The University of Michigan is addressing long-standing equity issues in the performing arts by offering a free, open course in stage makeup and hair for all skin tones and hair textures.
Available to the public on demand, the course, partially funded through U-M’s Arts Initiative, is taught by career professionals and leaders at the School of Music, Theatre & Dance, including Sarah Oliver, associate professor of theatre and drama, and drag artist Alex Michaels, best known as Alexis Michelle and from “RuPaul’s Drag Race.”
Created by Oliver, “Equitable Stage Makeup and Hair” seeks to address a pervasive issue she has observed throughout her career as a costume designer of shows from New York City to regional theater. Too often, she said, performers work with makeup artists and crew members who are not trained on their skin tone and hair texture. When they should be fully embodying a character, performers are instead confronted with limitations that can feel frustrating and demoralizing.
Even graduates of the best training programs have historically received instruction in makeup and hair that looked and sounded the same year after year, Oliver says. Instructors use the same examples, models and teaching concepts, applicable only to the same kinds of — predominantly white — students.
Oliver wanted to create something different, inclusive of more skin tones and hair types, with expert tutorials on color theory, aging makeup, special effects makeup, and drag makeup and hair, and to make it available to not only her students at U-M, but learners worldwide.
“People are hungry for this kind of training. They just don’t know where to get it. So my goal was to build an online course where you could go to one place to get in-depth, high-level and diverse training,” she said.
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Available on Michigan Online and Coursera, the course attempts to help both performers and makeup artists fill in their knowledge gaps with techniques and instruction applicable to more complexions, gender identities and backgrounds allowing performers to truly shine on stage and screen.
“We found that U-M alums recognized the importance of this project and the significance of what we were trying to do,” Oliver said. “They wanted to be part of making change in an industry badly in need of transformation.”
The course is a three-year passion project for Oliver. Her journey to create the course began shortly after she started at U-M, and was born out of both necessity and opportunity. A day after Oliver accepted her U-M appointment in March 2020, the university announced it was shutting down campus and transitioning to remote instruction due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Even then, Oliver asked herself not only how she would teach in a pandemic but also whether she had any hope of scaling up to teach the 250-300 students in the theater program when in-person instruction resumed.
At the same time, there was a reckoning in the industry, and Oliver says she and her colleagues knew it was past time to meet the moment and rethink what and how stage makeup and hair were taught in schools across the U.S.
“It’s a pipeline problem. If we don’t address the problem by changing how we are instructing students, how are we going to see change in the industry?” she said.
“Often, theater departments are small, and instructors wear a lot of hats. This course allows someone with more of a costume theater background, like me, to get a great understanding of how to appropriately apply, and also teach others how to apply, stage makeup and hair.”
It’s a lesson Oliver learned in her own career. She was hired to teach at the Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts and realized she had no experience working with Asian hair.
“When I was hired, I had trained in hair for years,” she said. “I walked in confidently. I went to prep everyone’s hair and couldn’t even put a pin curl in because I had never worked with anyone with the hair texture of the performers in that room. I was supposed to teach these students, and I was the least knowledgeable person in that room.”
She relied on late-night training sessions with a friend who worked at the Hong Kong Ballet to ensure she could get up to speed. But Oliver said she doesn’t want students or teachers to find themselves in that situation anymore.
“I have talked to so many students and so many people in my industry who have no access to training like this, even though they have the desire to learn,” she said. “It is exciting to be able to point to this course and get this level of diversified training that touches on so many skin tones, so many techniques, and so many needs.”
The course features perspectives from several actors and teachers from the Detroit area who recount the struggles and negative experiences they have had.
Janai Lashon, a Black artist, discussed what it was like being forced to “become her own stylist” in a production where people had no knowledge about how to treat her locs; this even had her considering cutting them off.
Kurt Sanchez Kanazawa, an Asian artist, reflects on the diversity of hairstyles in Asian culture and how few hair and makeup people truly understand how to style Asian hair.
While it’s been a long time in the making, Oliver said she is thrilled to finally see the course live and knows it will be hugely impactful once people find it.
“I have talked to so many students across this country who have no access to training like this,” she said. “It is so exciting to now be able to point people to this opportunity.”
