“Ma cherie bichette.” – Belize
On August 19th we started rehearsals for ANGELS IN AMERICA. We did both first reads back to back and then spent three days on table work for each play before we slowly began getting on our feet. It’s a huge play and took all of our attention for a little while, but now we’re ready to start blogging about the process! This is the first of several posts about producing ANGELS. Keep checking back for more as we get closer to opening – it’s less than a month away!
Tonight my friend Kyle came to ANGELS rehearsal to give us a makeup lesson.
With Karl and Ro playing ex (and ex-ex) drag queens Prior and Belize, we wanted the boys to have some experience with full-on drag makeup. Having gone to Ziegfeld’s last weekend for our first drag show, we were thrilled to get to play dress-up ourselves.
We started by visiting ULTA in Silver Spring to buy foundation and then we set up shop in the ladies’ restroom at the Education Center. I stepped in as Kyle’s model while Karl and Ro followed along. The first step was to glue down our eyebrows as we wanted to make them disappear. Using water-proof glue will keep them from coming loose even if we start sweating. Then we used clown white to create highlights.
Then we put on lots of foundation with different shades in order to further define our desired facial shape. It takes Kyle a full three hours to put on drag makeup, but we only had an hour and a half, so we didn’t fully “pound out” our foundation as much as would be desired, but we got a great feel for it.
Next Kyle demonstrated how to apply lip-liner.
I got “big, whore lips.”
Next, Kyle put eye-shadow on all of us and I helped Ro with his eye-liner.
At 8pm the boys had to go run act two of MILLENNIUM so we had to finish. Kyle spent a little more time putting contours on my face so the boys could get the idea while Ro realized that the first rule of being a drag queen is not to kiss someone on the forehead when you’re wearing bright red lipstick.
We had a fantastic time and hopefully this will help Karl and Ro embrace their inner queens as they continue the rehearsal process.
And in closing, a picture of our teacher, in full drag as Miss Randi Leigh. Thank you, Kyle!
