How To: Stage Makeup

9 steps for a successful theatrical makeup

Stage makeup is a necessity anytime you perform on a stage. It is kind of the opposite of beauty makeup because it needs to create harsh lines, contours, and overdrawn shapes, as opposed to keeping everything soft and blended.  In this tutorial, Sarah Coy is going to show you how to do a basic theatrical makeup look. This is also known as a basic “pretty” stage makeup. It will help your expressions be read from the back row while keeping your face alive with color.

Step 1: Clean your face

Wash your face thoroughly and follow with a quality moisturizer to create a clean and smooth base for your makeup. Apply eye cream first, and then a facial moisturizer so that your skin gets the most benefits from your creams.

Step 2: Foundation

Choose a foundation color that both matches and evens out your skin tone or is slightly darker. It’s important to remember that stage lights tend to wash out colors, so choose a foundation color that is a shade darker than your natural skin tone. Also, make sure to blend your foundation evenly into the hairline at the temples and slightly below the jawline. Be extra careful blending into the jawline. You’ll want to make sure your neck and face aren’t two different colors.

Step 3: Eyebrows & eyeshadow

Go in with a powder to draw eyebrows and try to make them a little bit more arched and a little more exaggerated. So, start at the ends and then work into the front to keep them looking relatively natural. Then using the same color at an angle brush to go in underneath lash line just to make the eye show up more. For the eye shadow choose a powder-based eye shadows are a wise choice because it will be working well on your eyes. Select three complementing eye shadow colors that are light, medium, and dark in intensity. The medium color is the base, the lightest color is the highlighter, and the darkest color is the contour.

Step 4: highlight & contour

Since stage lighting tends to flatten a face and remove definition, you’ll want to add contour, character, and definition to your face by using light cream makeup for highlights and dark cream makeup to create shadows. First, apply a lighter shade of cream makeup along your bone lines, especially along the cheekbones and nose. Then, sweep the darker shade below your cheekbone and in any other areas you wish to recede, or hollow, on your face.

Step 5: blush

Use blush to further define your cheeks and shape your face. Choose a blush color based on your skin tone and your character. Apply the blush on your cheekbone, starting on the apple of your cheek directly under the center of your eye and sweeping up the cheekbone.

Step 6: eyeliner

Line your eyes with a thin, firm line above the upper lashes and a thinner line below your bottom lashes to makes your eyes bigger and deeper.

Step 7: Lips

Start with a lipliner around the outside of the natural lip line.  Fill in the lip, blend with a lip brush, then apply lipstick in the same color.

step 8: enhance eyelashes

Apply the right amount of mascara to your upper lashes to make your eyes truly pop. In addition, if it fits your character, use false eyelashes to give your lashes a real lift. For falsies, put a small amount of eyelash glue to one of the fake lashes, close your eye, and press and hold the glued edge to the base of your bare lashes. Once dried, apply a light coat of mascara to combine the fake with your real.

Step 9: all set

Finish off with a setting spray to keep it all in place throughout the show. After this, a basic glamorized theatrical makeup look is ready and will be ready to pop on stage. I hope this tutorial has inspired you to create a successful look for future performances.