For my third look, the brief was to create a fantasy character look inspired by “Labyrinth” with film/TV makeup or “Wicked” with theatre makeup. I chose “Wicked” because I know more about it and I feel like there is a lot I could do with this.
Theatre makeup has been continually adapted since the Roman times. The Romans used decorative masks in theatre performances because they didn’t have lots of options for makeup. Theatre makeup largely changed around the 1700s, where the popularity of aristocratic makeup (pale faces, beauty marks, heavy blush, lipstick) influenced performers. The problem with early theatre makeup is that products often included lead, which ended up poisoning and killing many. Theatre makeup changed again throughout the 1900s thanks to safe makeup products and changing styles in general thanks to economic booms in between the world wars and through further changes in the theatre industry as the century went on (1960s onward). As industry professionals and more theatre shows became known, theatre makeup changed further because it could be properly analysed and adapted to each directors wishes/ the theme of the show itself.
The musical “Wicked” was adapted for stage by composer and lyricist Stephen Schwartz to be debuted on broadway in October 2003. The musical was based on the novel “Wicked: The Life And Times Of The Wicked Witch Of The West”, written by Gregory Maguire in 1995 and was described as “…a political, social, and ethical commentary on the nature of good and evil…”. The original material, “The Wonderful Wizard Of Oz” and the film “The Wizard Of Oz” were released between 1900 and 1939 so I wanted my theatre makeup to represent this time period. The musical “Cabaret” stood out to me for this reason but also because it has a link to “Wicked” in terms of themes; both musicals have themes of political unrest in entirely different ways but I think that link is very prominent in both shows. “Cabaret” is set in Germany around 1939, I will use the makeup from different productions of “Cabaret” as inspiration because the 1930’s had generally theatrical makeup style in a lot of Europe and because it will be bolder than my previous attempts at theatre makeup- which were quite plain and not up to the standard expected of me.
This look will involve dirtying down the skin, wig styling and costume design as well as 1930’s style makeup.
Character Backstory:
My character will be a student from Shiz University (the school from Wicked). He can never seem to get any spells right, leading to him becoming more of a student/ technician at the university. He appears to be an extroverted, confident person but in reality, he is a highly self-critical character that struggles with self esteem issues after seeing his peers succeed while he falls behind. I ended up using a mirror as a prop in my final images to portray this, the character looking into the mirror represents the characters low self esteem as he questions why he can’t seem to get any better at what he does. In “Wicked”, this character would even go as far as copying their classmates spells to try and out do them- only for the spell to not work or go wrong. This characters future as a wizard would always be uncertain as the audience would never be sure if his spells would ever work.