Complex Deep Fronts

Anything Goes

Utah Shakespeare Festival
Cut & Style: Karen Craven
Actor: Deanna Ott
(Photo by Karl Hugh. Copyright Utah Shakespeare Festival 2013.)

This wig was supposed to look the same for four people, so a template was created and all the fronts were made using the same hair combinations in the same place, only using one hair at a time, and ventilating right next to each other. This is called Single Hair/Single Space.

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The Marvelous Wonderettes

Utah Shakespeare Festival
Hair & Makeup Designer: Natalia Castilla
Actor: Natalie Storrs as Betty Jean

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Love's Labour's Lost

Utah Shakespeare Festival
Hair & Makeup Designer: Natalia Castilla
Actor: Melinda Pfundstein as Rosaline
Photo: Karl Hugh

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33 1/3 House of Dreams

San Diego Repertory Theatre
Hair Designer: Missy Gobble Bradstreet

Styling through the decades

In Hollywood for 33 1/3 years, Gold Star was the home of some of the greatest pop and rock hits of all time. That means the wig styles needed for this show had to span three decades.

1940's Peekaboo Bang

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1950's Bouffants, pixies, and pageboys

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1960's Ronettes Beehives

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1960's Mods

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Bonnie & Clyde

La Jolla Playhouse
Hair and Makeup Designer: Carol Doran
Hair and Makeup Supervisor: Michael Dondanville
Actors: Laura Osnes, Mare Winningham
Photos: Craig Schwartz & Sean M. Haffey

Michael Dondanville was the resident Hair and Makeup Supervisor at La Jolla Playhouse, but there was a scheduling conflict for the last half of the run. I stepped in to do daily maintenance of the wigs and finish the run of the show.

The maintenance involved styling three wigs for "Bonnie", plus one wig for each of the women, including all of the ensemble. The time period is the 1930's: FINGERWAVES.

To get this look, I roller set the wigs to the pattern given by the designer and after I take the rollers out I brush in the waves using bias tape and clippies to hold the waves in place. Once the taping is done, I work with the curls and the bottom and hairspray the entire wig. The tape will stay in the wig until about an hour before the actors arrive. The earlier in the day I do the maintenance, the longer they have to set in the style.

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Richard II

Utah Shakespeare Festival
Hair and Makeup Designer: Natalia Castilla
Actor: Abby Rowold
Photo: Karl Hugh, Copyright Utah Shakespeare Festival

Color Coded Front

The colors on the tracing represented the different colors of hair to use. Obviously, I was not going to use blue or orange hair, but those colors were assigned a number that corresponded to the correct hair color. I had to ventilate a side part in it, so the inch where the part was to be was all single hair, single space ventilated, and also directionally ventilated. The tracing looked a little psychedelic, but the finished front was very cool.

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  Inside Out View
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The Little Mermaid

Hale Centre Theatre
Hair and Makeup Designers: Trisha Ison and Krissa Lent

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Hamlet

Colorado Shakespeare Festival
Actor: Florencia Lozano

Silk Foundation

Creating the sparse chopped look of Mad Ophelia was particularly challenging in this production of Hamlet because Florencia Lozano- cast as Ophelia- had a head full of thick dark hair. Additionally, there was a costume change from the long-voluminous wig didn't leave time for gluing on a bald pate. The solution was a premade silk foundation. It covered the natural dark hair and allowed for a quick costume change.

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Sherlock Holmes: The Final Adventure

Utah Shakespeare Festival

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Colorado Shakespeare Festival

Various Shows
(As You Like It, Comedy of Errors, MacBeth, Coriolanus, The Merry Wives of Windsor, Othello, Pericles, Two Gentlemen of Verona, Love's Labour's Lost, etc.)

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Utah Festival Opera

Various Shows
(Madame Butterfly, Die Fledermaus, The Merry Widow, Tales of Hoffman, etc.)

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