I have Hair & Makeup designed three shows so far, including Much Ado About Nothing, Into the Woods, and The Drowsy Chaperone. Les Miserables in the Spring of 2018 will be my fourth. I wanted to include my Hair & Makeup designs to help demonstrate my other skills in technical theatre. I will be focusing on just two of the shows I have done Hair & Makeup for.
INTO THE WOODS:
Our concept for Into the Woods was shadow puppetry. We wanted the show to look like it was all made from shadows. The set was all black, costumes were black and white, and my hair and makeup design was black and white. Into the Woods is all about teaching lessons, and so as the characters each learned their lesson I changed their makeup and hair to color.
I had to purchase a lot of gray wigs, and a lot of white face powder. The hardest challenge of this was making the character skin appear white. After a LOT of trial and error I was able to achieve a faint white hue, which mixed with the hair and costumes was able to convey the concept well. I designed every wig myself, designs from victorian curls for the stepmother to Rapunzel's 10 foot long wig; I made Rapunzels wig by purchasing 3 of the same wigs and tying them together to flow into each other and appear as one wig. There is a moment when her hair gets cut. To do this, right before the scene we loosened the ties on the wigs, and when the Witch goes to cut it, she pulled at the bottom of the wig while doing the cutting motion and it appeared like she was actually cutting the hair off. This took a lot of trial and error, but by show week it worked perfectly every night! (Note: The picture of Rapunzel's wig below is without one of the wigs attached, this was taken during a dress rehearsal while the wig was being touched up)
For the Witch, she starts off as an old hag, cursed with ugliness. Later on into the show she regains her youth and beauty. I used a messy black wig and prosthetics to achieve her ugly hag appearance, the only hurdle to jump was her transformation. She had to drink from a cup, walk behind the large tree center stage and appear on the other side youthful. Under the tree we opened up one of the trapdoors on the stage deck to use as an entrance for the actors during the show. I decided that for the scene that the witch transforms we would put the prosthetics and wig and costumes on one of our same sized ensemble members, Kellan, who wasn't in the scene. During this scene. backstage the actress who played the witch, Mariana, was getting into her "youth and beauty" hair and makeup while saying her lines which projected to the audience while Kellan mouthed them. Mariana then went below the deck, climbed up and waited behind the tree with the same cloak on as Kellan, and when Kellan went behind the tree, Mariana came out right after with her hood on then revealed herself as beautiful. This transformation stunned the audience every night and I had countless people ask me how we did it, and they were shocked to know we used a body double.
Below you can see pictures of the production. January 2017.
INTO THE WOODS:
Our concept for Into the Woods was shadow puppetry. We wanted the show to look like it was all made from shadows. The set was all black, costumes were black and white, and my hair and makeup design was black and white. Into the Woods is all about teaching lessons, and so as the characters each learned their lesson I changed their makeup and hair to color.
I had to purchase a lot of gray wigs, and a lot of white face powder. The hardest challenge of this was making the character skin appear white. After a LOT of trial and error I was able to achieve a faint white hue, which mixed with the hair and costumes was able to convey the concept well. I designed every wig myself, designs from victorian curls for the stepmother to Rapunzel's 10 foot long wig; I made Rapunzels wig by purchasing 3 of the same wigs and tying them together to flow into each other and appear as one wig. There is a moment when her hair gets cut. To do this, right before the scene we loosened the ties on the wigs, and when the Witch goes to cut it, she pulled at the bottom of the wig while doing the cutting motion and it appeared like she was actually cutting the hair off. This took a lot of trial and error, but by show week it worked perfectly every night! (Note: The picture of Rapunzel's wig below is without one of the wigs attached, this was taken during a dress rehearsal while the wig was being touched up)
For the Witch, she starts off as an old hag, cursed with ugliness. Later on into the show she regains her youth and beauty. I used a messy black wig and prosthetics to achieve her ugly hag appearance, the only hurdle to jump was her transformation. She had to drink from a cup, walk behind the large tree center stage and appear on the other side youthful. Under the tree we opened up one of the trapdoors on the stage deck to use as an entrance for the actors during the show. I decided that for the scene that the witch transforms we would put the prosthetics and wig and costumes on one of our same sized ensemble members, Kellan, who wasn't in the scene. During this scene. backstage the actress who played the witch, Mariana, was getting into her "youth and beauty" hair and makeup while saying her lines which projected to the audience while Kellan mouthed them. Mariana then went below the deck, climbed up and waited behind the tree with the same cloak on as Kellan, and when Kellan went behind the tree, Mariana came out right after with her hood on then revealed herself as beautiful. This transformation stunned the audience every night and I had countless people ask me how we did it, and they were shocked to know we used a body double.
Below you can see pictures of the production. January 2017.
THE DROWSY CHAPERONE:
The Drowsy Chaperon is an insanely fun show, and it is often considered a "musical within a comedy." It takes place in a modern day home of the character named Man in Chair (Played by me!) who narrates to the audience his favorite show "The Drowsy Chaperone" which then comes to life in his home. The actual musical takes place in the 1920s, which was a very fun time for hair & makeup. As usual, I did very intense research to ensure accuracy with my designs. I spent days looking up photos, making renderings, and developing a Google Slide with all my research and preliminary designs for each character.
I used color schemes for this show as well, assigning each female a color for their makeup. Janet was pinks and blush reds, Kitty's was blues, and Chaperone was dark reds and black. Every single actress except the Chaperone wore a wig. Luckily, I only had to purchase 2, but all the others required hours on hours of touch ups, re-curling, and hair spraying to be show ready. For makeup, the females wore intense blush on their cheeks like they did in the 20s and I used a lot of smokey eyes on many characters because that was all the rage back then. For men, they wore very basic stage makeup with their hair slicked back.
This show was a lot of fun to design because I love working with wigs, and feel I can get really creative with makeup. Below you can see photos form this production which ran in January 2018.
The Drowsy Chaperon is an insanely fun show, and it is often considered a "musical within a comedy." It takes place in a modern day home of the character named Man in Chair (Played by me!) who narrates to the audience his favorite show "The Drowsy Chaperone" which then comes to life in his home. The actual musical takes place in the 1920s, which was a very fun time for hair & makeup. As usual, I did very intense research to ensure accuracy with my designs. I spent days looking up photos, making renderings, and developing a Google Slide with all my research and preliminary designs for each character.
I used color schemes for this show as well, assigning each female a color for their makeup. Janet was pinks and blush reds, Kitty's was blues, and Chaperone was dark reds and black. Every single actress except the Chaperone wore a wig. Luckily, I only had to purchase 2, but all the others required hours on hours of touch ups, re-curling, and hair spraying to be show ready. For makeup, the females wore intense blush on their cheeks like they did in the 20s and I used a lot of smokey eyes on many characters because that was all the rage back then. For men, they wore very basic stage makeup with their hair slicked back.
This show was a lot of fun to design because I love working with wigs, and feel I can get really creative with makeup. Below you can see photos form this production which ran in January 2018.