Objectify me: Thing theory, Deborah Voigt and the Little Black Dress

Abstract This article examines the notorious firing of Deborah Voigt from Covent Garden in 2004 – on the grounds that her body would not suit the costume design – and her triumphant return four years later after undergoing bariatric surgery. It reads Voigt’s fascinating 2008 YouTube video in which she works out her creative differences with the costume (a Little Black Dress [LBD]), now animated and endowed with a male British voice. Both the situation and the video blur the line between costume and body, and between human performers and objects. This article applies recent object theory – especially the work of Latour, Brown and Bennett – to costume design, and places this research in dialogue with feminist theories that examine the relationship of female bodies to objects. I suggest that it is not the costume–object that exerts surprising ‘thing-power’ in this situation; rather, it is Voigt’s body itself, which becomes a ‘thing’. This incident shows us that the materiality of the performer’s body (qualities like size, sex, skin colour) can become an actant in the mimetic process. Usually, costumes work to erase the gap between the actor’s body and the ‘character body’ – a term I borrow from costume design practice – but in this situation, the LBD apparently cannot close the gap between Voigt’s body and the role she was to portray. This separation creates a new space for thinking about the relationship between onstage objects and subjects, and their possible collapse into the costume–body. This article ends with questions for further research: could object theory function as a trap door into a new kind of power for female stage performers – or is it just a trap?