Inside Broadway: The Career of a Makeup Artist and Wig Maker

Because nobody in my family was really supportive of it at all.
They were like, really?
A master's cream here and makeup?
Wait, what?
Hi, I'm Ravozeri and welcome to How Much Can I Make?
I am a curious journalist, fascinated by what people do for a living, what their jobs are really like, and how much they can earn.
Join me as we dive into stories behind careers, uncovering insights and details, which I hope you'll find as intriguing as I do.
So let's get started.
We have another show about theater, and this time with a makeup artist.
So many questions I have for her because I'm so curious about it.
So let's dive right in.
With us today is Lauren.
Thank you so much for doing it.
Thank you for asking me.
Yes.
This is so cool.
What I want to know first, if you could tell us a little bit what you're working on now.
You're working on Broadway, which is very sexy.
How did you get into it and what are you working on now?
Uh currently at the moment I'm full-time on the musical Sunset Boulevard.
I am the hair and makeup supervisor, so I department head many artists working under me.
And then my primary job is taking care of uh the actress playing Norma Desmond, which right now is um the pop singer Nicole Scherzinger, so I take care of her hair and makeup, as well as the other understudies and um alternative performers.
It is a very well-oiled machine.
There's a lot of specificity involved with it, and I find that this job is truly the pinnacle of my skill sets at this moment, all converging in one place.
It's a glorified ladies' maid, is kind of what I call it.
So I tend to her every need that is hair and makeup related.
Is she like a real princess?
I would say so.
She I the way I see her is that she's a Polynesian Princess Barbie.
Um and she's so gorgeous and stunning, and the Norma Desmond in our production is meant to be kind of beautiful and young because you're like, wow, you're a faded movie star, but you're only 46.
But it like is to show you like how you know, over a certain age women are declassified essentially as being viable.
Um, and there's a lot of interesting aging and body horror in the the show.
So we, as a hair and makeup person doing this, it's making her beautiful, but by the end of the performance, she has become completely undone, and her makeup has to degrade throughout the second act, in which she does not come off the stage.
That sounds to me really complicated.
It is.
You have to set it up for success, and so there's a lot of tests involved, there's a lot of practice, there's a lot of failure that you have to allow yourself to be okay with and then try again the next time.
And to create this design, um, the designer, her name is Cheryl Thomas, and she's a great mentor of mine, and we there was so many, so much work that went into creating this to make it effective.
So, how long did you have to prepare before the show opened?
Uh, we had rehearsals, uh, they were starting in tech.
I came in late into the process.
I was hired three days before the first preview.
So the first, like it was three days before the first paying audience.
I was hired very late into the game because it was very difficult to find somebody who had the skill set to do this job because it isn't just you know doing makeup, it's doing hair and makeup that is also being filmed on an HD screen, and so there's every single night.
So we integrate film into the live performance, and it is an homage to black and white cinema and film noir, but it also it's it shows you the close-ups, so you can get these really beautiful, nuanced facial expressions with our entire cast, and it's really incredible, but it also means that the quality of the hair and makeup has to be at such a standard that you can't clock it because I can't touch it up and like try it again, it's do it perfect, it's on a jumbotron, and then uh if it needs touch up, touch them up then when they come off right quick.
It is so tricky.
You have to show her progress, you have to show her as an older woman, also.
She is a beautiful woman who does not look 46, but it's more in the style of the application of the makeup.
Um, we do a beauty makeup on her that looks beautiful, but then the thing that makes it almost like special effects is we do a really creamy, oily under-eye that's very smoky, and and it evokes this idea that she's a sleepwalker and she hasn't been sleeping, and she's kind of kooky and you know, not fully with us, and then it also harkens back to her as a silent film star in the 20s of using like Vaseline and soot to make eye makeup.
So there's little things like that that are being told through the makeup that she heard of her acting, take it, and you can see, oh, you know, she's an aging pop star.
I want to back up for a second.
How did you start in makeup?
My earliest forays into makeup were as a very small child.
Um, my mom was very active in our church growing up.
She designed the sets and costumes for our nativity and passion plays.
Okay.
I remember being four years old in the Easter pageant and wondering how our pastor playing Jesus was a pastor ten minutes ago, but now he's Jesus covered in blood, and then he's back to being a pastor, and I couldn't figure it out.
And they're like, Lauren, it's catch up.
And I was like, oh my goodness, I could not, like, I couldn't wrap my head around it, and I I was so fascinated, and I was like, okay, so I've always loved playing dress up and and trying to turn myself into other things, and and that was always very part of who I am.
And I always enjoyed being on stage, but not as much as I enjoyed the backstage part of it.
I never got cast as an ingenue because I didn't have the right body for it.
So I would just design people's hair and makeup for them and do that and and be like so much more satisfied.
My undergrad is in art history and anthropology.
Oh wow.
But the entire time that I was in school, I was working at Mac at the mall doing makeup for you know proms and you know, ladies on the go and all of that.
And so I I worked in retail as a means to an end, you know, and it was like I did makeup for fun all through that time, and no one said that it could be a real job besides retail.
When did you realize it could be a real job?
It was in 2011.
I had done Opera Tampa as a singer, and then in St.
Pete Opera, they were doing a performance of Madame Butterfly.
And my friend was in the chorus, and he was like, Hey, we need help in hair and makeup.
I know you do makeup, can you come?
And I was like, I don't know anything about wigs, but if you tell me what to do, I'll do it.
And the girl that was in charge of the wig department, her name was Jessica Mills, she was amazing, and she was like, you know, you're good at this, you could like do this for a living.
And I was just about to graduate undergrad and I was trying to figure out what I wanted to do.
I was considering becoming a physician's assistant.
You know.
Um, and and then that she was like, you know, you could like do this for a living and and make wigs and do theatrical makeup for film and TV and opera.
And I was like, oh my goodness.
So I she's like, there's a school called University of North Carolina School of the Arts in North Carolina, Winston-Salem.
And they had a master's program in wig and makeup design, and I essentially applied on a whim because nobody in my family was really supportive of it at all.
They were like, really?
A master's degree in hair and makeup?
Like, what?
And my mother thankfully was supportive as best as she could be, and when I got in, it was life-changing.
I I realized that I all the things that I had done and been the way I had growing up being a super nerd um and loving the things I loved was actually building a skill set for the career that I have now.
Did history of art helps significantly.
I have such a strong brain for time periods and like the specificity of certain time periods, and because I love learning about like the the history and science of cosmetics and hairstyling and body modification, it makes it very easy for me to get a time period and I can tell you exactly what was going on in that time period culturally to s suggest you know a silhouette of hairstyle or a product that they're using that was all the rage in the period to make them look so white.
Do you work closely with the director or the designer of the show?
It depends on the job.
So as a designer, um, which is what I I'm hoping to do, I wish to be a Broadway wig and makeup designer.
I work on Broadway as a supervisor and as an artist, but I really hope one day to design for the Broadway show.
Um I work as a wig and makeup designer for the Manhattan School of Music down the street.
Yes.
I'm their resident, um, and I've been with them since 2019.
So at those shows, doing both musicals and operas, I get to live my best life.
We don't have a huge budget, but we have a good budget.
And I have a wig stock that I rent out and that I utilize, and we get to do incredible, fantastic productions.
So in most cases, they live the look to you.
Wow, that's a lot.
It's a collaboration with the costume designer as well.
I would say that um me and the costume designer are best friends through the production, and it is our job to get the director's vision, but then bring it down into the most specific parts of that character.
Where did you learn all of this?
All at that school.
So this one is a public university, so the tuition is a really affordable, and it's the only one that offers an undergrad and a master's degree.
So you can get a four-year degree and then learn how to do this and get a BFA, MFA.
There are many schools and trade schools in the United States that offer like 18-month programs that where you can learn the same exact skills, but you don't get a degree, you get a certificate.
And so those schools are highly specialized, and you end up really just focusing on the trade and the craft of it all, but you're not getting like uh a bachelor's degree, you're not learning Spanish or French and film theory and things in addition to.
And you have it all.
Yeah.
So I'm not sure.
When you approached Broadway, did they ask to see your degree?
No, they don't care at all about that.
They care that you can do the skill well, um, and they care that you have good connections.
That's really the biggest thing that came from my school was that School of the Arts has a robust network of individuals that are highly successful throughout all the performing visual arts.
Oh, wow.
So there when I was in school, we did operas at school as well, and I became friends with those singers, those costume designers, those set designers, and now that we're all out in the real world working, we now are very connected to one another.
And the school prides itself on having a reputation that 95% of their students are offered jobs before they even graduate.
Wow.
So I was one of those students, and I was headhunted essentially at my school by a company.
Um, and they came and they were like, Hey, you do prosthetics?
You want to travel the world?
Do you want to do Shrek the Musical all over the Middle East and Southeast Asia?
And I was like, Yes, I do.
And you did.
And I did.
In fact, I've been gainfully employed since then without really any major laps, even during the pandemic.
Most people specialize in either makeup, hair, and wigs, or prosthetics.
I was encouraged by my professor to be good at all of them.
And that has been my MO, and so it has been extremely beneficial to me in my career because I I get jobs in all of these sectors.
How many people a day in the show now in Sensit Boulevard, your department has to make up every single day?
So uh I, as a supervisor, take care of our leading lady, and I do her hair and makeup for every single performance.
Um, I also have a colleague, and his job is to uh do all of our haircuts for everybody that's in our ensemble.
So he's in charge of cutting hair um, you know, on a regular basis for And he reports to you.
Mm-hmm.
Uh and uh like 25 people that he cuts their hair.
His job also is to braid our ingenue's hair at the top of every performance.
But for the most part, what we do to make it as efficient as possible is we show and teach our other actors how to comply with the standards of the design.
So they do their own hair and makeup, but we do all of the things like provide all the products and then provide their haircuts for them and any kind of guidance they need to get.
And supervision more.
In supervision.
Right.
Me as an artist doing hands-on on the leading lady is actually quite rare for Broadway to have someone that does both hair and makeup on somebody and takes care of them from the moment they walk in the door until they leave.
It was difficult getting this job because they needed to find someone who had the ability to do this these very specific skills, but also could work with a superstar and the temperaments that go with that.
And the ebb and flow and the chaos of dealing with things outside of the theater that your star has to deal with too.
So it's, you know, trying to take care of them and be their brain while they're in the building so that they can perform flawlessly.
When they hired you for this show, they hired you immediately as a department head.
Yes.
Yeah.
You gotta get big bucks for that kind of work.
I think I get I get paid well.
I I'm extremely fortunate on this show that when I was negotiating with management for the position, that I feel very comfortable.
You were able to negotiate.
Yes.
It's not the union doesn't dictate what so there is a base rate salary that the union does negotiate.
So a base rate for a supervisor of hair and makeup is$2,100 a week.
That's nice.
It's eight shows a week at$2,100.
And then if you go into overtime, you get a certain amount per hour overtime.
Right.
So some shows require what we call a work call, which is having to wash the wigs and reset them, restyle them, do maintenance on things, and most shows get at least one to two work calls a week.
So those work calls are all in overtime.
So a supervisor can take home after taxes a pretty decent amount of money.
Yeah, sounds like when it comes to highly specialized skills and working with celebrities, on the Broadway League contract, which is what this job is, you can negotiate above scale.
Oh, nice.
So on this show, I am negotiated above scale.
Let's say somebody just started out, what would they do?
So in my world, especially in life theatrical, we hire swings.
So that's how you get your foot in the door.
Okay.
So that's being a substitute hairdresser or a substitute costumer or something like that.
So if someone gets sick, you come in, you learn their job, and they can call you at a moment's notice to save the day.
And that's the best way to get your toe in to see if you even like the environment, but also to look at the dynamic of how a live running show operates.
But the good thing is, as a swing, you still get paid the same rate as the person that you're replacing full-time.
Wow.
You're just not there for the whole week.
You know, you're there for a show or two, you know, here and there, whatever.
But say you learn learn different shows.
You go and work at a different show across the street or down over there.
You can collect multiple shows and make a full-time living as a swing.
And that's what I was doing for a long time is working on multiple shows at one time.
Would you be able to make more money if you worked in a different field in makeup?
For example, weddings or something, would that be more money?
Film and TV is probably the most lucrative when it comes to uh the the money of it all, but the hours are really, really, really hard.
And but then to people who work in film and TV, they think that our hours on Broadway suck.
So it's really all relative.
It's what works for you.
And so it's like film and TV makes more money because they're on set for 12 hours.
There's a lot of hurry up and wait, there's a lot of sitting around and doing nothing.
I'm also finding that to a certain extent, once you get to a certain level, there there's a base number that is what you know you are worth.
Because uh my job and everything has required to do so much negotiating.
I I don't have someone doing that for me.
And so it's having to always know what your skill set is worth in the economy of the skills.
What was your initial investment in the business?
It was a lot.
Um when I worked at MAC Cosmetics, I was very fortunate that they gave us a really good discount.
Um, so I was able to buy a lot of Mac products at 60% off, and that that helped tremendously.
Of course.
When I started at grad school, they gave us a kit list, and everything on that list was about$10,000 altogether with every single item we could possibly need.
And that was every color of makeup, every product for hairstyling, ever because it was both both hair and makeup, wigs, prosthetics, it was everything.
And they didn't they was told us we don't expect you to buy everything in this kit, especially right away, all at once.
You're gonna buy things as you need them, but this is the list of items that we suggest.
And as people specialize, you know, they're gonna gravitate more towards one or the other.
I would say each year I probably put in a couple thousand dollars into my kit to refurbish it yearly.
That's not too bad.
It's really not, no, it's not, and if you have really high-quality brushes, I still have my brushes that I bought 15 years ago because they're really beautifully well made and I maintain them.
You know, so it's like you're only buying more disposable products.
My wig stock is also part of that.
You know, once you start building wigs, you then have wigs you can rent out, and then they can make money for you.
The larger your stock and what you specialize in, you can design an entire opera and then they pay you to borrow your wigs.
So that's another venture I.
I'm a hustler and I I've always done multiple jobs all at once.
So freelancing for me hasn't been scary.
It's been how I've always done it.
When I'm not working on Broadway, I'm building wigs for other designers.
Um, a year and a half ago, when I got divorced, I didn't know of I went one day from having a husband with a job that was supportive to not knowing where my money was coming from.
And a colleague called me and was like, Hey, can you come to this hotel in Chelsea um and build wigs for me this week?
And I was like, Yeah, I'm not doing anything.
And I showed up and I was like, Who are we building for?
She's like, Madonna.
Oh my god.
And then we built all of Madonna's wigs for her tour.
It was amazing.
I tell people that Madonna paid my rent that year.
And it's the truth.
Like, if I didn't have that job, I could not have stayed in my apartment.
So on every tour that they have like a They have a team and hair and makeup, and and sometimes and sometimes they want wigs, and she wanted wigs.
So she hired my colleague, Mariah Deerman, um, who is an incredible wig maker.
She is the top of the game for the everyday wig person.
Like she specializes in hair loss and especially in ethically sourced hair, so she knows where her hair comes from, who it came from, and they were paid a living wage for their hair.
So she is a very top of the wig making industry when it comes to bespoke perfection.
And that's who Madonna hired to be her wig designer, and that's who I build for when I'm not working for myself.
So, did you have to go on tour with them or just uh So I did not go out on the road.
I was their in New York City wig specialist.
So they would come through here for rehearsals and then they would come through for different performances and they would bring me into this the stadium and I would uh build and repair and redo all kinds of stuff from the road, you know, because things get ripped, and then I have to sew it back together and put more hair in it, and you know.
Did it pay better than Broadway?
It pays really well, but it was also at a 1099.
So Madonna was all um 1099, and also they their pay scale was really shitty in the fact that I would invoice them and then I wouldn't get a check for three months.
And that's the hardest thing.
And so I had to tell my landlord that I have this check coming and it's several months' rent at once, but it won't be here for a couple months.
And so I had to arrange with him a deal in order to get by to be like, it's coming.
And he agreed.
Yes.
Wow, you should have worked for Taylor Swift, she pays everybody, right?
She does, and um, and she is the kind of worker that cares very much about the quality of life of her crew and everybody's happiness, which is kind of a new wave in the world of pop ladies.
It's never been something that I've seen before.
I would hope that many pop stars would follow in her suit as well.
Yeah, I love her.
I don't know her music, but I love, love, love her.
As a personality, it's fantastic.
Yeah, yeah.
Describe to me what is your day like in rehearsal versus in performance?
Um, when we were in tech rehearsals and previews in the earliest part of this, it was the longest days.
So long.
We get to the theater around 11:30 and we don't leave until 11:30 p.m.
midnight.
It's a very, very long day because we're rehearsing over and over and over again, as well as running through the show in the evenings.
You rehearse all day long, you get an hour break, and then you run a show, and then you have notes.
But rehearsals and tech, it is so stressful on every single person in that building, and every one of them will question their life and their choices at least three times, maybe daily, and it takes time to get it right, especially to the standard that we provide.
So that that process sucks.
Everyone who's in the industry knows that tech is the worst, but once the show opens and the show is established and we call it frozen, then we Get into a rhythm of a general schedule where we have pretty much the same schedule every week for the most part, except for holidays and things like that, and then you get into a rhythm and you streamline it, and everything gets quicker and more perfect, and it's so neat to see how it all comes together in that way.
And then once it's running, you can hire someone to learn what you do because you've perfected it, and then they can cover for you so you can take a day off.
Some shows can run for two, three years.
Some shows can run for 35 years, like Phantom of the Opera did.
I know.
Do you get bored with the same job?
So I personally uh think that I'm of that camp, or I was up until recently.
So I worked at Phantom of the Opera as a substitute hairdresser, what we call a swing.
And it was a good show.
I liked it.
I think it's a great show, it was a great job, and I would sit there and be like, oh my god, I'm so bored.
After like three days of being there, I'm like, I love this job, I love I'm getting paid, but I am bored.
And I was like, man, I I could never do a long-running show.
But the difference with the long-running show is that you have a stable income.
You have a very stable job that provides wonderful benefits and camaraderie and support and stability.
At the time, I didn't necessarily need that because I had a husband that had a jobby job.
So I could be a freelancer and do my job and whatever.
But when I got divorced, it was very important to me to be self-sustaining.
That's why I'm now more interested in something a little bit more long-running and permanent.
And the boredom of it is not terrible because you always have to deal with live theater.
There's always something happening in your show that is gonna throw a monkey wrench into it to switch it up, you know, just to make you quick on your toes.
Like, oh, your lead soprano just went down.
Okay, we have to switch out and put the understudy on, and nobody's the wiser until she goes on stage and they're like, wait, that's not the girl that was just singing.
How did you break into the music, the the really successful Madonna?
I so B52.
Yeah, it was through Mac.
I really have to give it back to working at Mac.
I was with Mac Cosmetics for 10 years, and I came to New York via the Metropolitan Opera.
That was how I came here from Florida.
I'm a big opera nerd, and it was everything I wanted in every way, as far as the artistry and the working with so many singers and musicians doing the most beautiful work in the whole wide world, and that's how I got to New York.
And I had a friend who worked at Mac as well, and she was like, Oh, hey, um, they contacted me seeing if I want to do wigs and makeup for the B52s, but I don't do wigs.
Do you want this?
And I was like, Yeah, I'll call them back.
And I met the manager, and on a day off from the Met, I went and to Long Island and met Kate, and she was, I remember working with her, she was like, Wow, you know how to make my eyes look really big, and like, you know, we're being like, because I'm just painting you like an opera singer and just doing a big theater makeup on you.
Um, and and drawing the eye, you know, in certain ways to to trick it.
It's doing Photoshop on the face.
You know, so I'm working with my opera divas.
I'm working with Kate, my punk rock diva, and so it was a skill that transferred just right into taking care of Kate and taking care of Kate for so long as like her ladies maid, quote unquote.
So I do her hair, I do her makeup, I get her dressed, I prepare her snacks, I make sure that she has what she needs when she needs it.
I do all of those things for a person, and I really got to sink my teeth into that part of my job at the Met because you're dealing with stars and they need your support.
And I found that being able to help a singer at that level become who they're supposed to be and do their job is the most incredibly satisfying thing.
After the Met, I started working on Broadway with Paul Huntley, who is the most decorated wig designer on Broadway.
Um he recently passed away, but he was my wig mentor.
He taught me so much about the Broadway business and about that universe of things and dealing with theater divas.
And I then started working on Broadway full-time.
Do you have to watch the show from beginning to end every night?
No, I actually have never seen my show that I'm currently on.
I've never watched it and it's full from the house ever.
We have monitors backstage, thankfully, and we have monitors that we can see what's going on.
Out of the 15 shows I've worked on Broadway, I've probably only seen three or four of them from the house.
What's the most challenging part working on Broadway?
The stairs.
You know you're the second person.
The actress told me the same.
Yes, she did.
Of course she did, because the stairs are the hardest part.
Oh my god, I thought that was kind of a joke.
No, it's the truth.
I tell everybody that um I would do this for free, but they pay me to run the stairs.
I did not expect you to say the same thing she said.
Yeah, so I'm in the St.
James Theater right now, and we don't have access to an elevator.
And with our basement, which is where my office is, and our leading man's dressing room, it is eight floors.
And each of those floors is two sets of stairs.
And so everybody in this company has a really great butt, and you just gotta prepare yourself mentally to climb when you have to go all the way up there.
It is physically exhausting and the hardest part of the job, and the fact that our theaters are old and not many of them have been remodeled.
So, you know, they they're just not comfy places in general.
They're they're kind of busted.
Wow, I am so surprised by your answer.
Most people are.
I call Broadway a full contact sport because imagine you have to climb the stairs with your body.
Now do it with a beaded gown that weighs 60 pounds and with a laundry basket filled with shoes that you have to take all up at once.
They they put their bodies through the worst.
Do you also do any kind of special effects makeup?
Somebody is shot in the face, they need prosthetic.
That is honestly my my biggest goal would be to work in that world, which is called Yeah, it's called atoplastology.
And it would be to me the the next level of training um where you work with people who are injured um or have uh deformity or you know, are limb differences and things like that, and you create a a thing that makes their life better, a prosthesis that they can incorporate into their everyday life to feel more whole.
And that goes not only with um, like for instance, ocular work and doing eyes and facial pieces, but working with limbs and coloring them and texturizing them and putting the veining in.
Do you have any memorable story about people asking you to do unexpected thing?
Oh yeah.
Something you can share with us?
Well, it depends.
Like, what kind of story are we talking?
Because unfortunately, in my world, because we're so intimately attached to our talent, some people can take advantage of us.
And it can be scary, and you can get sexually harassed very, very, very easily in my world.
Um, one of my very first opera jobs, and I won't say the tenor's name, but he absolutely sexually harassed me on a daily basis.
Had to be Pavarotti, I heard a lot of stories about him.
Because it was my first show and he was dead by then.
Oh, okay.
But the guy that I was dealing with was at St.
Pete Opera, the tiniest little local opera company in Florida, and and he was playing Samson, and he was a white guy, and I was like, Can you please go get a spray tan?
And he wouldn't go get one.
He insisted that I body paint him every show.
Wow.
With because he didn't want to go get a spray tan.
So that meant that I had to be on my knees in front of him painting his legs.
Ugh, disgusting.
Exactly.
And he was just, he was such a sweaty, sebaceous man.
And and he was just schwitzing everywhere all the time.
And and he would keep his uh lozenges in the waistband of his shorts, and then ask me to fish one of the little candies out and unwrap it and hand it to him while I'm down there.
Oh my god.
Unbelievable.
Yeah, and I And you couldn't complain to anyone.
No, and I didn't know what to do.
I was like, make it stop.
Okay, I'm just gonna paint your legs.
Oh my god.
You know?
And I'm put in situations like that on a regular basis, not maybe to that degree, but different flavors of it for sure.
And were there women that were too much of a prima donna for your taste?
I've seen I have had a couple, but what's real funny to me is that leading ladies are very rarely as big of a diva as the third chorus girl on the left wearing the hat.
The girl in the back.
And you have to make them up, dude.
Yes, we have to do their wigs and makeup.
They have to also be part of the city.
Oh, I'm sorry, you got cast as the flower girl who's old and poor.
Sorry, we have to make you ugly.
And then that poor girl will just take it so personally, and then she'll like not wear her character makeup or you know, not wear her hat, and we're like, honey, you're playing the poor flower girl in the street.
You you can't be glamorous, but I'm a soprano.
Like, but you're not that soprano, honey.
And and you have to like really it's a lot of child minding.
It's you have to some of these people you have to guide them and be like, I'm in charge.
Yes, I'm younger than you, but I know what's best for you.
Like, which is the character that was the hardest to to make it up?
Uh Shrek.
Shrek was absolutely the one of the most difficult uh jobs I've ever had as far as the technique.
Um, because I had two and a half hours to turn someone into an ogre with full prosthetics every single show.
You had to paint him green, the whole bunch of every day?
We covered him in foam latex pieces as in silicone pieces, his entire face and neck and shoulders were covered, and then it had to be painted and texturized and all these things to make it function for eight shows a week.
That falls under special effects.
Absolutely.
What would you advise somebody who wants to become a makeup artist?
I would say that the best way to start is to draw.
To draw.
Because makeup artistry is is art, right?
We we follow the same principles of design and that you would get as a painter, as a fine artist, but we just apply them to the face and body.
We are looking at um enhancing certain features on the face, but those features are you know isolated down to their truest forms, are just circles, squares, and cones.
And so the nose is a cone, the shape of the head is a is a box with a circle on it.
And so you can learn how to uh enhance certain shapes by understanding light and shadow on simple forms.
And so knowing how to draw and understanding color theory, because we use paint and we're using makeup, and color is a huge part of it, understanding those basic principles will definitely aid you in your success as an artist, as either a hair or makeup artist.
Understanding balance, understanding line and texture and things along those lines also help because you, as a lay person walking down the street, you see a person that has eyebrows that you can see from 20 feet away, you're like, that is not a well-balanced look, but it's a choice, you know, and so it helps you understand art as well as people's personal choices and how they decorate themselves.
So fine art is a wonderful way to start.
Next would be to utilize the amazing technology that we have now in 2025, which is the internet and YouTube and social media, because there are so many people expressing themselves in these platforms, and you can watch them over and over and over again practice the same technique or see 12 different people do the same kind of smokey eye, and they'll all approach it differently.
And then the next part is just to do it, to practice not only on yourself, but on other people who don't look like you.
You want to get your hands into it.
There you can understand so many things theoretically, but you don't understand fully until you touch it, and it's a multi-sensory experience of applying and removing and and experiencing what this other human being is going through with you in this process.
Is doing weddings a good into their makeup in this?
I can.
So doing makeup for special events um is actually a very good way for someone who is getting their feet wet to uh brace themselves for working with the public.
So if someone's young, they could probably start doing like special events like quincenaras and proms and working with like a high school age person, as opposed to someone getting married.
But maybe your auntie is getting married and she would like you to do her makeup, or your cousins, or something like that.
It's a great way to practice because special event makeup gets photographed.
You'll get to see how it translates to film, you'll get to see how it lasts throughout the day.
You'll get to, if you are present in what you're doing and taking stock of how your makeup performs at these events, you'll have a better idea of working with people in the future.
So, with makeup and bridal and all of that, that is its own industry in the hair and makeup world, and it requires a lot of entrepreneurial skills because most artists that work in that side advocate completely for themselves.
And so they're doing marketing, they're doing um all kinds of trade shows to show their skills, and then they are hustling and probably have a car driving all over the city, hustle, hustle and they have to deal with other expenses that I don't deal with necessarily.
You can't have social life with six days a week.
Right now, my social life is very limited.
Um, it's hard to date, it's hard to, you know, do things outside of the theater, and because I work nights and weekends, normal people that are not creatures of the night, you know, they have the opposite schedule.
So it's like I try to plan to see people, friends, colleagues, family, um, on my lunch breaks.
Did you ever work on witness protection uh not yet?
Uh but though so our school that I went to gets headhunted, like I said, by various companies.
And the CIA actually poaches people from hair and makeup programs for Master of Disguise.
Oh my god, there's so many things you can do with makeup and hair.
And they don't know, and it's amazing.
The world is really your oyster.
It has provided me access to places all over the world as a hair and makeup artist, in places that no one should see.
Like you're in these vulnerable, intimate spaces with celebrities, royalty, famous actors, and and sports people, and you're like sports people, you make up sports people?
And any and all people, anybody who needs to be on a camera, anybody who goes on a stage.
So I meet all kinds of people in this gig and they're all from different universes.
You mentioned that you were busy during COVID, also.
I'm surprised because I know Broadway and theaters were closed and we were all in lockdown.
So, what kind of work did you do during the pandemic?
My mentor from grad school reached out and was like, Hey, I need a new professor at my school.
Can you teach two classes online for my school in Nashville?
And I was like, Yeah.
So he was like, Okay, you can teach whatever you want, as long as it's a history of hair and makeup, and I was like, Great, I'm ready.
And I devised a 20-week uh lecture course called Um The Art of Adornment: The History of Hairstyling, Makeup and Body Modification.
And it goes through time and space looking at how humans have decorated their bodies.
And so I got to teach that for four semesters.
Is there anywhere online that our listeners can uh tap into it and learn a little bit from you?
I have so I actually ended up utilizing YouTube as a resource and curating several video playlists that I did in addition to my lectures that were on PowerPoint.
And so my YouTube, I guess it's under my name, um, and I have tons of playlists that are ready to go that have already been vetted to make sure that the everything is viable and backed up and researched, and it actually is a really great accessible tool to share with people because it's such a highly specialized interest.
You have no time to work on sideshows, right?
I do a little bit, but with enough notice, I can schedule things accordingly.
So the opera that I'm designing in the spring, and so if I plan accordingly, I know that on my day off I will be doing this job at the same time.
It sucks, but it is what it is because it's more creative, it's more um designing, you know, it's trying to get that side of things satisfied while I have a job that pays the bills.
But also as a wig maker, when we work with people experiencing hair loss, so with alopecia or dealing with chemo, your insurance can pay for your cranial prosthesis, which is the medical term for a wig.
And so that is a huge that is like the the ultimate part of if I didn't have to work to make money and survive, I would just do that.
And I would just do it for free.
I would just make people That's how much you love it.
Yeah, I love it.
And I the the techniques involved in working with people that wear your pieces every day out in the street is that they have to be perfect.
They have to be what we call unclockable.
And because you want to be able to have a conversation with someone three feet away and you don't want to feel self-conscious about your your hair piece or your your anything.
There are avenues that one could take this skill set and really make a ton of money with it, especially when it comes to the the wig side of things.
Wigs is extremely lucrative if it's wielded by someone with an entrepreneurial spirit.
And I don't have a business degree, and I there are things that I I would love to pursue when it comes to wigs, wig making, potentially opening a shop in New York that I hire women in my neighborhood to build for me.
I would love to do that.
How do you keep up with the new technology?
I try my best to It changes all the time, right?
It does and it doesn't.
So there are some things that, for instance, when building a fully hand-tied wig where we tie individual hairs into mesh, there is not currently a machine that can do that.
At least to that standard.
And so that for now has those of us who do things by hand, it protects us a little bit.
You mean you do hair by hair?
Single strands, yep.
Every single hair in a full wig.
How so how long does it take you to build a wig?
As an experienced wig maker, about a hundred hours to build a wig.
That seems fast if you do hair by hair, but you got faster.
You get faster and and you get in the zone.
I listen to a lot of audiobooks while I build and music, and I love books because I can learn while I work and then I'm getting paid to read.
Where do you get the hair that you use for the wigs?
At this moment, you can make wigs out of synthetic hair and out of human hair.
Synthetic hair is straight-up acrylic that is extruded through tubes to make a fiber that behaves similarly to human hair.
It is a less than perfect uh material, but it gets the job done at a decent price point.
Human hair obviously has to come from donors.
It has to come from people who grow it.
And most of the hair goods that are available in the United States come from a variety of places, but largely from India, China, Vietnam, and South America, where people grow their hair very, very long, very fast.
And the quality of an Asian cuticle is that the hair is really robust.
It has a very strong um cuticle to it, and so you can bleach it many times, you can perm it, and you can take hair that is very dark, very black, and get it to relatively fine and blonde.
But it requires a lot of processing.
So for a very long time, a lot of hair goods were coming from India and they were coming from temple floors because in a certain sect of Hinduism, people practice uh tonsure, which is shaving their head with a razor when and taking all of their hair off completely, and then all that hair gets donated to the god.
People that run the temple then collect all that hair, process it, and send it to America to then go into weaves and wigs, largely for the African-American community.
Hair that is procured from Europeans tends to be more expensive.
The quality of the cuticle of the hair is is very sleek and fine, and depending on your demographic and who you're building for and who's consuming your wig, they're gonna want different kinds of hair.
So, for instance, on Madonna, the hair was Ukrainian.
Hair that is being bought for beautiful, expensive wigs are coming from heads that have been growing it for years and years and years.
Is it expensive to buy hair?
Yes, buying hair is expensive, selling hair is cheap.
The other side is the unethical wig making.
And so hair goods that are coming out of places like Western China where they are have people in concentration camps and they are forcing them to build goods to be sold in America as well as taking their hair from them unethically to be made into hair goods.
And so there are factories all over the world that are producing a fully hand-tied human hair wig and they're selling it to someone in America for$35 when the actual amount of labor and materials that go into that piece should have been$3,500.
Wow.
For instance, I know that like a going rate for three feet of hair for someone in Vietnam, like to pay them of like an ethical wage is like a hundred bucks.
Depending on the groups in which the hair is coming from, the value and the rate and the price changes.
From what I gather from our conversation, which is totally new to me, the wig business is the biggest part of the makeup industry.
I would say so.
Um when I went to grad school, they were they were like, I know you want to be a makeup artist, but you gotta learn how to do wigs because you will always have that skill and you can always benefit from it.
And and so we all had to learn how to build wigs.
We had to learn how to to construct them and work with them in all of the various ways so that we would always have that with us.
Most of the time, if there's a job that gets posted.
Like, say, a musical theater tour or um a cruise ship job or you know, a small local theater that has a hair and makeup position, they also have to do real wardrobe, they also have to do multiple things.
And so it's like sometimes that job doesn't do any makeup, and all you're doing is hair.
So that's where you're gonna make money because that's where there's a job.
This is AI proof job, which is good.
A little bit.
Why do you say a little bit?
A little bit.
Um, because uh real life interactions of doing hair and makeup is definitely something that is job security.
Doing makeup for things such as film and photos and things like that can very easily now be manipulated by AI.
In post-production.
In post-production and in pre-production.
Because now they're utilizing AI in camera as way when they're filming people live, and in camera it is uh taking that information and aging them or significantly de-aging them, and that's what they're capturing, is this live, you know, hybrid of both.
So that actually takes away so many jobs, especially the ones that are artisanal crafts that are in that are used in film and television.
You know, there are so many things that are being taken away, and the artistry and the making and the understanding and the science of how these things work that you know it's cheaper to use AI, but it affects the environment tremendously, and then it also takes jobs.
By the way, in the Tonnies, do they give awards for makeup on still?
That's a great question.
So uh wig and makeup design at the Tony Awards does not have its own award yet.
Why aren't you protesting?
We are.
Um, in fact, last season, one of my colleagues, Jerry Janice, he did a whole campaign trying to show the fact that we do not have a Tony Award for wigs and makeup.
We have been relegated forever and ever under the costume design.
But the thing is, we we do so much more.
Can you imagine Wicked without her being painted green?
Can you imagine the Phantom without his prosthetics?
Like there are iconic characters of Broadway that makeup is integral to the story, and yet we are snubbed and not given any of our flowers or recognition.
Disgusting.
One last question.
Do you love your job?
Yes, 100%.
Every day.
You do.
Yes.
You don't feel like you have to slap to work and oh, I wish I didn't have to go.
I still have those days.
I'm still tired, but at the end of the day, I play pretend for a living, and and I get to make art and I get to change people's lives in interesting and profound ways by painting their hair or painting their face and styling their hair.
You know, it it's people think of it as artifice and kind of shallow and you know, all these things, but there's so much to it.
Oh no, shallow far from shallow.
Yeah.
Excellent.
Fascinating.
Thank you so much.
That was so enlightening.
I mean, really, I learned a lot.
Thank you.
Thank you so much.
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