Taking Theatrical License: can collaboration and creativity overcome the potential pitfalls of recreative practice?

This paper will examine the important role of collaboration and creativity in overcoming the challenges inherent in recreating historical theatrical costume. Focusing on a project to remake a costume worn by the actress Ellen Terry (1847-1928) as Imogen in the 1896 production of Cymbeline, it will demonstrate the cumulative knowledge and deeper understanding gained through uniting a range of specialist skillsets to examine, document, and remake a single garment. In this instance, the triumvirate of maker, conservator and researcher not only facilitated a re-consideration of the on-stage life of this costume, but also illuminated its original construction, and complex afterlives. In this paper one such afterlife - recreation – is highlighted, but it is a practice which is often fraught with questions and complications, therefore can taking a more theatrical approach be a potential answer?