I'll Be The Indian, You Be The Cowboy!

Every day this week, and every performance for the next five weeks, I have had/will have to put on make up to transform myself from my 23 year old self to an old, old man. A majority of this is done through make up. I thought I would show you what I do backstage before every show in order to get this accomplished.

First, start off making sure you have all the essentials. A bottle of liquid latex, a container of face powder, a powder puff thing, blush, a blush brush, white face paint, foundation that is slightly darker than your natural tone, sponges, a shadow creme, a small paint brush, red make up pencil, an eyebrow comb, a hair dryer, a paper towel, your stereotypical native-american wig, your directions to the opening night cast party, and a bottle of water as it's just plain healthy.

Now that you have everything, make sure you get your mic pack on, pin your mic to the top of your head, and don your costume - in my scenario, a full body long-john underwear in red.

The first, and most time consuming, step is applying the liquid latex. Pour a small pool of the liquid onto your paper towel. With one hand pull the skin below one of your eyes so that it's very tight. Now take a sponge and apply it along the bottom and outside parameter of the eye as shown below.

Sorry about my twichy hands - I'm not the steadiest picture taker when I'm multitasking. If you can see the application area - about one inch thick - make sure the liquid latex is even and that you are still pulling the skin tight, this is very important.

With the help of my wonderful co-actor, Suzie Juul - who plays the ONLY female in the show - I can now show you the next step. With your plugged in hair dryer, dry the latex that you just applied on your face. Once dry, the latex will appear clear.

Now take your face powder and with your powder puff apply some powder to the area. This whole time you should maintain a nice tight pull on your face.

Once you have finished powdering, you can let your face go - the latex will bunch up causing wrinkles to form around your eye. Do this a total of three times on both eyes to make the wrinkles predominant enough to show up on stage.

Now, take the liquid latex and apply to the top of your eye - reaching just below the eyebrow, and just above the eyelash, as shown. Do the same steps as pulling the skin tight, applying, blow drying, and powdering three times to both eyes.

You will then get a very wrinkled affect around your entire eye. It helps a lot when trying to make yourself look very old onstage. Next comes the actual coloring of the face with highlights and shadows, but first we must apply some foundation to even out the skin tone.

TA DA! The make up will look a LITTLE darker on the surface of the latex - but this won't read on stage at all, especially after applying all of the other make up. First, we'll start with some rouge - I like that word more than "blush".

First apply some of the blush around, but not actually on, your chin, as shown. Highlight your cheek bones and also around the hair-line. Next we're on to the shadows - you'll notice a more drastic change once you apply this.

First, with your finger - apply the shadow just under your eyebrows, and, since I'm going for a sunken in cheek feeling, make two 7's on your cheeks with the open end facing your ears. Now with your paint brush make sharper lines from the outside of your nose down your "smile lines" to the outside of your chin, make some lines to extend the crease of your mouth, and a few lines on your brow/forehead (wherever they naturally show when you scowl/crinkle your face).

Now, take your white face paint, and run it along the bridge of your nose - this will keep your nose from blending in too much with the rest of your face. Apply some white on top of your eyelids, also to help those pop out more, and whiten your eyebrows - this is where you will want to use your eyebrow comb to help your eyebrow hairs stand up more and appear textured/bushy, otherwise you'll have flat white smudges on your face. Also, take your red make up pencil and use that as eyeliner instead of a black line as is usual.

Put on your native-american wig, and your headband of feathers and you are ready to go! From stage you will look marvelously older than usual, lol. Unfortunately, if you have my luck, when the photographer of your show takes shots, your hour (YES, this takes me about an hour) of hard work applying make up will inevitably go unnoticed...

Yay for action shots with my coworker/helper Suzie!

To see me in all my aged glory, order tickets HERE and see my show "The Fantasticks"!

WARNING: Make sure when you take off your latex (it peels off very easily) make sure you moisturize the area!!!! Your skin gets very dry, and if you don't moisturize the next time you put on the latex it will STING like no other... I learned the hard way and currently I'm sitting at home with puffy eyes that sting. It sucks.