in which I explain how you can become a pig too

I was going to write a post about the ten out of twelve rehearsal we had yesterday. But I’ve just now decided against it, as that’s not necessarily a fun thing to experience firsthand, and in that case why would one want to experience it secondhand? So instead I’m going to talk about stage makeup. Because that ties in and it’s much more interesting anyway.

Stage makeup is absolutely ridiculous. I love it so much. It is the most fun thing to put on, so satisfying to take off, and just altogether a jolly good time. Right now, as you know if you’ve read any of my other posts, I’m doing Shrek the Musical, so there are some… interesting makeup looks taking place.

As a pig, I’m supposed to be pink. A funny thing happened where the girl who designed the makeup looks for fairytale creatures forgot to do the pigs, so ours was a last minute design. It’s adorable though, and all's well that ends well, so no hard feelings.

Get the look: Pig

You’ll start with the “normal” stage makeup look. That said, if your stage makeup looks normal, you're almost definitely doing it wrong.

First, you’re going to need some foundation. Lots of it. In fact, just cake it on there and see where it gets you. You’ll probably need more, but at least it's a start. Make sure it’s a shade or three darker than your actual skin tone, because you don't want to end up looking like a piece of paper under the lights.

Speaking of paper, you also don’t want to look flat. Even if you’re a pig who’s supposed to be chubby, you still need to contour. In fact, you can contour to make yourself look more chubby. Start by creating a shadow under your cheekbone. Rounding out this shadow will also round out your cheeks. The easiest way to do this is to make a fish face and draw two lines with your shadow colour where your cheeks naturally cave. Cave isn’t the right word, but you know what I mean. Unless you don’t. Oh well. Anyway, draw two lines underneath your cheekbones and blend downward from there. To round out the cheeks, you can extend this line sort of to the bottom of your nose. You’ll also want to contour your nose a bit by darkening the sides and highlighting the bridge. Contour your jawline as well by darkening your neck and directly underneath your jaw. If you’re a guy and/or want a sharper and more masculine looking jawline, you can also highlight above the jawline. To finish off, just add some highlights and shadows where you think they'll work out. It’s really an in-the-moment process. 

a visualisation of what your highlights/contouring
should look like in a general sense

More contouring info can be found in this educational video, but keep in mind that you'll want to be about eight times more dramatic than this for stage.

The next thing you’ll need is some blush. For normal stage makeup, you can simply smile very widely and plop some blush on the apples of your cheeks. When doing the pig look, you can do this, but we’ll be putting on more blush later. Much more blush.

your blush look at this point

Now for the eyes. Remember that you’re going for a magnified version of the Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman look. Your eyes need to be dark and obvious as… Oh, I don’t know. Something very dark and obvious. First comes eyeshadow. Obviously, for this look you’ll do pink. Cover your lid with white, and add in some different shades of pink on the edges, in the crease, etc. You should probably highlight your brow bone as well, but that step never seems to actually work for me. Eh, do it anyway. Next, line your eyes with white. Yes, white eyeliner. Right above your lashes you should have a line of white, as well as some in the inner corner, outer corner, and in the waterline. This will help your eyes look larger. Draw a black line above the top white line and line the bottom in either black or dark brown under the water line. I like to blend out the bottom line, but that's optional. Actually, all of this is optional. Now, apply a ton of mascara (and falsies if they suit your fancy).

a lil step-by-step for ya

Fill in your eyebrows next. Almost all of the guys in Shrek literally use black eyeliner to fill in their brows, and the girls could probably get away with going darker than they are at the time being. You can hardly go wrong here.

For pig specific cheeks, you’ll need a ridiculous blush that looks absolutely like the colour your tongue gets when you eat a red lollipop. Or like a maraschino cherry. Or like the little number icon on the messages app. It’s whatever you please, as long as it’s ridiculously red. Take this red on your finger and smile really widely. Draw a circle on your cheek and fill it in. And then add more on top of that. In a circle.

There you go.

For lips, you can't go wrong with bright pink. I like to overdraw my cupids bow and my bottom lip a little bit, but it's really up to the discretion of your very own. Blot some concealer on them to reduce shine, which will be amplified x one million with the lights.

And of course, you’ll need a pig nose. I apologize in advance for how uncomfortable it is. When in doubt, just remember how cute you look as a pig and everything will be alright. In the end, you can always un-pig with Pond’s cold creme. Or coconut oil. Take your pick. 

(The pigs are German but I don’t speak that language and even though Google Translate is almost definitely incorrect...) auf wiedersehen.

wishing I were German + a mini lesson

Accents are pretty weird things. Everybody has an accent, and it’s not difficult for us to talk in our own, but it can take a lot to learn other accents accurately and be able to speak in them.

I’ve always been an accent type of gal. I’ll randomly switch from my own accent to British to Indian to Aussie to Russian to Scottish to Ella Marija Lani Yelich-O'Connor knows what else (ha). The research behind this habit has originated in the caves of random life experiences and seeped its way into my cerebral sponge from movies, exchange programs, the internet, other human beings (if you can believe that), etcetera. I’ve never had to learn an accent for any purpose other than wanting to do so. Until now...

As a pig in Shrek the Musical, I’m supposed to be German. Let me just say that being German is pRETTY GOSHDARN DIFFICULT THANK YOU VERY MUCH. I hardly even have three lines, but I feel like I’ll be able to better impersonate my character if I put myself in a German accent mindset (think in German, sing in German, etc.) (also, German is kind of a classic, you’ve gotta be able to do German) (also, it's way more fun to be German than American, let's be honest with ourselves here, kids).

I watched a few videos of some Germans speaking English, and then a video of a British voice actor doing a German accent, and then listened to the International English Dialect reading whatever whatever website. Even after all of this, I still manage to sound Indian, Russian, or French when trying to sound like I'm from Deutschland, although I do admit my German accent is now only slightly worse than okay. 

Anyway, as a person who’s generally alright at accents, this has been a new challenge (that I 100% brought upon myself because I could do an accent that sounded enough like German to get by in saying lines before I even embarked upon this journey).

Not-so-side-note that I thought I’d point out: The German accent is really pleasing and beautiful. It can sound harsh, especially when one is actually speaking German, but even then it has this good… GAH, I don’t know. I like it a lot. In English, which is mostly what I have been listening to (actually, all of what I’ve been listening to), it can sound sweet or comical (and surely many other things as well) either/any one of which is alrighty-okay with me.

A mini German-accent lesson from someone who clearly doesn't know what she's doing at all:

a little chart of consonants that I found on the top of my head

Other points:

Vowels are a nice Ice Mocha Blended between British and American. Kind of.

Earlier today, my friend advised me to speak like I was complaining, which sounds eh but helped me a surprising amount.

Germans don’t speak with their mouths open very wide, which is a useful thing to keep in mind.

At the end of the day when you come home to me and you're another day older and all is said and done, and when you’re simply much too tired to remember all of these rules thank you very much, there’s always that coughing up phlegm thing. You know what I mean. You know exactly what I mean.

in which I explain how I became a pig

Of course, this all took place on the one day on which we didn’t have our origami-like level-block-things-on-which-you-stand. I had absolutely no idea where I was going, as I had been blocked into all of the songs as a different character and the three little pigs stick together. On top of that, one of the other pigs wasn’t there that day, so there was this other person that I had to pretend was there while the present little pig lead me around like a puppet. BUT I’M NOT A PUPPET, I’M A REAL BOY. Well no, actually, I'm not. I’m a pig. And female. But it's whatever.First, some background information that slowly dissolves into the story:

My high school is putting on Shrek The Musical this year.

I auditioned mostly because, well, why not? At first, I was going to audition for the auditioning experience, as at the time I was still on the swim team and I thought I wouldn’t have enough time. But of course, when I got there and saw all of my people-that-I-actually-like theatre buddies, I decided that, as a matter of fact, I did want to be in the musical.

I was not expecting to be called back, especially because on my audition form I had written “auditioning to audition” where I was supposed to write the name of whatever character it was my heart’s desire to portray. Also because the casting director was age-ist. But that’s whatever.

Anyway, when the callback list was up, I was on it. I wasn’t called back for any major roles, but I was okay with it. When I got to callbacks, we were informed that they had been expecting more people to audition, and that everyone had been called back. Of course. Still, I said “I’ll take it.” Considering my lack of on-paper experience (or any other experience, for that matter), I couldn’t expect to get a lead, or even a role with lines or a solo. And that's totally okay, because if it's fun, it doesn't really matter how many lines you have.

In the end, I was cast as a Duloc citizen, a guard, and a happy village person, as well as a fairytale creature tbd by costume availability. Alright, I thought. I can deal.

About forty people had auditioned. The teacher had been told to expect sixty, which is sort of a mess to begin with, but again, whatever. Right off the bat, a few people crossed their names off of the cast list. Within the first few rehearsal days, a bunch more people had decided that they no longer wanted to be fairytale creatures (which I honestly don’t understand. Who wouldn’t want to be a freak?).

At this point, our group numbers looked kind of ridiculous because we had gaps everywhere (well, have, present tense).

Now, with five weeks left to rehearse, we have twenty six people in our cast. TWENTY. SIX. PEOPLE. At the very least, the cast is supposed to have forty to fifty members, and we have TWENTY SIX. Okay.

More backstory:

This one girl literally showed up for rehearsal two and a half times. I’m not even exaggerating; I’m fairly certain that's an accurate approximation of her attendance. She was the third little pig. At this point, you can probably guess where this is going to end up, but I’ll tell you anyway just for the health of it (I saw that on a paper towel dispenser. Clever paper towel manufacturers). And because I probably shouldn’t end a post in the middle of a story.

So.

We arrived at rehearsal last Friday and this girl is not there. AGAIN. Not only that, she also didn’t tell anyone that she wasn’t going to be coming. AGAIN. The director said "She’s cut," and that we needed a new third little pig. Short-story-shorter, she picked me.

Some minutes later, the girl showed up. The director took her into another room, and, from what she later told us, gave the girl the option of either playing a smaller part or dropping the show. The girl dropped.

So now I’m the third little pig.

this is who I am now (picture courtesy of GazetteXtra)

Of course, this all took place on the one day on which we didn’t have our origami-like level-block-things-on-which-you-stand. I had absolutely no idea where I was going, as I had been blocked into all of the songs as a different character and the three little pigs stick together. On top of that, one of the other pigs wasn’t there that day, so there was this other person that I had to pretend was there while the present little pig lead me around like a puppet. BUT I’M NOT A PUPPET, I’M A REAL BOY. Well no, actually, I'm not. I’m a pig. And female. But it's whatever.