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The Blue Angel
Premiere on October 10th, 1996 on Intima Teatern in Stockholm, Sweden
Director: Dilek Gür
Set and costume design: Elisabeth Åström
Light design: Imre Zsbrik
Mask and wig design: Lars Carlsson
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Diary from a
theatre production.
Here I have written a diary during the
production to show how the makeup artist's ordinary workday is like.
August 1996 |
| 15 August |
I am moving up to Stockholm and am visiting the theatre
there I am going to be the next two months. The theatre has rented a nice
apartment for me, I plan to spend my weekend relaxing there. |
| 19 August |
The first rehearsal day usually starts with a complete
reading of the play and we look at the set and costume designs. This first
reading took approx. 4 hours, quite a bit longer than the play is supposed
to be.
During the lunch break I measured all the actors heads so I can start to
make the needed wigs without delay. |
| 20 August |
Today my work is starting for real, the whole day I spent
making wig foundations ( see the Wig page).
Maybe not so many laughs today but at least they became good. |
| 21 August |
The hunt for hair has started. I have not yet decided if I
am going to use real hair or synthetic hair. Normally I wouldn't even
consider using anything but real hair, but this time I am not going to be
here after the premiere and in this case it can be easier to take care of
the wig during the almost a year the they are playing. I didn't score today
but I have gotten quite a lot of tips that I am going to check out in the
morning. I also made a visit to the Oscars theatre and borrowed some wigs
for some smaller parts in the play. |
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Here you can see where I am sitting and some tools of the trade. |
| 22 August |
Until noon I just walked around to different wig shops and
tried to find hair. I couldn't find any synthetic hair so it will have to be
real hair for all my wigs. I found the blond hair I needed, but the
red-purple hair was not to be found anywhere so I ordered it from Gothenburg
instead. The rest of the day I spent tying hair in back of the first wig. |
| 23 August |
The whole day I spent working on the wig, except for the
hour I had a meeting with Ann-Britt, my assistant who is going to take over
my work after the premiere All the actors has now been here to rehearse and
I have talked to almost everybody briefly about how I want them to look in
this play. Now it will be wonderful to have two days off. |
| 26 August |
Continued working on Regina's wig. |
| 27 August |
Here I just have a little left in the middle of the forehead and I finished
it later. We had a production meeting this morning with the directors,
costume designer, light
designer and me. We talked about every scene, so that we all should
know all the changes that has been made during this first week. |
| 28 August |
Today we all went to the movies and saw a film based on
another novel by Henrich Mann. Good movie, but I really don't have time for
this kind of activities right now. I have still too much to do. Later I was
down to Oscars again and borrowed more wigs, they just keep adding wigs all
the time. Before I went home I washed them and put rollers in them. |
| 30 August |
Today we had the first complete rehearsal and it worked
better than anyone could have expected. But to take away the joy of that we
ended our week with a more than two hour long production meeting. Wonderful
start of the weekend |
September 1996
| 1 September |
Still weekend, mmmm. |
| 2 September |
I just had to continue working on Regina's red wig, that is
almost finished. We also had a production meeting as always on Tuesdays. |
| 3 September |
Regina's wig was finally done. In fact, all things I have done so far has
been very quickly made, but when you are sitting alone working it feels as
if everything takes an eternity. By now I am quite confident what everything
is going to be finished on time. on the picture you can see all the things I
have done so far. |
| 4 September |
Today I ran around and shopped some. I also made a false hairline to a guy
who is going bald. On this picture you can see how small the knots are. |
| 5 September |
Today I made the first test makeup on Regina and it didn't
become so good because the makeup time was reduced from 1.5 hours to 25
minutes. How much can you do on that time. I will get a new chance next
week. |
| 6 September |
Boring day. This afternoon I am going home to Gothenburg for
the first time since I started here. I want to go now! |
| 9 September |
Ann-Britt ,my assistant starts working today. That is really
good because she has a hairdressers education and can help me with all the
things that I am really bad at. She will be the one who dresses Regina's
wigs and maintains them during the show. I made a test makeup on Lakke and
it became good. I will put in a picture later. |
| 11 September |
The last few days has been filled with makeup's tests, and
it has been quite hectic. Yesterday I was down to TV4 and made Regina up for
an appearance in the tv-show Black or White. Today we also took the pictures
for the theatre program of the design
crew(including me) and of course I had to do some makeup on those of
us who needed it. |
| 17 September |
Wow! Has it already gone a week since I updated this page?
This week I have been stressed like hell and I will see no relief for
another week or so. On Saturday we are having the first costume and makeup
rehearsal, so I'm working my butt off. Last week I worked 12 till 16 hours
per day (mon-sat). But all the test
makeups are almost finished, but unfortunately I can't put in any
pictures yet because my scanner doesn't want to work right now. I do not
have any more wigs to make now, so now I am mostly running around shopping ,
talking to all involved personnel and teaching the actors to put their
makeup on correctly. It maybe doesn't sound so hard but right now everybody
thinks they are the only one to need my help and it kills me. Now I will
have to go to bed before I pass out................zzzzzzz...............What?
already morning? |
| 20 September |
These past days I have prepared the last things before the big day tomorrow,
the day when we'll see if all the things I have made during this time will
work or not.
I am counting on some smaller failures but I hope that at least some
of the stuff works.
My scanner has started working again so I am putting in some pictures
of the test
makeups. Please hold your fingers crossed for
me tomorrow. |
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On the pictures:Ulf Söderman, Lakke Magnusson,
Viktor Friberg, Martin Karlsson och Sture Hovstadius. |
| 21 September |
Today it has been a quite hideous day and the expected chaos
came, but in some strange way it seemed as most things worked as I had
hoped. Sure, some things looked terrible and have to be fixed next week but
in whole I am really satisfied with today's results. I am celebrating this
by giving away two tickets for the dress rehearsal on October 8. Mail me if
you are interested. (Anna-Maria Jönson won the tickets) |
| 23 September |
I had hoped to be off today, but I had to run around and
shop for a few hours and sit down and make Regina's red wig a bit thicker. |
| 24 September |
A looong day without actually doing so much.
Now when almost everything is finished there really isn't much left to do.
We spent the whole day combing the wigs and moustaches that became
ugly on Saturday. Late at night we finally got hold of Regina so we could
talk about the hairdo of her wigs. At last we agreed and I could go home to
sleep.
Regina in one her wigs that she uses as a wig on stage and puts it on and
off. |
| 25 September |
Dress and mask rehearsal of the first act.
Went like a charm. How did that happened? Here is a picture of Mats
Helin that I have made a cleft lip on.
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| 26 September |
Dress rehearsal of the second act , not much to write
about. |
| 28 September |
Production dress rehearsal. If all our plans had fallen into
place everything would be ready today, but it didn't quite happened. This
evening they have the premiere of "My fair lady" at Oscars and because we
have the same light designer and the same costume department ,these parts of
our production has suffered some delays. Most of their work is finished but
I do not think that everything will be ready until opening night. The
rehearsal today was pretty lousy depending on many thing. This has been a
very long week so everybody was really tired and in the middle of the
rehearsal someone in the building started drilling in a wall and continued
for more than an hour. Hope next week will be easy. |
October 1996
| 1-3 October |
I don't have much to write about any more. We are rehearsing
to whole play every night and I am done with my work. The only thing I still
do, is making Regina up an hour before the show and in the intermission.
everything else Ann-Britt has taken over. On the fourth there will be
audience for the first time, that will be a lot of fun (hopefully). |
| 5 October |
Yesterday we had 600 persons watching the show, and I think
they liked it. Everybody was very tense but everything worked just fine.
Today we had to cancel the rehearsal, because Regina has gotten a cold and
can't sing. We used tonight's rehearsal for Regina's stand-in, Annika Kofoed. |
| 8-9 October |
The two last dress rehearsals. I am not supposed do do
anything any longer. So I am just sitting and trying to to do just that. |
| 10 October |
Premiere!!
The day we all knew was coming but didn't dared to think about. Everything
went as good as one could have expected, except the guy that dropped his wig
on stage in a scene there he is supposed to be really drunk.
But I don't think it was so bad because it fitted so well into his character
so I am hoping they will keep it. Of course we had a party later on, so I
had a hangover the day after. |
| 11 October |
My last day on this job. It wasn't funny going in today
because of all the bad reviews in the press. But everybody is trying to pep
everybody else up. I said "Bye" to the gang and left after the intermission.
That was that job and now it is time to go on to the next, next Saturday I
am working on the premiere of Salome at the GothenburgOpera. |
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