Malotke Sews

For "Bus Stop" it was very important that the main lady, Cherie, was blonde. Once the show had been cast I was faced with a challenge to take an actress with very long dark brown hair and make her a short, sassy blonde. I would say my wig experience is still in beginner mode, but I thoroughly enjoy working on wigs. I was able to find a lovely short, sandy blonde wig. It needed a little work before it would be show ready. First I used a wig shampoo. You let the wig soak in a shampoo and water mixture for about 10 minutes, rinse it, and let it dry on a wig stand ( not the mannequin head pictured to the right). After the wig was dry I lightly sprayed it with a leave in conditioner. Next I added a few more defined curls with some small rollers. After that I used a styling spray to make sure the curls would make it through an active show. In the end the wig looked great on the actress with the full costume and makeup. 

Here are almost all of the wigs used in the show. I have used wigs in a few of my shows so I'm not a total novice, but it was slightly overwhelming to do so many wigs for "Farinelli & the King." In total I had to find, purchase, and style 10 wigs. Some actors had to wear more than 1 for the show as they were playing different characters or older/younger versions of their character.  While it was a lot of unexpected work, I did enjoy working with the wigs. A lot of them just needed to have their curls fixed and re-pinned. I did however need to powder a couple to decrease the shine from the synthetic look. I wish I had taken a wig class or something while in college, it's been a lot of fun learning process, but it'd be nice to have some solid guidance.