If a
picture paints a thousand words, Pam Hogg is probably the perfect choice to
design costumes for the Citizens Theatre company’s new production of Cyrano de
Bergerac. It was a picture, after all, that got Hogg the gig on Dominic Hill’s
revival of the late Edwin Morgan’s Scots translation of Edmond Rostand’s
classic nineteenth century yarn, first presented by Communicado Theatre Company
in 1992.
When
Hogg was first contacted by Hill about collaborating on his new co-production
with the National Theatre of Scotland and the Royal Lyceum, Edinburgh, before they
met, she put an image from her archive onto her phone. This was a typically
instinctive move by Hogg, designed to give a taster of what she might be able
to bring to the play, in which the poetic Cyrano is so embarrassed by his big
nose that he is unable to express his love for the beautiful Roxanne. When Hill
and Hogg met, Hill too pulled out an image to illustrate his own thoughts about
the play. Both images were the same.
“That
was the start,” says Hogg, “and that was everything. It was a feeling that
showed exactly what kind of director Dominic was. He’s fluid, and I work in a
fluid way. It’s all about feeling, and letting things – I hate that word evolve
– but you’ve got a million ideas, and you muddle through until one arrives. It doesn’t
matter when that comes out, as long as it does come out, and at some point the
jigsaw puzzle will come together.
“That’s
how I work, and that’s obviously how Dominic works as well. There were quite a
few things from that very first meeting, where I’d ask what about this, and he’d
say, oh, I don’t know yet. For me, that’s fresh air. It’s wonderful, because anything
can happen, and it means there’s no painting by numbers. That’s everything to
me, because you can get anybody to paint by numbers.”
As
Hogg readily admits, such an approach “doesn’t always work for everybody,
because you’ve got people who are waiting to be told what to do, and you have
to work around what they’re doing. Bringing all that together is the main
thing. There are still some things I ask Dominic, and he doesn’t know yet, but
I’m fine with that. It’s trying to let everyone else know it’s fine, especially
at this stage.”
If it
wasn’t already clear, Hogg points out that “I work in a different way to
everybody else. Whether it’s music or whatever, I don’t work in a normal way.”
Hogg
mentions Sean McLusky, the former Subway Sect and Jo Boxers drummer turned London
club impresario, who worked with her on assorted musical ventures.
“He
would say, where’s the chorus? But he said it made him think in a different way.
It’s thinking out of the box, basically, but not everyone can do that, which is
a good thing, because you need somebody to pull the reins in and say we have to
get something made, your show’s in three days’ time. Aaargghh! That’s when
everything you always knew comes into focus, and that’s what’s happening right
now with both myself and Dominic.
“I
love solving a problem, because that’s when my ideas start to fly. There are
hundreds of characters, and about seventeen actors who have to multi-task, and
play about six characters each. They have to change within seconds, and all
these magnificent ideas about frocks, they become about how you get on and off
stage in two seconds, and you have to redesign and rethink things. That for me
is a challenge I welcome. I love it.”
Holding
court in the upstairs bar of a chi-chi Glasgow hotel, Hogg’s conversation
free-forms its breathless, motor-mouthed and eternally in-the-moment way around
the houses in much the same way, one imagines, as the working methods she so
vividly describes. Clad in a blue tracksuit, beret and Chelsea boots, Hogg has applied
a similar mix and match approach to a career which began with her studying Fine
Art and Printed Textiles at Glasgow School of Art.
After
further studies at the Royal College of Art, Hogg’s design work landed in the
middle of a post-punk London club culture and music scene that put her
personality as much as her clothes at its centre. Hogg sang with bands, made
records with Acid House DJs and appeared on prime time TV chat shows. Her 1990
show at Kelvingrove Art Gallery in 1990 was the first fashion design exhibition
to be held there.
Over
the years she’s worked with Debbie Harry, Lady Gaga and Kylie, as well as
sharing bills with post-punk icons The Raincoats and Chicks on Speed. In 2009,
the Scottish Fashion Council gave her a lifetime achievement award, presented
to her at Stirling Castle by Siouxsie Sioux. The morning after we meet, she’s
off to work on a film with original Jess and Mary Chain bass player Douglas
Hart.
Everything
Hogg does, it seems, is a performance of sorts, but she’s no poser. In 2014,
she was approached by Amnesty International and asked to give a nod to Pussy
Riot, the Russian activist collective, three members of whom had been imprisoned
for twenty months following their ‘punk prayer’ protest in 2012. With no show
planned, Hogg worked flat out, and, on Valentine’s Day, her models walked the
catwalk carrying placards dedicated to Pussy Riot, and bearing slogans such as ‘Love
Is A Human Right’.
Hogg
is unflinchingly honest, whether talking about the constant need to work to
survive financially, or else the people she’s been close to who are no longer
around. As for the move into theatre, as with everything she does, she leaps in
head first.
“My
stuff is quite theatrical, anyway,” she says. “It doesn’t matter to me if it’s
music, film or whatever, I work in the same fluid way. I don’t term myself as a
fashion designer. I’m like a fashion designer who knows nothing about fashion.
So it doesn’t matter if I’m a fashion designer who knows nothing about theatre,
because I’m open to everything, and I can fit myself into these places, because
that’s what I love doing.
“Immediately
I was asked to do Cyrano, I started having visions, and I tell you the most
exciting thing, I went into rehearsals yesterday, and there’s no set, no
lighting and no costume, and that’s so exciting. That’s what I’m used to. I
jump through those sort of hurdles every single day.”
Cyrano
de Bergerac, Tramway, Glasgow, September 1-22; Royal Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh,
October 12-November 3; Eden Court, Inverness, November 7-10.
The Herald, August 30th 2018
ends
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