by Leda Senise*, special for London Link

To make fashion costumes is also to travel in the time. The opportunity of exploring historical moments and places which we didn't live in, and we don't know. And in some way... live them. Adapt fabrics and new technologies to shapes and colours from the past, recreating it. But one of the biggest challenges of those creative "journeys" when you work with an epoch article, classic, is to adapt it to the present time. Travel in the time. Fiona Shaw, a well known English actress, is showing Medea, a tragedy from Euripides, directed by the modern Débora Walker. I went there to check. Forget the Greek tunics and drapes. Medea, from Fiona and Débora ,dresses a dramatic black tube and high heels. She doesn't lose her majesty, nor her jealousy, neither her fury.
Her husband, Jazao, when comfortable "in the palace" wears a jogging pack and snickers without losing his royalty. Medea's chambermaids and all the choral seem to be out of the lively nights of the Londoner Soho in a "fully street-wear look" not even for this reason it loses its function and dramatic nature. T-shirts, bandanas, crochet short jackets, cargo trousers, mix themselves in the most absolute theatricalism. In the final tragic scene, with her children already dead, blooded in her arms, Medea/Fiona just dresses a white masculine shirt and black underwear. ( I am almost sure that they belong to the new GAP's underwear line). The husband dresses a very modern white suit in tunic style. Fiona makes the scene in a swimming pool at the centre of the stage. The water is encrimsoned. The scenery is also modern and abstract, in a complete harmony with the costumes . Shocking? Shocking. At its best sense. The tragedy is totally there in an unbelievable show of contemporaneousness emphasised by the bold design conception. Stimulating creation flights breaking down time barriers. I leave the theatre and nosedive in Leicester Square, Saturday night. My imagination has travelled in time and space ... in first class.

Leda Senise is a multidisciplinary artist in Scenic Arts and Communication. She has been working since the beginning of her career in publicity and arts as
an editor, as a marketing and communication projects maker. She was responsible for Forum's communication and marketing project as a whole in its first five years, she passed by Fiorucci and Zoomp, among others. She has created shows, catwalks, exhibitions, campaigns, differentiated communication and trade processes for fashion brands where she worked. She directed art and costumes for hundreds of advertisements. She has dressed all our movie and theatre actors and made opera and ballet scenarios and costumes for the Municipal Theatre in Sao Paulo, Guaíra Teatre in Curitiba, Municipal Theatre in Rio de Janeiro. She walked around the world privately and as a scholar student with an allowance given by the British Council, interested in creation, costume storage and epoch productions and in the uncountable creation and technological intersections in these areas. At the moment, she develops research about language and formats in cinema and theatre in London, research which will serve as the base for her doctorate thesis at "Universidade de São Paulo".