Costume

Ali Maclaurin is a freelance designer and lecturer. She has practiced for over twenty years, particularly in physical theatre and young people's work, with companies such as Scottish Opera and Shadow Syndicate. Aoife Monks is Senior Lecturer in Theatre Studies at Birkbeck College, University of London, UK. She is the author of The Actor in Costume.

• Introduction – Aoife Monks1. Writing About Costume; Ali MaclaurinInterview one: Jenny TirimaniInterview two: Mark Thompson2. The Stage Picture; Ali MaclaurinInterview three: Simon AnnandInterview four: Alex Rigg3. Virtuosity, Craft and Technique in the Work of Costume; Aoife MonksInterview five: Lois WeaverInterview six: Lez Brotherstone4. Playing the Body: Costume, Stereotypes and Modernity in Performance; Aoife MonksInterview seven: Tina BicatInterview eight: The salon project5. Artists and the 'scenic body'; Ali MaclaurinBibliographyIndex.

I am delighted to have this book as part of our literature, and highly recommend it to students of costume design in theatre, television or film, theatre studies, performance studies, fashion and textiles, art and architecture, gender studies and cultural studies. It is an invaluable resource that offers an entryway through which designers, directors, performance theorists and historians may tread towards a more comprehensive history and theory of costume, with its infinite manifestations and functions.