Last Sunday night marked the kickoff of Northwestern’s annual Dolphin Show, the nation’s largest student-produced musical theater production. This year, the Dolphin Show will be the Broadway musical Shrek the Musical, which is based off of the 2001 movie Shrek. The kickoff was a chance for Dolphin crewmembers, from set to sound designers, to present their vision for the Northwestern production.
North by Northwestern sat down with Shrek’s costume and makeup designers to learn their plans for the show, and to get an answer to the all-important question: how, exactly, will they transform a normal Northwestern student into one very large, very green ogre?
“He’s probably gonna be in a hat. That’s the spoiler for the show,” said co-makeup designer Melanie Vitaterna, a Communication junior, said. Instead of shaving the actor’s head, like the Broadway Shrek did, the designers will copy the Chicago Shakespeare production’s solution.
“They gave him a hat that had ears on it. It was just this lazy, ugly knit beanie that totally fit the rest of Shrek’s character, but it was an instant solution to the problem,” Vitaterna said. “So I’m definitely interested in making him one of those.”
Instead of slathering Shrek in green face paint, the designers plan to give him a subtler green tint. The characters are so vivid, so iconic, that the designers don’t need to recreate the characters’ faces and costumes from the animated movie. The audience will know who the character is simply by suggestion. For the co-costume designers, Communication sophomore Veronica Johnson and Weinberg second-year senior Sarah Wachtel, that approach is much more intriguing.
For Donkey, Johnson and Wachtel didn't want to give the actor a padded “donkey butt,” as Wachtel called it, like other productions have. Instead, Donkey will rock a Mohawk and a pair of platform sneakers for hoofs.
“We want to allude to the fact that he’s a donkey and not go overboard with making it literal,” said Johnson, who is also a co-makeup designer. “We don’t really need any big prosthetic noses for him. As long as we have some contouring that indicates where stuff is going in and out and the shapes of his face, that would suffice and it would allow the actor to be more expressive onstage.”
Many characters, like Pinocchio or the Big Bad Wolf, were around way before they appeared in Dreamworks' film. The designers have even more freedom to reinterpret those costumes. Those characters have gone through so many portrayals, there’s no one “right” version anymore.
“We just have to figure out how past musicals and performances and Halloweens have portrayed these characters and then from there decide what we do like or what we don’t like and build our own,” Vitaterna said.
In fact, slavishly following the Shrek movie’s design might even hurt the production. The designers stressed the importance of working with who they have – actors need to be able to act, without the constriction of masks or heavy prosthetics. Shrek won’t wear a fat suit, because it restricts the actor’s movements too much. But don’t worry: Shrek will still be a lovable lump. He’ll just wear some padding, Johnson explained.
For actors that don’t resemble their roles, the designers have to get even more creative. Gingy the Gingerbread Man, for example, will be a puppet controlled by a human Sugarplum Fairy. This is a modification of the Chicago Shakespeare solution, where Peter Pan was Gingy’s ventriloquist.
But there’s no changing Lord Farquaad’s shortness. If the character could make eye contact without the use of a stool, his obvious Napoleon complex would make little sense. The actor will trundle around on his knees, wearing fake shoes and a cape to cover his calves.
Overall, the main theme of the Shrek’s costume and makeup design is that there’s no theme at all. Each character has too much personality, too much life, to make them resemble any other character. The designers aren’t confined to one color palette or one time period. The Dragon will wear a sexy clubbing outfit – complete with high-low skirt – while the Fairy Godmother will be dressed like Marie Antoinette, and Fiona will look like she hangs out with the elves from Lord of the Rings.
“Even if they’re playing a pretty minor role, their role is still a distinctive fairy tale role,” Johnson said. “It’s not like they’re a peasant in the chorus. Just every character has to be a distinctive character, and I think that’s going to be the hardest part.”
But the designers are excited for the challenge.
“I could do neutral townspeople all day and be so bored,” Wachtel said. “There’s no neutral townspeople in this. The townspeople are anything but neutral.”