I am about to confess one of my deepest, darkest secrets. It is something I have a hard time bringing myself to admit, since it is so shameful considering my long years in theatre. If you want to get technical, I did my first show in first grade, but I don't know if a class show everyone was required to be in counts, so we'll say I started doing shows in sixth grade. I am now a freshman in college. And for all those many years of performing, I have never learned how to do stage makeup. Not only that, there have been certain shows where I didn't even attempt to do stage makeup and instead opted to wear my street makeup onstage. If I ever needed to stage makeup, I was lucky enough to have cast mates who were willing to do it for me.

For the last twelve weeks, I have been in rehearsal for my college's fall play. We have finally reached that delightful point in production known as tech week. Or perhaps you call it hell week. Either is accurate. Last week, we had a rehearsal where we figured out what our makeup should look like for the show. You can imagine my stress levels when I realized that I was going to have to apply my makeup myself. After eighteen years, I finally was going to learn how to do stage makeup.

Part of the stress derives from the fact that I don't even really understand all the ins and outs of regular street makeup. Our director told us that, since we're working in a more intimate space, we just needed "heavier street makeup" for the show. I'm sure that was useful advice to everyone else who knows what they're doing when it comes to makeup, but for me "street makeup" consists of: eye shadow, mascara, eyeliner, foundation, and blush. But for this show, makeup also consists of highlighter and contour, two cosmetic items that I barely understand the function of. I figured out pretty quickly that the art of applying contour was completely lost on me. Most of the time, my contour looked like a fading bruise and didn't give off that "sexy, sharp cheekbones" effect.

And before that night, I had never put Ben Nye on my face. I know. It's like a standard of the theatre world. How did I avoid wearing any before my freshman year of college? I have no idea. Apparently, I'm too pale for any of Ben Nye's normal foundations, so I get to wear a sexy shade called "Death Flesh." Doesn't that sound appealing?

As I'd never worn regular stage makeup, it's safe to assume that fake wounds were a new experience for me as well. In this particular play, my face rots off. The director built me a liquid latex prosthetic and colored it in. This was the first time I got to wear spirit gum on my face and if I never had to put that on again, I would die happy. Spirit gum feels like it's setting your face on fire, which is not at all an enjoyable experience. The effect of the prosthetic was awesomely gnarly (see above picture), but at great cost to my face. After eighteen years of living on this planet, I discovered that I have a latex allergy. I'm glad it's the latex prosthetic that brought that ailment to the light. My face is taking its sweet time to heal. I've spent the last week looking something like the Phantom of the Opera's long-lost brother (also see above picture.)

This makeup rehearsal was an enlightening experience, to say the least. Not only did I learn how to apply stage makeup (a concept I admittedly should have learned years ago), but also I discovered that I'm allergic to latex. Who knew? Obviously not me, or I never would have put the prosthetic on my face and let the skin underneath get fried. But, hey, the makeup looked cool (in a completely nasty way), so I guess it was worth it.