theater blog post

Makeup artistry-------- Makeup is a huge part of any production. Simply day to day, it is a significant part of our culture. In theater, makeup has a tremendous impact on any scene. It can be used to age a person, to make them look younger. It can make someone look inhuman, or severely injured. Makeup is one of the finishing touches on a show that really accentuates the themes and makes them intense. Makeup is one of the few parts of a production that transmit the history to the audience. The audience will be able to tell a lot about a character just based on how they look. While this can be accomplished with clever costuming, as we learned from Robin this week, makeup does it much more effectively because people don’t easily change their faces. People change their cloths often, but something like worry lines or a scar don’t go away. Makeup can accent and emphasize various lines on someone’s face to produce effects like making them seem happy, creepy, or angry.------------ Makeup is also one of the areas of theater where it is really taking steps forward technologically. Means of making costumes has not changed recently, and while lights and sound are starting to take steps into the 21st century most theaters still cater to old school philosophies. Makeup on the other hand is continually leaping forward. New glues and prosthetics allow for much more exciting and realistic makeup. Techniques utilizing this new technology go far beyond just making scars and worry lines, they can actually turn people into aliens! Currently, there is an entire show devoted to sci-fi style makeup and most of what is thought of is spectacular. Makeup can do so much for a production, in a lot of ways it can be the most important part of the production (assuming a lot of makeup is required for the show).

These are two characters from cirque du soliel's ka. in the show, there was a lot of makup used, and for ever character, you could tell if they were good or evil based on their makeup. these two were evil minions

This is one of the makeup designs completed on the show "face off" it really shows how much can be done with makeup.