West Side Story is Underway!

Rehearsals are underway from this year’s school production: West Side Story! With the on-stage cast working hard, our backstage creators are gearing up to make the performance possible. Costumes are in the works and make–up is in discussion, with two incredible workshops available for our production make-up artists, hosted by third year university make-up student, Katie Buck.  

 Visiting on Tuesday 7th November and Tuesday 14th November, Katie taught the students about the difference between everyday makeup and stage makeup, enthusing how accentuated stage makeup must be made in comparison, due to a large audience and stage as well as lighting. She also educated the intrigued students about how shades may need to be tweaked to catch stage lights in a more appealing way, to avoid washing out the vibrancy of the stage characters. Not only were techniques discussed but the science behind the makeup also. Differentiating the difference between grease paint and water-based make–up; for example, students learnt how grease paint allows make–up to remain on the skin under the hot stage lights without smudging and running through all that sweat of hard work! Katie also explained the power that make-up has in the sense of make-up styles connoting different times of history and different personalities and cultures and therefore how the Sharks and Jets can visually be told apart on stage.  

 Katie explained how her background in Art before her make-up course helped her understand make-up colour theory as well as being steady with applying make-up, similar to painting within in her artistic passions. However, her university helped her understand other basic of make–up, enabling her to teach our students of all levels the base rules and the intricacies of painting your face for stage.  

 West Side Story is a modern musical representation of the classic story ‘Romeo and Juliet’ Taking the Montagues and the Capulets as its reference point, the production centres around the Sharks and the Jets, two rival gangs fighting for the same territory. Tensions rise as a Shark named Maria and a Jet named Tony fall for each other, but there’s a problem – just like Romeo and Juliet their opposing alliances mean that they can never be together. Don’t wait around to find out the rest of the story! Tickets will be available to purchase after Christmas.