Recently, I had the opportunity to work with the talented crew from the Retford Musical Theatre Company on their production of Kinky Boots at Retford Majestic Theatre.
Me alongside some of my fabulous crew mates made up the drag queen ‘Angels’ from the production. We went through the initial planning stage; working with the actors and production team receiving Inspiration images before creating plans for the makeup.
After initially meeting the angels, we observed the actors given and started to think about shapes for eye makeup that would work. We did have some mature models hence we needed to be aware of this during the planning stage. As this was theatre/stage makeup - this was not a huge issue for us.
We initially spoke to the angels and receive inspiration images mention before and from there, we then curated face charts that could be used on the angels. This featured a harsh, striking contour and highlight, large dramatic eyes and huge large lashes to be seen from the furthest seat in the balcony!
When sending this to the team, they were happy with the designs and so we went ahead with makeup tests. We found that their main comments was that it needed to be bigger, bolder and more dramatic and most of all, COLOUR!
Initially during the planning stage - we did not know the costume colours for each of the angels hence we could not incorporate these until we knew for certain. When it came to further tests during dress and tech rehearsals we tested out the colours and it worked brilliantly for stage. Something we needed to be cautious of also was the depth of the makeup and colour hence blending was not the highest importance and it was more having the intensity of the colour so that it could be seen under the harsh lights. Thankfully, we were able to walk around the theatre while they were practicing and saw that we needed to amend certain bits about the makeup.
For me in particular, I needed to increase the depth of my cheek contour in the pocket, make the brows thicker and more prominent, with that, make the eyes slightly bigger and then ensure that my highlights were white as possible.
To help sort this, we sourced additional products to achieve this. Using a bright white Kryolan grease paint to be used on the face as well as a darker Morphe palette for the cheeks and blush.
After completing these improvements, we Observed how the makeup looked and it was very successful in amending the issues we observed. Overall the experience of working on the production was so fun and inspiring. After attending numerous shows, we were all singing in the wings alongside the cast having a blast.
Comments