What does the costume “do” in a performance? How is the relationship betweenthe costume and other elements of a production and how does changes in thecostume impact the experience of the fellow actors and the audience? Theseare central questions in the initial phase of the artistic research project CostumeAgency, affiliated at Oslo National Academy of the Arts (2018 - 2023). We decidedto start our research with an experiment, documented as a film.

We had the following hypothesis: costume is a dynamic entity of garment, body,action, and context. To test our hypothesis, we decided to make the followingexperiment: The performers played six versions of Scene 4, Act 4 of the playHedda Gabler, by Henrik Ibsen. We made three of the components as stable aspossible; the actors were the same, the actors performed as similarly as possible,and the context was the same – a 1900-apartment in the upper-class area in Oslo.One component changed in each of the six versions: the costume of the maincharacter, Hedda Gabler, changed just before the film recording started.

To capture the effect of the change of costume; the actors were intervieweddirectly after each version. The actors were asked how the costume impactedthem and how their perception of the main character changed. The actors saidthey never thought that costume could have such a huge effect, that in somecostumes it was impossible to perform the role as rehearsed. The main actorsaid that the costume changed her inwards, because the way she looked in otherpeople’s eyes. One of the actors said the costume had a domino-effect on them.

In this presentation I will analyze the response of one performer, the husband ofHedda, in one specific line of the scene, namely when she expresses she findsbeauty in the suicide of Eilert. I will also analyze the response of Hedda at thepoint where she discovers that the “suicide” was an accident. As a result of theanalysis, I will revise the hypothesis that costume is a dynamic entity of garment,body, action, and context.