What's in a colour?

The director of our upcoming show Sense and Sensibility, Lexi von Hoffmann, is a woman of a vast array of talents – you have to be when you decide to lead a cast of fifteen plus a crew of even more through months of rehearsals – one of which is: sewing! Which came in more than handy when her assistant director came up with a brilliant, but work-intensive idea…

Fabric, fabric, fabric

One of the challenges in producing a Jane Austen play are the many characters and their shifting relationships. How do you make sure that the audience can keep track of who is who and who is connected to whom? This becomes especially tricky when there are actors playing several characters... 

Assistant Director Jess Albiston – a visual artist besides being a terrific AD – came up with an inspired idea: colour-code the costumes! Let all the Dashwoods be in shades of beige; all the Ferrars in purples, the happy Middleton/Jennings clan in cheerful yellows, and the mysterious gossips in grey (not quite fifty, but various shades...).

The fearless Barbara Möller who finds our costumes for us rifled through our costume collection and found some that fill the bill, but not all that we need by far.

So, I have been spending my time inundated in greys to make costumes for the gossips, and am now happy to be moving on to purples for the Ferrars, to be followed by yellows and one beige creation.

My apartment is covered in pins that have escaped the material and bits of yarn and material, but progress is being made! 

Lexi von Hoffmann

Meet the Gossips

“Did I tell you, I saw Lady Fagg and all of her five daughters last week…”

They may not appear per se in the classic novel, but the four Gossips (every character deserves to be capitalized, no?), thought up by playwright Kate Hamill to guide the audience through the plot of Sense and Sensibility, very closely reflect Jane Austen’s description of societal conventions in Regency England. But what does it mean to be a gossip, and where does the term come from?

The private affairs of others

Originating in Old English (spoken roughly between 450 and 1150) and meaning basically godparent, it later adapted to signify a familiar acquaintance, friend, or neighbour. This is also the time when it got gendered: those acquaintances, friends, and neighbours were the women of the village who gathered at the bedside of a woman in childbirth, and whiled away the time with idle talk. By the 16th century a gossip was pretty much as we know it today – a person who talks about the personal or private affairs of others, or the talk itself.

Unwritten rules of dos-and-don’ts

Regardless of the word’s origins, the act of talking about others has been with us since the dawn of humanity. And although we tend to see it as malicious and something to be avoided, anthropologists have suggested that it developed as a form of social bonding – humans needed alliances to survive. But as groups of humans grew larger, it became impossible for each individual to know the characters of the others: who’s reliable, who’s a cheat, who would be a good mate. Gossip provided the information necessary to maintain the alliances.

Even today, gossip transmits social norms and guidelines for behaviour, allowing new members of a group to learn the dos-and-don’ts, those unwritten rules that every social group has in one form or another. At the same time, it provides a conflict-free rebuke to individuals who have broken those rules. Gossip about inappropriate acts allows the wrong-doer to correct their behaviour without the necessity of a confrontation.

Now, our Sense and Sensibility Gossips are a bunch of good-natured, curious country folk with simply a little too much time on their hands. And that’s usually what allows for pretty good storytelling…

Amy Lee

Read a deep dive of the origins of the word “gossip” in our programme, which is available in the theatre foyer during our run at Theater an der Marschnerstraße from 2 to 5 and 9 to 12 November 2022. Tickets are available here.