Makeup is something that every actor should know how to do for themselves. But if you are working with young actors or non professionals you will need to teach them how to do their makeup. I find that it is best for every show to have a class where you give the actors their makeup kits and teach them the basics and then show them what to do for their character. You should provide a drawing or picture of what you have in mind. For instance for the chorus of Cabaret you can make a collage of a few pictures for inspiration and period detail and let them experiment and personalize their makeup. It’s fun and sometimes enlightening for you and the actor.
Here is the process shown for making a life mask of the actor playing Cesare in a production of Dr. Caligari. The show called for a live actor and his doppleganger.
Another show and another way of working;
Robert Anderson in The Sea
Once I was fooling around in the dressing room with a very experienced actor and trying on mustaches for him when I suddenly got the idea that he could have a comb-over. He was balding on top and he shaved his hair so it seemed like he had no hair. But he did still have hair around the sides. I remembered that I had seen some ventilating samples that were very long and thin in the cupboard. So I got out one of those long thin beards and put it over the top of his head. He laughed so hard he almost choked. So he agreed to grow his side hair out and make the comb-over work. It was wonderful and really helped bring his character to life.
It’s important to provide individual makeup kits for each actor. The time has past where actors can dip in to a common tub of makeup. Ben Nye has inexpensive kits that should last for a 2 week run. You will need to buy individual eye makeup for everyone. No one should share eye makeup ever. But because of the advances in stage lighting, street makeup is fine for most plays.
Makeup is closely tied to lighting. It seems to me that makeup techniques are stuck in the 19th century while lighting has made great advances, perhaps too great. Something has been lost, the atmosphere of the old theatre performances. As Robert Edmond Jones put it;
“Yet the old theatre lighting, in spite of it’s crudeness, had a quality which our modern lighting sadly lacks, a quality which I can only describe as dreaminess. Our plays are case-histories, not dreams, and for the most part they are played in the pitiless light that beats down upon an operating table.”
I once designed costumes for a play that took place in a bar and the lighting designer had so much light onstage you felt like you needed sunglasses on. There weren’t any dark corners or any dreaminess. I miss some of the old lighting I remember from my youth and I hope that after we get over our infatuation with new technology that some of the art will come back.
Robert Anderson in The Sea
Costumier 