Andy Whiteoak is the Head of Wigs and Makeup at the Birmingham Rep Theatre. Just as the wardrobe department looks after what actors wear, Andy oversees the appearance of their heads, faces, hands, and even their feet. In
The Crucible , the make-up required is fairly straightforward, but the
wigs are a challenge. Unusually, it is the
male characters who need wigs because the women’s hair is hidden beneath white bonnets tied under the chin. A lot of regional theatres hire wigs when they need them, but at the Birmingham Rep, Andy and his assistant Alice actually make them. This is a time-consuming and highly skilled process involving something called
knotting. Each wig can take up to a week to make, and for
The Crucible , Andy and Alice have to make eight.
The wigs are made from human hair, but occasionally Andy can’t get the right colour and texture so he uses animal hair. The wig worn by Danforth, the stern and forbidding senior judge in Salem, is actually made out of the white under-belly hair from a yak. Andy sources the human hair from all over Europe and he finds that a natural (i.e. unprocessed) diet and a clean unpolluted atmosphere produce better quality hair.
In addition to making wigs,
Andy and Alice also have to fit them. This can be a time-consuming process, rather like a visit to the barber’s and the actors must sit patiently in Andy’s special chair whilst their wig is fitted, adjusted, and secured (Andy has never had a wig fall off in performance) before finally being dressed. On some shows (but not
The Crucible ) Andy also needs to create appropriate facial hair: moustaches, eyebrows, sideburns.
