Charlotte's Web Makeup Fun

Rehearsals for Charlotte's Web are in full swing. Opening Night is only 3 weeks away! My kids have all their lines and songs memorized, but as Makeup Committee Chair, I've got so much to think about....

The most urgent item on my agenda was a photo shoot for the program cover. I needed a pig makeup design and quick! I googled and found nothing. (I'll use all the magic words: Theater stage makeup design pig Wilbur Charlotte's Web. There, now maybe someone who needs this can find it!)

So I got pictures of another Wilbur from another county of our own theater group. That gave me a starting place, and I had a few ideas to improve their design. Bantam8 got to be my guinea pig.

(The first shot there looks more pig-like, but I had to include this one because it cracks me up. How can he look so GQ in this picture, even with pink makeup, lipstick, bobby pins and a pig snout! (Do my readers know what GQ means? In the 80's we used that term to refer to a guy who dressed well or looked like a male model.)

I thought my design was okay, but no one else in my family thought much of it. So I panicked and called in the big guns, an artist friend who's helped us do animal makeup for other productions when his son has been in them. Because of his wife's cancer (remember the Charlie Brown, "I Got a Rock" email from her which I posted here?), they took this show off, so I was hesitant to call him...but this is the program cover photo! and I didn't want poor Wilbur (not her real name:}) stuck with my so-so design.

As I feared, he offered to come and do her face for the photo shoot--but I gratefully accepted his help, and here's what he came up with. Much better, huh? I'm not sure whether to go with or without eyebrows--what do you all think?--but she definitely needs some mascara.

My daughter, as Charlotte, is also on the program cover, so I had her makeup to think about as well. Here's her costume:
Now I now what you're thinking: Don't spiders have 8 legs? They do, and if she were wearing her skin-tight black leggings instead of her blue jeans, you'd quickly realize that the other two "legs" are her real legs! They'll also be the only legs that won't move in tandem with the rest.

She wasn't crazy about the hood, and she suggested to the head costumer the bright idea of getting fur or something feathery to soften the line around her face. They approved, and here's what they came up with:

I think it looks cute, don't you? Kinda 1920's flapperish? Or silent film star? The director wanted the huge false eyelashes, which are always fun, and I'm eager to try something like the dramatic eye makeup the old silent film stars favored. I think she needs a darker blush and lip color for the stage, but this was fine for the photo shoot. Onstage, the director wants glitter all over her cheeks as well.

She's so glad they want Charlotte to be a glamorous-looking spider.


And last but not least, I have to show you Bantam8's Gosling costume. He's so proud of it. "You have to see it, Mom," he told me on the way home from rehearsal. "I have a big butt."

And he does. There's a little pillow sewed to the seat of his yellow shorts there, and another sewed into the "tail" of the costume.

Orange tights have been ordered to complete the costume.

Don't you love the knee pads?

I'm thinking of using rubber duck bills as part of the makeup for the Goslings. We tried one; Bantam8 loves it and it sure would be easy. Maybe the rest will be your basic Huey, Dewey & Louie design: white makeup with big eyebrows and worry lines.

Now all I have to think about is a rat, a horse, a cow, a cat, a dog, a sheep, a lamb, a goose, a gander, a goat, a rooster, and a bunch of hens. One of my committee members did makeup for Animal Farm, back in her high school days, so I'm crossing my fingers that she'll find her pictures and designs!!