Last night’s acting class was interesting. If I hadn’t mentioned it before, apart from being a teacher at WCU, Dr. Hash is a professional makeup artist for the Wilmington Opera and has applied makeup to many artists performing in productions in Philadelphia and the surrounding area. She also teaches the theater makeup class at WCU, and you can tell from her discussion of the subject that she enjoys it, probably more than the general acting class.
So it wasn’t shocking when she dragged us all into the makeup room last night to be painted.
I was handed some pink-looking pasty stuff and a sponge, and was told to apply it to my entire face. So I did. It wasn’t unpleasant except for the being coated in a strange substance that rubs off on everything. Interestingly, this stuff covered over my evening stubble, so if there’s any argument for men using makeup, that would be the only thing I could think of.
After that she game me some brown stuff to put on my nose and cheeks. The idea is to create shadows on the face to accentuate parts under the bright stage lights. She applied the first stroke to my nose, and it was clear that she knew what she was doing because my nose became suddenly visible amongst all the pink. I tried to copy this on the other side of my nose, and was marginally successful.
Then she had me apply the brown stuff to my eyelids, cheeks, and jaw line. After that, she came around with a bottle of black stuff that she painted thickly around the edges of my eyelids. This stuff smelled funny and make my eyelids stick together. Not a pleasant experience, really.
Finally, she brushed some kind of powder over everything to top it off.
I felt like a vampire. All I needed was a Marilyn Manson outfit and I would have fit the bill.
We scrubbed our makup off and smelled like baby wipes for the rest of class.
Practice wasn’t great. I didn’t know any of my lines. Danielle knew most of hers. I need to practice more, or something, and not just talk about doing it.
Our final class/scene is tomorrow, and even if we bomb, Dr. Hash is buying us pizza.
