In 1983, costume designer Sonia Biacchi founded The Centre for Theatre Research (CTR) as a collaborative performance and construction space for her design experiments. I met with her in April 2019 on a brief visit to Venice where I was able to interview Sonia in her home. She brought out several costumes, displayed her old photographs, and shared several stories of the artisans she had collaborated with. I recently learned from her son, Stefano Polizzi, that Sonia passed away; she was 89. I was incredibly sorry for her passing but grateful to have met her.

My own research combines aesthetic and object theory with a practice-based project wherein I study Sonia’s creative process. My academic interests lie primarily in object theory, the physical posthumanist experience, and exploring the costume as a directive object. I plan to integrate my creative interests with the design and construction of costumes like those of Ms. Biacchi and study my own process through the lens of Sonia’s aesthetic impetus.

Biacchi’s strong aesthetic is prominent in her work but also enhances the gesture of her dancers’ movement. Her costumes extend architecturally beyond the human form to enliven the space around it. A major part of her process was her collaboration with dancers to enable and inhibit movement. I replicate this collaboration and explore how it charges both the design and the dancer’s experience of the costume space. This celebrates the structural environment that is created by the designer but energized by the dancer in movement. I examine the costume as an object that expands and constrains the body, combining theories of the body, movement, and objects with the practical creation and expression of Sonia Biacchi’s aesthetic legacy.

It is important to document Sonia’s work as her projects are recognizable but often wrongly attributed as original Bauhaus designs in English sources. Ms. Biacchi’s work re-introduces a conversation begun years ago by Bauhaus designer Oskar Schlemmer—one that focused on the movement of the body within constructed forms. I find this relates closely to how our own costumes and technology change how we engage with our environment. I plan to pursue this particular aspect of movement and costume through the lens of the posthuman experience—one that dictates a less human-centric approach to physicality. 

This project is not only an exploration of the topic itself, but also Practice-Based research wherein I propose, research, document, complete, and reflect analytically upon a creative project. This particular method allows me to integrate my role as researcher, writer, and as maker—and this research format is quickly becoming the most practical approach for theatre artists to accomplish in-depth and reflective work. The methodology is particularly important because it forms a model of research, refinement, and reflection that are core to theatrical design work. I plan to incorporate this model with my future students and colleagues and seek out similar projects that will expand my analytical and construction skills.

While this particular project focuses on Sonia Biacchi’s work, the complexities of her costumes as functional objects are at the center of my long-term interests. In future I plan to continue my work with architectural, posthumanist aesthetics and how that affects the performer’s movement and person/object-hood.

I have always sought both internal and external funding for my creative projects and will continue to do so. My hope is to build deeper connections with some of the postmodern theatres in Italy—such as Raffaelo Sanzio—so that I may continue experimenting with costumes as wearing object-bodies both in the US and abroad. As this extends into technology and its use in construction and production of contemporary costumes, I hope to explore how mechanics compliment and re-conform the mechanics of the body as well.

This field of work opens up future collaborations with Art History and Museum Studies, which have together been my minor during my Ph.D. studies. I have been working on a new way of teaching theatre design that incorporates object theory—bringing focus to the personalities and stories of each object as parts of the larger story we seek to tell on stage. My hope is to change the way I (and others) teach and implement design processes, so that there is more focus on how elements’ personalities exist individually, and thus together function as a cohesive whole. This, in relation to how costumes control the body, is the focus of my written and practical research.