Papers by Elise J Maynard
Question Journal , 2025
Reconstructing identity is a common practice within theatre design. When the performance focuses ... more Reconstructing identity is a common practice within theatre design. When the performance focuses on the personality of a single person, the reconstruction goes beyond the superficial and become signifier of the life once lived. One practitioner who worked with this idea was Julia Trevelyan Oman, who collaborated with Patrick Garland for his Brief Lives in 1967. It is a one-man play, acted notably by Roy Dotrice, which focused on a retelling of John Aubrey and the creation of his book, Brief Lives. The set of this play draws on every known aspect of Aubrey’s life, toying with the notion of a collector of both stories and artefacts, in a chaotic, overflowing and overwhelming atmosphere built from the careful collection and placement of over 2,500 props, many of which were antiques in the time of Aubrey. Oman’s design style can be described as a detail focused naturalism, which she employed on this production with excess. Each prop was carefully chosen, collected and placed by Oman to signify different elements of Aubrey’s life, with the intention of building his identity. At the time, this performance held a record number of props, which contributed to its fame. Garland described the design as a ‘Jacobean kitchen sink’, the purpose was to bring the lesser-known historical figure to life. The result is a reconstructed home, showcasing the identity of the man now since displaced, in their attempt to reinstate him as the significant social historian he was. This paper will focus on the use of set design to build identity through depictions of the home, how Oman created a home signifying Aubrey as belonging in our modern world and the notoriety this brought the production and the person they were elevating.
Fantasy through naturalism: Julia Trevelyan Oman and The Nutcracker
Studies in Costume and Performance , Jul 29, 2024
The Nutcracker is one of the most successful ballets in the world, accounting
for almost half of ... more The Nutcracker is one of the most successful ballets in the world, accounting
for almost half of the annual revenue of ballet companies across North America
and Europe. As the third-largest ballet company in the world, the Royal Ballet’s
version is one of the most recognizable, with designs created in 1984 by Julia
Trevelyan Oman. Oman is the set and costume designer responsible for some of
the longest continually running designs created for the Royal Opera House in
London. Her method can be characterized as a highly detailed naturalism facili-
tated by meticulous research often centring on a period from history relating to the
original conception of the narrative. Oman would use details gathered during her
research process in order to build her theatrical worlds, in many instances creating
high realism, and in others a complete immersive fantasy. The specific production
of The Nutcracker serves as the epitome of Oman’s design practice, a perfect blend
of her historical naturalism and detail-oriented fantasy. The production is praised
for the design, yet Oman is largely neglected from the narrative around it. This
article explores Oman’s design practice when working on The Nutcracker creat-
ing the splendour and success of London’s highest grossing ballet.
Conference Presentations by Elise J Maynard
Staging the Enigma Variations: Julia Trevelyan Oman’s Visual Reimagining of Elgar’s Musical Portraits
Thinking Through Sound, Sep 9, 2025
Edward Elgar's Enigma Variations presents a unique case study in musical portraiture, where each ... more Edward Elgar's Enigma Variations presents a unique case study in musical portraiture, where each variation functions as a ventriloquised portrait of his friends and family, sonic sketches that capture not just musical characteristics but personality traits, mannerisms, and social dynamics through sound. When choreographer Sir Frederick Ashton and designer Julia Trevelyan Oman adapted this work for ballet in 1968, they faced the challenge of translating these already-translated musical portraits into visual and kinetic language.
This paper examines how Oman's costume and set designs demonstrate a sophisticated practice of "thinking through sound", interpreting Elgar's sonic characterisations and rendering them visible through fabric, colour, form, and spatial arrangement. Oman's designs reveal how sound functions not merely as auditory experience but as a generative force for cross-modal translation, where musical qualities become material textures, rhythmic patterns transform into visual motifs, and the social dynamics embedded in Elgar's compositions find expression in costume relationships and stage geography.
Through archival research and visual analysis of Oman's sketches, documented research and realised designs, this study explores how her creative process involved listening to the music's social codes, the gendered implications of certain variations, the class dynamics suggested by musical textures, the intimacies and distances mapped in Elgar's harmonic relationships. Her designs thus function as a form of sonic archaeology, excavating the social world embedded within Elgar's musical portraits and making visible the cultural codes that sound carries.
This case study contributes to broader questions about interdisciplinary methodology and the ways sound operates as both subject and method in creative research. Oman's design practice demonstrates how ‘thinking through sound’ can extend beyond acoustic analysis to encompass the social, visual, and embodied dimensions of sonic experience. Her work suggests that sound's capacity to encode social relationships and cultural meanings can be productively translated across media, offering insights for contemporary practitioners working at the intersection of sound studies, visual culture, and performance.
Recreating Odette: Experimental History in the Archive
Capturing Practice: The Arts and Design Practice Research Exchange 2025, 2025
This interjection is a consideration of the importance of experimental history in the rediscovery... more This interjection is a consideration of the importance of experimental history in the rediscovery of costume for the stage, without which designers, productions, and material knowledge would continue to go largely undocumented. Reusing the practice as research methodologies used by scholars such as Hilary Davidson, Toni Bates, Serena Dyer, and Sarah Bendall, experimental history allows the scholar to piece together existing inconsistencies and scarcities in recorded information and offers them a greater insight into the visual aspect of the design, along with the successes and failures which may have led to the existing scarcity of recorded information. In the case of costume history, drawn designs, photographs or posters often long outlive the physical object, and while some of the written documentation may survive, it is much less common to see these types of physical records in archives. Material considerations are significant for the development of the design, from durability to weight, to aesthetic impact on the stage, the design drawings do little to suggest these nuances. And it is these nuances which can often lead to the success or failure of that design. Applying this approach to The Boston Ballet’s 1981 Swan Lake—designed by Julia Trevelyan Oman—this study demonstrates how hands-on research recovers lost material knowledge and enhances our understanding of historical stage design.
Costuming Memory: Nostalgia in Enigma Variations
Fashion, Costume and Visual Culture, 2025
Ballet is an inherently traditional art form, with many of the most celebrated productions evokin... more Ballet is an inherently traditional art form, with many of the most celebrated productions evoking nostalgia and cultural memory on stage. Many of the ballets performed today resurrect images from the past hundred years, with design concepts that have been continually reinterpreted and refreshed with each new revival. However, some productions go further, with nostalgia as their primary conceptual focus. This paper presentation examines Julia Trevelyan Oman’s costume designs for The Royal Ballet’s Enigma Variations (1968). Enigma is a narrative ballet that seeks to accurately depict the real individuals portrayed in Edward Elgar’s music, which itself was an experiment in ventriloquising. It is a ballet steeped in nostalgia, centring on Elgar, his love of the Worcestershire countryside, and the friends and family who surrounded him at the threshold of his career. Oman’s designs, based on Elgar’s musical interpretations and family photographs, use carefully chosen colours and fabrics to define the ages of the characters, reinforcing a sense of memory and longing across generations. The palette, sampled from the hues of Elgar’s own autumn trees, imbues the costumes with a softness that enhances both the historical setting and emotional depth of the work. Through these choices, the ballet captures a fleeting moment in time, as Elgar’s family and friends gather at his home, awaiting a telegram that will determine the fate of his career, rendering the past both intimate and bittersweet on stage.
A Legacy of her Own Design: Julia Trevelyan Oman’s Archive as Feminist Intervention
‘Deviant’ Women: Women and the Visual Arts Research Symposium, 2025
This paper explores the personal archive as a strategic act of defiance, foregrounding the case o... more This paper explores the personal archive as a strategic act of defiance, foregrounding the case of British stage and television designer Julia Trevelyan Oman (1930–2003). Despite a distinguished career, Oman’s contributions were often under-attributed by the institutions she worked with, a form of gendered marginalisation echoed across the cultural record. Drawing on feminist theorists Griselda Pollock and Rozsika Parker, whose work interrogates the systemic devaluation of craft under fine art as “women’s work” (Parker, 1984), this paper situates Oman's archive within a broader discourse of archival agency and feminist legacy-building. Now housed at the University of Bristol, Oman's meticulously curated archive resists institutional narratives and reasserts her authorial voice. Two case studies illuminate this intervention: Enigma Variations (1968), in which Oman originated a conceptual approach later credited to choreographer Sir Frederick Ashton, and The Nutcracker (1984), for which Oman fought against her erasure in her lifetime. These examples underscore how the archive not only preserves Oman’s creative legacy but reconfigures the frameworks through which her work is understood, shedding light on how institutions excluded Oman’s voice from the legacy of the production. In doing so, the archive exemplifies a feminist archival praxis, an act of reclaiming visibility, authority, and historical memory within a field that has long marginalised women’s creative labour.
La Bayadère: Designing colonised culture
RMA Study Day: Colonial Narratives and the Musical Stage, 2025
There is a longstanding tradition in western ballet which incorporates the stereotypical in ‘othe... more There is a longstanding tradition in western ballet which incorporates the stereotypical in ‘other’ culture. Designers often perpetuate stereotypical generalisations within their costume practices in order to represent these cultures on the stage. Ballet is an inherently traditional artform, with many of the largest ballet companies taking on historic works, which have remained in the cannon, nearly unchanged, for over 100 years. Many of the most popular ballets were created in the romantic period, under the authorship of composers such as Pytor Ilyich Tchaikovsky and Ludwig Minkus and choreographed by Sergei Khudekov, Marius Petipa and Lev Ivanov, which were then repopularised in the early 1900s by Sergei Diagalev and his Ballet Russe. While it is a widely recognised issue within ballet, that many of the stories and designs have become increasingly criticised, some productions have been retired and others have been allowed to continue to dominate the largest stages in Europe. This paper will focus on La Bayadère, it’s history and Yolanda Sonnabend’s 1980 design for the most recent production with the Royal Ballet, which ultimately led to its retirement from the companies repertoire in 2015. Many dancers blame the design for the public banishment of the ballet, claiming that the choreography can be made empowering, but is dragged down by the continual revival of colonialised perceptions of an ambiguous ‘orient’, but what is the origin of the stereotype? What role does the music have on the creation of the ballet’s design? How has La Bayadère contributed to the current perception of repertory ballet? And what now is the future of this ballet?
Reembodying the archive: Creative critical practice in feminist archival recovery
London Conference in Critical Thought , 2025
This paper explores how experimental history can recover women’s contributions to the stage throu... more This paper explores how experimental history can recover women’s contributions to the stage through the reconstruction of costume and performance practices. Drawing on the feminist critiques of Griselda Pollock and Rozsika Parker, alongside practice-as-research methodologies from scholars such as Hilary Davidson, Toni Bate, Serena Dyer, and Sarah Bendall, this study examines how recreating costume bridges archival gaps shaped by gendered hierarchies in artistic production. Without such revival, the work of designers, productions, and embodied material knowledge risks being overlooked.
Costume history is particularly vulnerable to archival loss, with garments, fabrics, and textures often surviving only as sketches, photographs, or descriptions. Yet essential qualities such as weight, movement, and tactile experience cannot be fully understood through visual records alone. Experimental history allows practitioner-researchers to reconstruct lost or fragmentary productions, restoring embodied knowledge and illuminating overlooked labour.
This paper applies these methods to a case study of Julia Trevelyan Oman’s costume designs for The Boston Ballet’s 1981 Swan Lake, demonstrating how hands-on reconstruction revives forgotten material knowledge and reveals costume’s role in shaping theatrical legacy. By engaging directly with Oman’s designs through practice, this research restores a fuller understanding of her creative vision and material choices—insights inaccessible through text-based study alone.
Experimental History in the Study of Lost Costume
Creative Critical Practices Symposium, 2025
This interjection is a consideration of the importance of experimental history in the rediscovery... more This interjection is a consideration of the importance of experimental history in the rediscovery of costume for the stage, without which designers, productions, and material knowledge would continue to go largely undocumented. Reusing the practice as research methodologies used by scholars such as Toni Bates and Hilliary Davidson, experimental history allows the scholar to piece together existing inconsistencies and scarcities in recorded information and offers them a greater insight into the visual aspect of the design, along with the successes and failures which may have led to the existing scarcity of recorded information. In the case of costume history, drawn designs, photographs or posters often long outlive the physical object, and while some of the written documentation may survive, it is much less common to see these types of physical records in archives. Material considerations are significant for the development of the design, from durability to weight, to aesthetic impact on the stage, the design drawings do little to suggest these nuances. And it is these nuances which can often lead to the success or failure of that design. With these types of material archives lost, it is the place of experimental history and the ability of artists and makers to literally piece back together elements of the productions that have been lost.
EXPERIMENTAL ARCHAEOLOGY IN THE REDISCOVERY OF LOST BALLET
Collisions24, 2024
This project centres on building on and expanding the practice of experimental
archaeology to bet... more This project centres on building on and expanding the practice of experimental
archaeology to better understand Oman’s designs for the Boston Ballet’s first
full-length ballet Swan Lake (1981), of which only Oman’s designs have survived.
Through remaking we are able to uncover information on cost and skill as well
as being able to test the costumes to better understand how and why a costume
might be considered successful or unsuccessful. Many of Oman’s designs are
still in use 50-years later, and this ballet stands in particular contrast as one
which was quickly redesigned, and as so little survives on the performance, we
must turn to what remains to uncover the reasons for the redesign and the loss
of the production.
Experimental Archaeology in the Rediscovery of Lost Costume
Replicas. Reconstructions, and Recreations, 2023
This interjection is a consideration of the importance of experimental history in the rediscovery... more This interjection is a consideration of the importance of experimental history in the rediscovery of costume for the stage, without which designers, productions, and material knowledge would continue to go largely undocumented. Reusing the practice as research methodologies used by theatrical scholars such as Gilli Bush-Baily, experimental history allows the scholar to piece together existing inconsistencies and scarcities in recorded information and offers them a greater insight into the visual aspect of the design, along with the successes and failures which may have led to the existing scarcity of recorded information. In the case of costume history, drawn designs, photographs or posters often long outlive the physical object, and while some of the written documentation may survive, it is much less common to see these types of physical records in archives. Material considerations are significant for the development of the design, from durability to weight, to aesthetic impact on the stage, the design drawings do little to suggest these nuances. And it is these nuances which can often lead to the success or failure of that design. With these types of material archives lost, it is the place of experimental history to piece back together elements of the productions.
Cultural (mis)representation in The Nutcracker
Culture Costume and Dress , 2023
There is a longstanding tradition in western ballet costume design which incorporates the stereot... more There is a longstanding tradition in western ballet costume design which incorporates the stereotypical in ‘other’ culture. Designers often perpetuate stereotypical generalisations within their costume practices in order to represent these cultures on the stage. While it is a widely recognised issue within ballet design, some designs have been retired and others have been allowed to continue to dominate the largest stages in Europe. This paper will focus on the design for the Royal Ballet’s The Nutcracker seeking to uncover the origins of and justifications for the design, particularly those costumes used in the ‘Arabian’ and ‘Chinese’ dances in the second act, along with the modifications Covent Garden has imposed in order to attempt to make the designs and dances more appropriate for modern audiences. The Nutcracker, most recently designed by Julia Trevelyan Oman, includes these culturally insensitive costumes, building on aesthetic stereotypes, reflected additionally within the music. Though these are a smaller part of the performance, they have become increasingly scrutinised, and most recently have been adapted to lessen the offence caused by their presence on stage, though these adaptations are limited. Why, when many ballets are now retired for their culturally insensitive representations in narrative and costume, such as La Bayadere, does the largest ballet, synonymous with the Royal Opera House in London, include reductive representations of other cultures? What role will the misrepresentation of people have in the current, continuing decline of traditional ballet, and would a redesign serve to rectify the issues present currently?
Julia Trevelyan Oman: Remaining Connected
Critical Costume 2022, 2022
Julia Trevelyan Oman (1930-2003) is the set and costume designer responsible for the longest cont... more Julia Trevelyan Oman (1930-2003) is the set and costume designer responsible for the longest continually running designs created for the Royal Opera House, London. Her design for La Bohème (1974) became the longest running opera design before its’ 2015 redesign, her Enigma Variations (1968) designs, not only inspired the ballet, but are the second longest running designs currently in the Royal Ballet’s repertoire. Additionally, many of the original costumes from its’ premiere are still in use. Oman is also responsible for the iconic The Nutcracker (1984) design, performed every year. Her design work can be characterised as “highly detailed naturalism” (Vaughn) facilitated by meticulous research often centring on a period from history relating to the original conception of the narrative: the story, music or performance. Oman researched through photography, whereby she gathered vast albums, collecting details from trips, books, and museums. These raw research collections created the basis for her designs and were passed along with design drawings, paint samples and fabric swatches, to the making departments. The result is an almost complete effacement; Oman’s identity is lost within her naturalism, losing her connection to the designs. However, within each of her designs, there is a colour motif, employed as a signature. Amongst the characters, one has the primary combination of blue and white. Most notably, the principal character, ‘Natalia’ in A Month in the Country (1976) and the principal narrative character, ‘Clara’ in The Nutcracker. The ratio of colour varies as does the prominence of the character, but the shade of the blue, the quality of the white and the presence of the motif does not. Whether intentional or not it’s unknown, but its presence is undeniable. Oman’s work is relatively unresearched, with no academic work published centring on her. Outside of academia, she features within biographies centring on her male collaborators such as Sir Frederick Ashton and Sir Peter Wright, she’s also mentioned within the autobiography of Jonathan Miller. This paper explores the development and use of this motif, primarily within her ballet costuming, investigating the origin, development and intention behind its use.
Talks by Elise J Maynard
Archive in Motion: Reviving the Magic of Swan Lake
Futures Festival 2025, 2025
This study employs creative critical practice to recover and analyse the overlooked contributions... more This study employs creative critical practice to recover and analyse the overlooked contributions of costume designer Julia Trevelyan Oman (1930-2003) to 20th century ballet design. Focusing specifically on her designs for the Boston Ballet's inaugural full-length production of Swan Lake (performed at London Coliseum as part of the Nureyev Festival), the research addresses the scarcity of surviving performance records by recreating Oman's costumes and having dancers perform in them. This practical methodology enables analysis of how fabric choices, construction techniques, and material properties affected both the visual aesthetics and performative qualities of the production.
The research draws from Oman's personal archive at the University of Bristol Theatre Collection, which contains the most complete surviving documentation of this production. Through costume reconstruction and performance testing, the study reveals how Oman's deep understanding of fabric behaviour and movement dynamics contributed to her success as a designer, challenging the attribution of her work to male contemporaries and highlighting her significant but underrecognized impact on contemporary ballet design.
The interactive display combines material culture analysis with hands-on learning, featuring reconstructed costumes (full-scale Odette and half-scale Von Rothbart), fabric samples demonstrating different movement properties, video documentation of costumes in performance, and a dress-up area where families can experience how fabric choices and construction methods affect both visual appearance and movement possibilities in ballet costume design.
Key Message: Material and constructional considerations in costume design are fundamental to the visual and performative experience of ballet, and understanding these elements is crucial for both accurate historical research and appreciation of overlooked designers' contributions.
This presentation demonstrates how creative critical practice can serve as both research methodology and public engagement tool, making specialized humanities research accessible to general audiences while advancing scholarly understanding of underrepresented figures in design history.
Fashioning the Archive: Recreating Odette
Futures 2024
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Papers by Elise J Maynard
for almost half of the annual revenue of ballet companies across North America
and Europe. As the third-largest ballet company in the world, the Royal Ballet’s
version is one of the most recognizable, with designs created in 1984 by Julia
Trevelyan Oman. Oman is the set and costume designer responsible for some of
the longest continually running designs created for the Royal Opera House in
London. Her method can be characterized as a highly detailed naturalism facili-
tated by meticulous research often centring on a period from history relating to the
original conception of the narrative. Oman would use details gathered during her
research process in order to build her theatrical worlds, in many instances creating
high realism, and in others a complete immersive fantasy. The specific production
of The Nutcracker serves as the epitome of Oman’s design practice, a perfect blend
of her historical naturalism and detail-oriented fantasy. The production is praised
for the design, yet Oman is largely neglected from the narrative around it. This
article explores Oman’s design practice when working on The Nutcracker creat-
ing the splendour and success of London’s highest grossing ballet.
Conference Presentations by Elise J Maynard
This paper examines how Oman's costume and set designs demonstrate a sophisticated practice of "thinking through sound", interpreting Elgar's sonic characterisations and rendering them visible through fabric, colour, form, and spatial arrangement. Oman's designs reveal how sound functions not merely as auditory experience but as a generative force for cross-modal translation, where musical qualities become material textures, rhythmic patterns transform into visual motifs, and the social dynamics embedded in Elgar's compositions find expression in costume relationships and stage geography.
Through archival research and visual analysis of Oman's sketches, documented research and realised designs, this study explores how her creative process involved listening to the music's social codes, the gendered implications of certain variations, the class dynamics suggested by musical textures, the intimacies and distances mapped in Elgar's harmonic relationships. Her designs thus function as a form of sonic archaeology, excavating the social world embedded within Elgar's musical portraits and making visible the cultural codes that sound carries.
This case study contributes to broader questions about interdisciplinary methodology and the ways sound operates as both subject and method in creative research. Oman's design practice demonstrates how ‘thinking through sound’ can extend beyond acoustic analysis to encompass the social, visual, and embodied dimensions of sonic experience. Her work suggests that sound's capacity to encode social relationships and cultural meanings can be productively translated across media, offering insights for contemporary practitioners working at the intersection of sound studies, visual culture, and performance.
Costume history is particularly vulnerable to archival loss, with garments, fabrics, and textures often surviving only as sketches, photographs, or descriptions. Yet essential qualities such as weight, movement, and tactile experience cannot be fully understood through visual records alone. Experimental history allows practitioner-researchers to reconstruct lost or fragmentary productions, restoring embodied knowledge and illuminating overlooked labour.
This paper applies these methods to a case study of Julia Trevelyan Oman’s costume designs for The Boston Ballet’s 1981 Swan Lake, demonstrating how hands-on reconstruction revives forgotten material knowledge and reveals costume’s role in shaping theatrical legacy. By engaging directly with Oman’s designs through practice, this research restores a fuller understanding of her creative vision and material choices—insights inaccessible through text-based study alone.
archaeology to better understand Oman’s designs for the Boston Ballet’s first
full-length ballet Swan Lake (1981), of which only Oman’s designs have survived.
Through remaking we are able to uncover information on cost and skill as well
as being able to test the costumes to better understand how and why a costume
might be considered successful or unsuccessful. Many of Oman’s designs are
still in use 50-years later, and this ballet stands in particular contrast as one
which was quickly redesigned, and as so little survives on the performance, we
must turn to what remains to uncover the reasons for the redesign and the loss
of the production.
Talks by Elise J Maynard
The research draws from Oman's personal archive at the University of Bristol Theatre Collection, which contains the most complete surviving documentation of this production. Through costume reconstruction and performance testing, the study reveals how Oman's deep understanding of fabric behaviour and movement dynamics contributed to her success as a designer, challenging the attribution of her work to male contemporaries and highlighting her significant but underrecognized impact on contemporary ballet design.
The interactive display combines material culture analysis with hands-on learning, featuring reconstructed costumes (full-scale Odette and half-scale Von Rothbart), fabric samples demonstrating different movement properties, video documentation of costumes in performance, and a dress-up area where families can experience how fabric choices and construction methods affect both visual appearance and movement possibilities in ballet costume design.
Key Message: Material and constructional considerations in costume design are fundamental to the visual and performative experience of ballet, and understanding these elements is crucial for both accurate historical research and appreciation of overlooked designers' contributions.
This presentation demonstrates how creative critical practice can serve as both research methodology and public engagement tool, making specialized humanities research accessible to general audiences while advancing scholarly understanding of underrepresented figures in design history.