Amateur Theatricals
Amateur Theatricals.—These form an excellent amusement for winter evenings, and may be made highly instructive to young members of the family, besides aiding in developing a degree of culture in manner and speech with proper guidance. A moderate amount of ingenuity, with some pasteboard, paper and paste, will suffice to extemporise a stage and scenery. A few hints on “making up” may be useful.
Making up.—Given a clean shaven face, the features of which are not specially prominent, and it is comparatively easy for an artist in make up to transform it into a fair likeness of any type of character he wishes to represent, or even to imitate a particular individual. Of course the actor cannot remould his features, but by putting on different coloured paints he can present an effect which, viewed from a little distance, has all the appearance of having been remoulded. The great secret underlying all the triumphs of this art is that white brings into prominence and black depresses. For instance, take a nose that is reasonably straight. Suppose it is desired to make it a pug. Put a little dark brown on the bridge and make the end lighter than all the rest of the face. The gradations have to be nicely shaded, and there comes in the art. To reverse the process, and produce a marked aquiline, hook, or Jewish nose, put white on the bridge and darken down the tip a little. That will bring forth an aristocratic nose that would do credit to any duke in the British peerage.
Grease paints can now be purchased. These are colours mixed with a hard grease, a little of which is rubbed on the face and then smoothly spread over with the finger. One of its most valuable properties is that it is not affected by perspiration, and requires grease or soap and water to remove it. Generally the actor rubs a little vaseline or cold cream over his face and wipes this off with a rag before washing, thus removing most of the paint and getting the soap to lather more easily. It does not seem to injure the skin when it is properly washed off at night, but persons who are careless may let it block up the pores of the skin or remain in the roots of the hair or eyebrows. The number of shades in which grease paint is now made is very great, and every actor who takes pride in his make up will have from a dozen to twenty kinds. Even in flesh tint alone there are six varieties, from the very delicate creamy white of youth to the leaden sallowness of extreme old age. Besides these there are shades for Chinamen, and for every gradation of Indian and negro blood. Then there are whites for “high lights” and for whitening mustaches or eyebrows, browns for shading, blues for veins and hollows, reds, blacks, and yellows. You must not think they are all used in one make up, though often seven or eight colours are combined in an elaborate one. The first thing to do in making up is to select the proper flesh tint. This having been chosen and applied, the next thing is generally the rouge. Except in the case of very old characters, some red must be put on the faces, or the yellow glare of the footlights will make them look perfectly ghastly. But where the red is to be put and how much of it and what shade to use, depend entirely upon the age of the person to be represented. The younger the person the more delicate the tint of rouge should be and the higher it should be upon the face. Thus, for a very young man, the rouge is put on in a half-moon shape, one horn beginning at the inner corner of the eye and the other extending well up the temple as high as the eyebrow. As the age increases we cease to run the colour up so high on the outer side, until for mature years it settles down into the hollow below the cheek bone.
The rouge being properly applied, we next go to work upon the wrinkles or hollows. In representing age the principal lines to be emphasised are those from the nose to the corners of the mouth, from the corners of the mouth to the chin, from the inner corners of the eyes to the hollows of the cheeks, and those on the forehead. Some actors make the wrinkles in blue, others in brown, and others in grey. It is a matter of taste. The lines are made with thin sticks of the paint cut to a point, or with a pointed leather stub upon which the paint has been rubbed. After the wrinkles have been put on it may be necessary to accentuate them by a line of white or light colour on the edges, and these lines must be graduated into each other so as not to seem too hard or abrupt. In representing old men the strong muscle above the line from the nose to the mouth must be brought out very strongly with white. The cheek bones under the eyes must be treated in the same way. Then the eyelids require darkening for age, and crows’ feet are carefully drawn with a number of thin irregular lines at the outer comers of the eyes. Where youth is shown, the upper eyelids and skin under the eyebrow are delicately rouged. If hollows in the cheeks, temples, or neck are wanted, these are the next things to be done, and the outlines of the cheeks may be rounded out with light shades or made to assume eccentric shaped with darker ones. The muscles of the neck may need bringing out, and hollows put under each side of the chin. Lips require rouging for youth, and blueing or darkening for age. Large mouths are made small by putting rouge only in the centre of the lips, and small ones made large by rouging all the way, and even extending the corners with a line of red. Where toothlessness is desirable the teeth are covered with a thin coating of black wax, which renders them quite invisible. The process is technically called “stopping out.” The face being now coloured, rouged, lined, wrinkled, and hollowed, the next things to be attended to are the eyebrows, and hair or beard if any are required.
Very few people are aware how important a part the eyebrows play in forming the expression of the face. Bringing them very close together will cause a look of meanness or villainy; a high arch will ensure surprise or vacancy of expression. A slight upward turn of the inner corner makes some faces very handsome. Eyebrows are often painted; but if very heavy ones are needed they are stuck on over the true ones. If the actor is going to wear his own eyebrows or mustache, he colours them to match his wig with grease paint, which, after being rubbed on, is combed so that each hair is coloured and there is no matted appearance. The use of mustaches and beards made on wire and hung from the ears has almost entirely gone out except among supers and utility people, as, being independent of the skin of the face, they did not move with it, and consequently never appeared natural. The best mustaches and beards are now made upon a thin foundation of silk, each hair being drawn through separately and knotted. The foundation is fastened to the face with spirit gum, another modern invention of great value to actors. It consists of gum dissolved in collodion and alcohol. This mixture dries immediately it is exposed to the air, is impervious to moisture, and can only be removed by spirits or grease. When the actor had to depend upon plain glue or gum, he was always in fear of losing his false beard, and many are the funny stories told of swallowing mustaches or transferring them to the faces of ladies who have had to be embraced in the course of the action of the piece.
Many actors prefer to make their own beards or whiskers nightly, as they do not like the feeling of the solid foundation on the skin, and, indeed, an all-round beard is apt to restrict the easy working of the jaws. Whiskers or beards are made from wool or crape hair, both of which can be obtained of any desired shade of the theatrical wig makers. The hair or wool is drawn through a coarse comb to a little longer than the length desired. It is then cut close to the teeth on the under or more solid side. An even mass is thus obtained which is readily fixed to the gummed cheek. The real art is in the subsequent trimming, with very sharp scissors, to the shape desired. Wool is more easily handled, but hair which comes in short lengths, plaited, is the most realistic. It is this that detectives use for disguises, and when well put on it is almost impossible to detect its falsity, as each hair seems to grow out of the skin.
Almost the last stage is the putting on of the wig. If this is not a bald one, the hair is brought down so that the junction with the forehead is not seen. Many foreign actors prefer to have their wigs made with a forehead piece, painted to match the face. Bald wigs are, of course, made in this way, and the edges are hidden with a thick dressing of grease paint, or, as it is sometimes called, joining paste. This being done, a coat of powder of the proper colour is delicately dusted on the face. Powder is prepared in every shade from white to orange. It has the effect of deadening the shininess of the grease paint, of softening the lines and blending the work into one harmonious whole.
Be careful, too, to make up your hands, a thing which many a good actor forgets. Yet how absurd it is to see an old, wrinkled face accompanied by young, plump hands. For an old man, the knuckles should be whitened, the hollows between them darkened, and the veins marked with white blue.
Actresses very seldom use grease paint, and, in fact, it is not necessary for them, as they rarely consent to line their faces. They generally use a liquid white, which has some mineral basis, and is in the end hurtful. The safest compound is a preparation of oxide of zinc, rose-water, and a few drops of glycerine. A little rouge, the darkening of the eyebrows, and a touch of red on the lips complete a lady’s make up. Most of them line below and above the eyelashes with black, which gives brilliancy to the eyes. They are very apt to overdo this, and then their eyes look like burnt holes in a blanket.