AS the backstage doors opened, an unseen world of the musical, Victor/Victoria is unveiled.

Lights, sounds, sets and costumes all come together as the curtains pulled away, ready to dazzle the audience.

Often, the performance by the cast and dancers become the highlight of the show, leaving the costumes unnoticed. After all, what's a good performance without costumes to compliment it?

In order for actors or dancers to immerse themselves in their roles, costumes need to play their parts.

Filomar Tariao, one of the dancers, shares that: "It helps to boost my performance as the costumes make it (the musical) more believable".

Keeping the costumes in tip-top condition is no feat.

"We have over 200 pieces of costumes for 30 cast and ensemble members, so nailing every look and coordinating it with the overall design of the show is a challenge in itself!", said Moe Kasim, costume designer for Victor/Victoria.

Dressers find themselves stitching loose sequins, missing buttons and ripped pants at the end of the show. Such slip-ups occur amidst the mad dash and chaos during the crazy costume changes between scenes.

To facilitate a quick changing, one of the tricks of the trade is the usage of velcros instead of buttons and laying out the costumes in sequence to avoid last minute confusion.

Despite all the "safety precautions" wardrobe malfunctions are still unavoidable. Despite using sticky tape or safety shorts, when anything goes wrong during a performance, one has to be prepared and move on so that the audiences do not pick up on it.

Andy Cuba, a dancer in Victor/Victoria had one such experience.

"During the dance sequence, Le Jazz Hot, my pants split and I had to continue dancing in sync with the others so that the audiences would not realise my wardrobe malfunction.

"To draw away the focus from my split pants I danced more 'tightly' (faster and more fluid movements)", said Andy.

The costumes in Victor/Victoria reveal the good, bad and ugly of staging a musical of this proportion.

Victor/Victoria is not all song and dance; it is also about the costumes that work hand in hand with cast and sets to transport us back to the glorious days of Paris back in the 30s.

Text and photos by Sheena Kaur Jaswal & Gurprit Kaur d/o Paramjee Singh of Republic Polytechnic.
This is a final-year project by Republic Polytechnic students in conjunction with AsiaOne.