Latex Creations for "OUR COUNTRY'S GOOD"

 

Kelsea Polk and I were asked to create some specific makeup effects for a challenging show this Fall term at PSU. Our Country's Good required someone to be whipped and bleeding and to later show the scars from this whipping. There was also an Aborigine character who needed to be painted, and who died late in the show of small pox. We had both taken a stage makeup course, but hadn't done much work with latex otherwise. It sounded like the perfect chance to try it out so we dove in.

• We Started out with liquid latex and strips of cotton, building on sheets of glass so that the pieces could be pulled off easily. 

• The research for this project was pretty disturbing so I haven't included the photos. We found old photographs of slaves that had been whipped and based our pieces on that. 

• We had to make two nearly identical pieces, one being the fresh wound, the other being the scar. They reminded us of the babies from the movie "Aliens," and we started referring to them as The Twins: Scully" & Mulder. Every day we would have to go check on how The Twins were doing, were they dry? Did they need more paint? More latex? 

• The fresh wound pinned to a mesh shirt so the glue would dry. This was Margaret, the Costume Designer's idea. She made the mesh tank, which wasn't visible because in both scenes the wounds are viewed through an open over-shirt. It was easier to having to apply the wounds with spirit glue and switching them mid-play each night. 

• For the scar piece we used a blade to cut out space between the ridges so that they wouldn't appear as one big pink blob on stage. 

• Then we added some paint to add more dimension. We never were able to find a paint that worked very well with the latex, although the makeup effects store claimed that acrylic would work. 

• For the small pox we rolled up tiny balls of cotton to simulate pustules then embedded the cotton balls in liquid latex. 

• We did research on small pox but had to modify our pieces for the stage. The pox had to be applied during a scene that lasted about ten minutes. Actual small pox looks like these bumps covering the entire surface of the skin, but of course, we wouldn't have time to apply that much makeup in 10 minutes, so we made smaller patches. 

• Small pox bumps are closer to actual skin tone but the director wanted them to read from a distance, and to look disgusting, so we used some creative license. 

• Researching the Aborigine's makeup was very challenging. In the time period that the play was set there were over 26 different Aborigine groups in the area of the English colony, all with different customs. In addition body painting has very specific meaning that varies from group to group, and even person to person, and finding information about the symbolism was very difficult. We felt it was very important to portray him as honestly and respectfully as possible. Kelsea and I argued that in fact he most likely wouldn't have been painted unless he were attending a ritual, not in daily life. We were worried that we would be painting him in something that had a specific meaning that was inappropriate for the play. The Costume Designer wanted to emphasize his physical difference from the whote settlers as much as possible though, and insisted that he be painted, so we used some of the most common elements that we'd found in our research and kept it simple. 

Also, the small pox blisters were applied to one side of his body, since he was only seen crawling across the floor, and they wouldn't be visible elsewhere.

Starting out with liquid latex and strips of cotton, building on sheets of glass so that the pieces could be pulled off easily.

We had to make two nearly identical pieces, one being the fresh wound, the other being the scar. They reminded us of the babies from the movie "Aliens," and we started referring to them as The Twins: Scully" & Mulder. Every day we would have to go check on how The Twins were doing, were they dry? Did they need more paint? More latex?

The research for this project was pretty disturbing so I haven't included the photos. We found old photographs of slaves that had been whipped and based our pieces on that. It was pretty harrowing.

The "fresh" wound with blood. This was only seen peeking from under a torn shirt as the character was being "whipped."

The "healed" wound. Later we went back and added more paint to make it look more dimensional, but the acrylic paint didn't work as well with the latex as everyone claimed it would.

Tiny cotton balls embedded in liquid latex to form "small pox"

For the small pox we did research but had to modify our pieces for the stage. The pox had to be applied during a scene that lasted about ten minutes. Actual small pox looks like these bumps covering the entire surface of the skin, but of course, we wouldn't have time to apply that much makeup in 10 minutes, so we made smaller patches and painted them grotesquely.

The Lincoln Hall Theater has a 500 seat capacity so the director requested that the small pox be highly exaggerated.