COSTUME
97
In short, the good costume must be material enough to signify
and transparent enough not to turn its signs into parasites. The cos–
tume is a kind of writing and has the ambiguity of writing, which is
an instrument in the service of a purpose which transcends it; but if
the writing is either too poor or too rich, too beautiful or too ugly, it
can no longer be read and fails in its function. The costume, too, must
find that kind of rare equilibrium which permits it to help us
read
the
theatrical act without encumbering it with any parasitical value: it
must renounce every egotism, every excess of good intentions; it must
pass unnoticed in itself yet it must also exist: the actors cannot, after
all,
appear on stage naked!
It
must be both material and transparent:
we must see it but not look at it. This is perhaps only an apparent
paradox: Brecht's recent example suggests that it is in the very ac–
centuation of its materiality that costume has the greatest chances of
achieving its necessary submission to the critical goals of the spectacle.
(Translated from the French
by
Richard Howard)
