How to Act in a Corset and Period Costume (Breath, Skirts, Stairs, and Sitting)

You’ve rehearsed for four weeks in leggings and sneakers. Then comes first dress. Someone laces you into a corset, a skirt lands on top of a petticoat, and the staircase you’ve run down twenty times now has a hem waiting at the bottom of every step. You sit for your big speech and the boning digs in exactly where your breath used to go.

None of this means you can’t act in it. It means the costume is a scene partner you haven’t rehearsed with yet.

The short version: ask for rehearsal pieces as soon as you can get them. Take a full breath at your fitting so the corset leaves room for your ribs, and learn to breathe into the sides and back of your ribcage. Lift a long skirt in front when you climb, don’t walk backward in it, and plan every sit, kneel, and bow as part of the blocking. Then let the clothes tell you who your character is.

Ask for rehearsal pieces, and wear them

Some costume shops plan for the time your body needs with these clothes. Designer Katrina Lindsay, talking to TDF about the 2008 Broadway revival of Les Liaisons Dangereuses, said the team gathered rehearsal costumes “just to get used to having corsets on,” even when they weren’t quite the right shape. Her point was that your body has to adjust to the corset and to the width of the panniers, the hoops that sit over the corset and under the skirt.

The Royal Shakespeare Company did the same for The Empress in 2013. Its costume department made rehearsal bustles so the actors could get used to their feel and weight before the full costumes were built. The same post says a bustle takes about 12 meters of inch-wide steel, and that these costumes are often worn on stage for a long time.

Sometimes the real piece arrives late. Deidre Rubenstein, who played Queen Elizabeth in Melbourne Theatre Company’s Shakespeare in Love, told MTC that her costume was “truly like wearing a table.” She couldn’t see her feet, found it hard to judge distances, and was on a raked stage. She was able to wear the skirt in the final week of rehearsals, which she called a mercy.

So ask, politely and early, through your stage manager: is there a rehearsal corset, skirt, or pair of period shoes I can work in? If not, bring your own stand-ins. A long, full skirt, period-height shoes, and a stiff jacket buttoned to the top teach a lot. Our guide to acting in a period piece covers the research side of this, and what to expect at a costume fitting covers what to tell the shop.

One honest note from Lindsay: at some points her actors didn’t want the pieces on. They wanted to find their emotional route through the play first, without the constriction. They always had the option, which is a good model. Find the scene in your body first, then put the clothes back on and find it again.

Breathe and speak in a corset

A corset limits how far your waist and lower ribs can move. Singers perform in them, though. The work is to set the fit up so it leaves room, and then put your breath in the places the corset allows.

Start at the fitting. Soprano Charlotte Hoather, singing a scene from The Turn of the Screw in corsets at the Royal College of Music, wrote that her singing teacher warned her to take in a big breath during the fitting, so the corset would allow for the expansion of her ribcage. It was tempting to breathe out, she admits. Don’t: laced on an exhale, you’ll have less room to breathe.

Mezzo-soprano Kara Cornell, who has often sung Carmen in a corset, told onStage Pittsburgh that she would expand her ribs before being tied in. Before she bought her own corset, some were so tight she couldn’t breathe. She also said some singers like the resistance: pushing the ribs out against a corset helps them feel engaged all the way around the ribcage.

To practice at home, wrap a snug belt or scarf around your lower ribs:

1. Put your hands on the sides of your lower ribs and breathe in so they press out into your palms.
2. Move your hands to your back, just above the waist, and breathe so you feel the back widen too.
3. Say a long line from your part on one breath, keeping that width as long as you can, instead of letting the ribs collapse at the start.
4. Notice where you run out, and mark a new breath in your script at the nearest turn of thought.

Hoather found the corset helped. Hers were soft opera corsets, which she described in a reply to a reader as made “without the hard boning nor too tightly strung.” She could feel her muscles expanding and contracting, which helped her focus on supporting her breath evenly. A corset can give you something to feel as you breathe. For pacing breath, see our guide to breath control for long speeches, and for volume, how to project your voice on stage.

If you truly can’t get a full sentence out, tell wardrobe. They may be able to adjust the fit, and they want a costume you can perform in.

Get dressed in the right order

A lot of trouble in period clothes is about sequence. Hoather’s costume mistress gave her a tip she called very handy: put your shoes and tights on before the corset, because bending down to do them afterward is quite a task. Bending over got harder in general, so she was careful not to drop props.

So check your blocking for anything you pick up off the floor, and ask whether that prop can live on a table instead. Then look at your quick changes.

Cornell is blunt about quick changes. Untying a corset in about 15 seconds is a real pain, she said, often in very little light behind the set, where it’s hard to even see the ties. Theatrefolk’s guide to costumes gives the fix: practice every quick change before technical and dress rehearsals, with costume crew there to help.

Skirts, hoops, and stairs

Long skirts change your walk. Theatrefolk warns that larger and longer skirts can be a tripping hazard, and points out a common mistake: wearing a period skirt low on the hips, the modern way, instead of at the natural waist. Ask wardrobe where the waistband should sit and wear it there.

Stairs are a common worry. Claire van der Boom, playing Viola in the same MTC production, said she was hoping not to trip on her hem going down the steps of a steep tower. A few habits help:

• Going up: lift the front of the skirt high enough that your foot can’t land on it. A reenactor who said they’d worn a hoop for more than 16 years, commenting on Cassidy Percoco’s blog, describes picking the skirt up or holding it out in front so you don’t put your foot on it or through it.
• Not backward: another commenter in the same thread calls moving backward a bad idea. Skirts are often longer in back, so stepping back sweeps the hem under your heel. If the blocking asks you to back away, turn and walk, or ask the director about it.
• Smaller steps: that commenter also suggests shorter steps, sliding the foot slightly instead of lifting it high, so it doesn’t catch the inside of the skirt.

Hoops and panniers add width, so you have to learn where the edges are. Walk your blocking in a rehearsal hoop and watch doorways, furniture, and other actors you pass. Theatrefolk adds that bustles, petticoats, and crinolines can rustle loudly.

Sitting, kneeling, and bowing are blocking

In leggings, sitting down is nothing. In a corset, it’s a move. Hoather found changing levels from standing to sitting more restrictive in a corset, and Theatrefolk notes that bustles and crinolines can make it difficult to sit down. Treat every sit like a piece of choreography: where you stand, how you gather the skirt, how far back you lower yourself, and which line you say once you’re down.

One movement coach starts in the same place. Kalo Gow, a voice and movement coach who works on period movement, told J. Gordon Shillingford Publishing that it’s imperative to begin with costumes, especially restrictive ones like corsets and panniers. Gow’s work starts with posture, then walking, sitting, and gesture. Men’s clothes count too: Gow notes that a formal 18th-century English suit coat was often stiff and slim, and arms weren’t meant to be raised above shoulder height.

Bows and curtsies need repetition. Lucy Cullingford, the RSC’s movement director on The Taming of the Shrew, wrote that Elizabethan bows and curtsies have to become “as habitual as a handshake.”

Wilde gives you a scene to practice all of this. In Act I of The Importance of Being Earnest, Jack is still on his knees after proposing to Gwendolen when her mother walks in:

LADY BRACKNELL. Mr. Worthing! Rise, sir, from this semi-recumbent posture. It is most indecorous.

GWENDOLEN. Mamma! [He tries to rise; she restrains him.] I must beg you to retire. This is no place for you. Besides, Mr. Worthing has not quite finished yet.

Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest, Act I (1895), Project Gutenberg text.

In a period production, everyone in that moment is dealing with clothes. Jack is trying to get up from his knees in a fitted coat, and Gwendolen, likely corseted in a period production, has to stop him. Lady Bracknell has just made an entrance that should look effortless. Rehearse the rise and the restraint until both land on the line.

Let the costume tell you who you are

Restriction can be information. Hoather wrote that the corset encouraged her to sit and stand upright, and gave her governess “a sense of control and seniority.” She used it. Beatie Edney, who played Queen Victoria in The Empress, said her costume helped her performance, according to the RSC’s costume team. Rubenstein said that as Elizabeth she had to look and feel comfortable, regal, and stately inside something cumbersome.

That last point is the key. The people who wore these clothes were used to them. Gow notes that class shapes how a character carries themself, and Cullingford says the period affects how actors carry themselves, walk, and interact. Your character isn’t fighting the corset. Make the struggle yours in rehearsal so it’s gone by opening.

Run your lines in the clothes

A sit, a stair, or a curtsy can take just enough attention that the next line goes. Rehearse the words and the business together until the business is automatic.

1. As soon as you’re cast, ask the stage manager about rehearsal pieces and period shoes.
2. At your fitting, take a full breath when you’re laced, and try sitting, kneeling, and raising your arms right there.
3. Walk every staircase and sit in your blocking in a long skirt or rehearsal hoop, at every rehearsal you can.
4. Rehearse every quick change with the costume crew before tech.
5. At first dress, notice anything new the real costume does, and tell wardrobe that night.

For the running part, Offbook helps you practice at home. Upload your script, pick your role, and realistic voices read every other character and wait for your line, so you can rehearse your blocking in a long skirt in your living room with your laptop on a table nearby. You can add a custom pause before the next line to give yourself time for a sit or a curtsy. To try it on the play above, our free run lines online tool has the handbag scene from Earnest, with Lady Bracknell interviewing Jack.

Questions actors ask

When should I start rehearsing in costume?

As early as the costume shop can manage. Rehearsal corsets, skirts, and bustles exist so you can get used to the weight and shape before the final pieces are built. If nothing is available, wear your own long skirt and period-height shoes from the first blocking rehearsal, and take them off when you need to find a scene without them first.

Can you project your voice in a corset?

Yes. Opera singers sing roles like Carmen in them. Take a full breath at the fitting so there’s room for your ribs, breathe into the sides and back of your ribcage, and tell wardrobe if a corset is too tight to get through a sentence.

How do you sit down in a hoop skirt or bustle?

Treat it as blocking. Check where the chair is, gather or lift the skirt so it doesn’t catch, and lower yourself with a straight back. Ask wardrobe how your hoop or bustle likes to be handled.

Do men need to rehearse in period costume too?

Yes. Stiff coats and period shoes change how you move, and a formal 18th-century coat wasn’t cut for raising your arms high. Ask for rehearsal coats and shoes, and practice bows until they’re habit.