Ya know, yeah, sometimes I do write at five a.m. Sometimes I can’t help it. So what?
There’s this phenomenon where I go off on a tangent with one essay and realize it’s actually the beginning of a completely different essay. One day, I promise I’ll come back to this and flesh it out, but for the moment, I want to move what I wrote for a completely unrelated essay over here to remind myself to finish it one day.
When Erin was nineteen, I was tasked with doing her makeup for a play. In the theater, everyone is a kid. I learned that from Brent, Denise, and (most importantly) Lance, so you know it’s true. I suppose the idea is, “I’m ancient and all-knowing, and you’re just a kid.” Putting people in their place is an important part of theater. Now that you know this, the next time you hear somebody say, “Break legs, kids!” you’ll know what it means.
When it comes to doing theater at Millsaps, it usually is a matter of I’m ancient and all-knowing, and they’re just kids. Part of why I continue working with them is to pass on the flame that was given to me when I was their age. I knew Lance. I knew Frank. I knew Lucy and Miss Eudora. I’m the keeper of the book.
Whether it’s beauty makeup, old age, injury, or even monster makeup, painting someone’s face is a uniquely intimate experience. It’s not at all sexual, but it’s deeply personal. When you do somebody’s makeup, you know where their blackheads are. You know if they need to trim the hair in their nose or ears. There are absolutely no secrets. All of that is pretty surface, though; if you do it long enough, you get to know how someone’s skull is shaped. You learn where the muscles in their eyes attach. You learn things about them nobody else knows.
Erin was the new kid. Painting her face, I wanted very much to portray that I was interested, but in a detached, very artistic way. I wasn’t an older guy looking for some play. Having not known her before, I wanted to leave open in her mind the option that I might be gay. A middle-aged man doing makeup in the theater, odds are in favor of him being gay. I’m not, but you’d be surprised how often I amuse myself by making people wonder.
“With your bone structure, you could do some modeling,” I said. It was a test.
“I don’t think I’d like that very much.” She said. She passed the test.
In the theater, at all stages, there are “look-at-me” kids, “ghoul” kids, and “everything” kids. Since Erin said she wanted to study theater, I wanted to know which she was.
Ghoul kids wear all black all the time. In theater, you often wear all black when you’re not acting so that you will be as unnoticeable as possible when the show lights go up. It’s a practical matter. Ghoul kids have lots of black clothes just for that. They also have black prom dresses and black workout clothes. They sit in the back of the church, and they hate parties. Ghoul kids are pasty white because they never go in the sun, even if they’re black. Ghoul kids make theater work because they know how every technical position works and usually have their own tools to work with. Just don’t try to cast them in a role. They hate acting.
Look-at-me-kids are beautiful, and they know it. Their entire lives are built around them being beautiful. Look-at-me-kids have a “good side” of their faces, and they know which one it is. At an advanced stage, look-at-me-kids ask the lighting designer to show them the proposed gels because they know what colors make them look best. To be honest, Look-at-me-kids are often annoying to be around and work with, but they are absolutely vital to theater. They’re the instrument through which the playwright (who is often a ghoul kid) brings his words to life. Konstantin Stanislavski talks about how look-at-me-kids shouldn’t let it go to their heads, but nobody ever reads that part.
The Everything Kid will go on stage if they have to, climb the a-frame to focus a light, or hang a curtain if you need them to. They will stage manage better than almost anybody. They have a set of clothes that’s already covered in paint, often including paint-spattered shoes, because they’ve painted more sets than you’ve seen shows. They have their own tool kit and their own makeup kit, and they know basic first aid. The Everything Kid is how theater gets done.
There was a look-at-me kid in Erin’s class. I’m not going to give her a name. On stage, she was one of the most talented people I ever knew. Off stage, she would have me meet her at the green room to do her makeup when she went on a date because “I understood her face.” The thing a lot of people miss about look-at-me kids is that there’s a deep need for approval under all that preening. Something makes them question their self-worth. Everybody goes through that, including me, but for them, it’s worse. I have complete sympathy for people like that, and I have no problem giving them all the attention they need because I know they do actually need it. I’m not giving them a power tool, though. That’d be stupid.
I wanted to know if Erin, the new kid, was a ghoul, a look-at-me kid, or an everything kid. There were two everything kids in that class. One of them is now the head of the theater department at Millsaps. Erin, I would come to learn, was an everything kid. She was, and is, one of the best everything kids we ever had. When I started my own company, she worked there for a while and was an everything kid there, too! In the twenty-something years I’ve known her, Erin will always be the penultimate everything theater kid. There will be others, but she’s the best.
I’ll go on stage. Some people even like it when I do, but I‘m not one of them. I’m a ghoul. I need a sketchbook or a keyboard to feel useful or complete. Ghouls need everything, kids, especially when they get old and broken like me because they’re how you get shit done. If I had to be locked in the green room with a theater kid or spend the night drinking with one, an everything kid would be my choice. I can talk to them about the parts of art and theater that are important to me and actually mean something, even if we have to whisper because the show has started.