impression.

Showing change through costume and make-up

Costume and make-up are powerful for showing change across a production, because a visible shift tracks a character's arc clearly. A character who begins in neat, bright clothing and ends dishevelled and drained shows a decline the audience can see; a change to richer or poorer dress shows a change in status or fortune; make-up can show ageing, illness, injury or transformation over time. Planning a costume or make-up progression, deciding how the look changes at key points and what each change communicates, is a sophisticated design choice, and explaining how a change communicates a development to the audience is exactly what the higher mark bands reward. The change must serve the character's arc, not just provide variety.

Examples in context

A designer dressing a character who falls from comfort to ruin might begin them in a well-cut, clean coat in a warm colour, signalling status and ease, so the audience reads them as secure on sight. As the play turns, the same coat appears worn, then is replaced by something thinner and colder in tone, the hair becomes unkempt, and make-up adds shadows of strain, so the audience sees the decline tracked visibly across the production. Each choice communicates a precise aspect of the character's changing situation, and a written answer would justify the progression by what it shows the audience.

Try this

Q1. Name three things costume and make-up design can communicate. [3 marks]

• Cue. Any three of character or personality, status, period, situation, change (and age or health through make-up).

Q2. Why is costume powerful for first impressions? [2 marks]

• Cue. The audience reads costume the moment a character appears, before any line, so it establishes status, period and personality at a stroke.

Q3. Explain how a change of costume or make-up could show a change in a character during a production. [6 marks]

• What the marker wants. A costume or make-up change shown tracking a clear development (decline, rise, transformation) and tied to the audience's understanding, not a static description.