Guest Post by Alice Barry

The relevance between drama & make up

                 

On the left we have Natalie Portman in “The Black Swan” ready to dance her part in the play that she stars in the movie. However on the right, it’s a makeup effect called the “Smokey Eye”, someone went into this play, saw the make up on the girl in the picture on the left and said “mm, I like that... I wonder how I can get my eyes to look like that...” This shows how influential Drama can be on people's choice of makeup. 

At the beginning of drama, in Greek and Roman times make up wasn’t used. Masks kept the actors faces covered which made it even harder to act, considering in those times they had no microphones. Technically speaking, a man names Thespis was the first to use make up. In one of his performances he painted his face with white lead and wine to infiltrate the character he was playing. Different characters got different face paint. If someone was playing the character of a god they would paint their face gold. If they were angels, they would paint their faces red.  Then the Renaissance came and almost upgraded everything. They would go more into detail when painting someone’s face and would use sheep wool to make a beard if the people were wise or old.  When electrical lighting came into way, the makeup industry became more advanced as they couldn’t use simple make up terms anymore when they had dim lighting that didn’t show the actor’s face very well. Nowadays peoples make up choice is more influenced by Actors or famous people that they look up to.