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Home > Archive > Apr 3, 2008

DSC Student Wins Regional Award
By Elizabeth Brown
Makeup can really take you places – at least, it can for Guy Smith. A sophomore at Dixie State College, Smith traveled to Los Angeles in February for the Region VIII Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival competition, where he was chosen as the regional winner in the theater makeup design category.
Smith’s next stop in the competition will be Washington, D.C., where he will go in April to compete against other finalists for the national KCACTF and Alcone Makeup design awards.
Smith’s regional award was based on his makeup designs for last November’s DSC production of “Sweeney Todd,” a dark comedy about a murderous barber.
Smith said he and other college-level competitors from six Western states spent a week in Los Angeles, participating in presentations and workshops before finding out at the end of the week who had won the award. Smith said he was “excited and kind of shaky” when he found out he was the winner.
“I put my best foot forward, and I ended up beating all the designers from the other states,” Smith said. “It was mind-blowing!”
Smith is looking forward to the competition in Washington, D.C., although he is a bit nervous.
“I’m really excited and really scared,” Smith said. “I’ve had nightmares about failing. But it’s going to be really cool.
“We get to work with makeup designers that are the best in the world. We’ll get top training.”
As in Los Angeles, Smith will have the opportunity in Washington, D.C., to display his portfolio of “Sweeney Todd” designs. Smith said that while the regional event seemed to be “all about presentations and projects,” the national competition will focus more on how the competitors work with other people and how they perform in workshops.
Varlo Davenport, director of theater at DSC, said makeup design and other categories in the KCACTF competition are usually dominated by graduate students in well-established, major theater programs.
“(Smith’s) advancing to the finals as an undergraduate lower-classman puts a huge feather in both his cap and the theater program here at Dixie State College,” Davenport said.
Smith credits Davenport with giving him the opportunity for success at the college level. Last year, Smith took a theater makeup class from Davenport, who directed “Sweeney Todd.”
“(Davenport) offered to let me do the makeup for ‘Sweeney Todd,’” Smith said. “I said, sure, I’ll do it. So I went from saying, yeah, that’d be cool, to going to L.A.!”
Smith said he first started learning about stage makeup as a student at Dixie High School, where he acted in many productions, including “Les Miserables” and “Fiddler on the Roof.” He discovered he had a knack for applying his own makeup, and soon started applying other actors’ makeup as well.
Smith explained why stage makeup is a necessary part of acting.
“Most theater lights are 750 watts, shining down from multiple angles,” Smith said. “They make your facial features blend together, and you look like a blob. Stage makeup is used to create surfaces for the light to bounce against.
“By shifting where the light reflects, you can change the entire look of a face. You can create hard lines to make a character stand out and come to life.”
The use of “highlights” is lighter-colored makeup that emphasizes prominent facial features such as cheekbones and noses. “Lowlights” are areas of shadow created by darker makeup, contrasting with highlights and sometimes giving a heavier or older appearance.
Smith said Davenport wanted “Sweeney Todd” to have the look of an actual black and white film brought to life. Smith’s unique gray-toned designs were partly based on a 1920’s horror film called “The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari,” in which actors appeared with heavy eyeliner and shadowed lips.
“Guy worked very hard, spending countless hours making ‘Sweeney Todd’ look as good as possible,” Davenport said.
“It was hard to find the perfect level of gray,” Smith said. “We also wanted to make the lead actors into ‘beacons’ by adding a little bit of color in their faces, to make them easier for the audience to follow onstage.”
Smith, who played the part of Perelli in “Sweeney Todd,” wore a purple costume and added purple elements to his makeup. The actress playing Mrs. Lovett was made up with yellow patches under her eyes to make her look sickly.
Smith said he applied makeup for all 11 lead actors in “Sweeney Todd.” He used an airbrush for foundation, and then added highlights and lowlights by hand.
“The final process took us four and a half hours each day,” Smith said. “We even changed some of the makeup between acts. For instance, Sweeney’s eyes got darker. He developed black rings around the eyes for the second act.”
Smith said at one point in the second act, ensemble members crawled forward, reaching out with their hands toward audience members sitting in the first few rows.
“We changed their hands for the second act, adding heavy black lowlights to make their fingers look three times as long,” Smith said.
In addition to makeup design, Smith’s talents include acting, singing, and painting. He is currently working toward an associate degree in theater and performing arts and enjoys learning about all aspects of theater. So far, his favorite is acting. Smith started acting at age 5, when a St. George Musical Theater production of “Music Man” needed children to appear onstage.
“I went on from there – I kinda got the bug,” Smith said. “I’ve been doing this my whole life.”
Smith said he enjoys acting because it allows him to apply himself in interesting ways.
“It’s fun to apply myself artistically,” he said. “As an actor you can feel so alive and personal to so many people.
“It’s like Harvey Fierstein once said: ‘You’ve gotta love it so much that you just can’t NOT do it.’ It consumes every part of you.”
Smith said that acting can be a tough career.
“If I could pursue makeup design,” he said, “I could probably keep myself afloat, and maybe fund myself as an actor, so I could stay involved with theater.”

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