Costume, Performance and Transformation

Amie Egan and Isadora Epstein on their collaboration

Nature is indulgent.

Coloured feathers and tassels, ties, bunches and strokey smooth fluff

Is this a creature?

(The soft curve behind a fox’ ears)

Or a human?

(silky culottes midlayered to - with - for- a decadent blouse)

“The creatures, they morphed out of another world” says Amie Egan, a costume designer whose work crosses between realms. The animal and the human. This world and the otherworld. Myth and dream.

Photo by Saoirse Sexton during Leave The Door Open at the Hugh Lane Gallery

I visited her studio in the Complex a few months ago, she’s delighted with this space and excited to have been on a residency in Austria this summer with Isadora Epstein’s group of players. The group are consistently active. I spoke to Amie just before their performance in Graz Austria at Club Hybrid in July, since then they had at a performance at The Complex, and there’s another show coming up in IMMA on the 10th and 17th of September.

Isadora Epstein is the group’s leader, who writes, directs and plays in the performances. She has an incredible gravitational leadership style, curating and calling on different artists, musicians and performers to work on the performances. Consistent collaborators include harpist Méabh McKenna, artist Stéphane Hanly and Amie Egan whose rich costume design has defined the group’s visual presence.

Research

It is clear that research is foundation of the these two collaborators’ processes. For each project, Isadora has a discussion with Amie about what she hopes for the costumes: the paintings and mythology they’re both inspired by, and the animals and plant life she wishes to evoke, but frequently Isadora does not see the costumes until the night of the show.

Isadora starts with reading and writing. One text she frequently returns to is Ovid’s Metamorphoses and it is clear that she is interested in the transformational power of performance. In “Leave the Door Open”, Isadora was at once a flirty cow, a coquettish milkmaid, and, as she describes it “myself in drag”. Her charisma is larger than life so it makes sense when she says she feels the most attractive when she’s performing. It’s also a space to be more perfectly feminine than life will allow, and she relates a story of Amie putting false eyelashes on her for a show. This was intimate and meaningful, as “she never usually puts in the effort required to be femme”.

Photo by Saoirse Sexton, Hugh Lane Gallery, Leave The Door Open

I wonder if she is interested in the potential of performance to transform not just the performers, but potentially the audience as well. She thinks what distinguishes her work from theatre is the lack of the fourth wall: “I’m always performing for people I know, I look round the room : I might see someone that makes me feel weird or someone I have crush on”. Sometimes she feels there’s a perception in art, where the audience are perceived as being the foolish ones. But she is keen to reverse this, and make the performers the fool.

Visual Culture

The two artists are deeply inspired by visual culture. The Garden of Earthly Delights by Bosch is a frequent reference point, including for the upcoming performance in IMMA.

I can nearly imagine how thrilling it must be to create yourself into this painting, through your work. Amie also described how she tries to get closer to the venues the performances take place, through her costume design.

When speaking about the performance in the Hugh Lane, Leave the Door Open , she said “I wanted to feel as if the creatures were coming out of the walls, I wanted them to be part of that world”. As such, her golden ‘summer’ costume for Méabh McKenna incorporates beautiful ties mimicking the classical design of the ceilings.

All of this is documented on her Instagram which includes intricate depictions of the elements of the gallery mimicked in the costumes. One can also see how her interest in costume design blossomed during lockdown, when she made costumes and took photos embodying classical paintings. I wanted to get deeper into this. What is it about paintings? Is it the world that inspires you? 

“No”, she says bluntly. Of course she is not nostalgic for an aristocratic past. She speculates that it might be more to do with her education and exposure to visual culture in NCAD. And I sense it could be something deeper, something about how the paintings, like the costumes and nature, speak of something unspeakable? “Nature is a huge inspiration” she muses later, as her eyes soften over a grasshopper’s waistcoat. I know what she means. Gazing at the costumes, there are unexpected angles of beauty: intimacy with an insect, the wings of a moth. And more deeper still: a celebration.

The Mystery

Definitely the unspeakability is something she resonates with. Amie’s focus is on the work, not the words, and she is keen to emphasise this. A craft of assembling and creating, with receptivity and hunger. She stays open, letting the making lead, using diverse and rejected fabric that she’s gathered over the years. And the hunger comes from what? Where? 

Whatever it is driving her, it comes through in the work. A joy, a sense of humour and beauty. I am extremely drawn to the shoes she creates. How the players’ slippers are uneven, vulnerable, even. There’s a curiosity to the work. It questions, prys, plays… I sense something of a figure dancing at the outskirts, between realities, sticking her tongue out to authority. I suggest there’s archetype at play here. “The fool” as Amie coins it.

International Literature Festival, Moth Holes

I suppose ultimately what drew me in to talk with both Isadora and Amie, is the sense of vitality within the work.

This for me is connected with transformation. During our interview, Isadora spoke about the balance between control and the lack of it as a performer. How we cannot fully control the present moment: the adrenaline which happens as a performer on stage, femmes larger than life, more than perfect and at the same time sometimes the failure is the gift.

And similarly for Amie, we cannot say the full truth of the costume, the joy of being inside a painting, the singing fullness of cloth.

And the question for me then is, what on earth are we to do? In this absurd obscurity?

                                                                         But laugh?        Sing?    Play?                              

Here lies the potential for transformation, for emergence: through being open to the hilarious mystery: to the material presence or the temporal present unfolding, this is where change, freedom and metamorphoses can begin.

Thus, also, the non-dwelling of the wise fool: dancing between worlds, beautiful and rapturous, bowing out with a twirl and a wink.

Isadora Epstein’s performance Paradise, Paradise, Paradise! with costume design by Amie Egan will take place on September 10th and 17th as part of IMMA Outdoors 2023. Tickets available here.