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The
Second Look team takes on the challenge of helping to bring this
classic holiday film to life on the stage in this musical version
presented at the Kelsey Theatre
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| Above, Second Look face painter and make-up artist Kelly Allen adjusts the wig of actress Ileana Hernandez as she prepares to play the not-so-innocent version of her character, Violet Peterson, in the alternate universe sequence the script refers to as "Pottersville." In these scenes, George is shown by Clarence, the angel, what the world would look like without him, and through this adventure, George comes to understand that he really is living a wonderful life. One of the people George encounters in grim and gritty Pottersville is his old might-have-been girlfriend, Violet, whose life has turned out to be something very different from the one in which he knew her. Ileana played this scene in a wig the crew dubbed "Violet Gone Wrong." |
| Standing, from left to right, the Second
Look hair and
make-up crew members at work: Tess Ammerman, Laurie
Hardy, Kelly Allen, and designer Erin Penney, working on actors
(seated, l to r)
Jesse Dubin, Jim Apgar, Toni Campbell, and Reed Schmidt. Photo by Marty
Berrien. In this photo, we see one of the 90 or so minutes the crew spent in preparing the company's 28 actors who play 36 roles throughout the course of each performance. The show required multiple wigs and hairpieces, including quick changes, period hair and make-up, special effects age make-ups of varying intensity to show the passage of time on key characters as the decades roll by, plus the full-out aging of actor Steve Decker as nasty, old Mr. Potter. As Steve is actually neither nasty nor old himself, he called on his acting abilities to turn out a performance as one of the wickedest bad guys ever, while tricks of powder and paint were used to add the missing years. |
| On the left, actor Steve Decker looking his typical self. To the right, after some time in the make-up chair, he seems to be showing signs of aging, all the better to play Old Man Potter. |
| Above, some of the ladies in waiting. Below, Vicky Czarnik as Mary Bailey, circa 1929-1932, in a photo shot backstage during a performance. Below and to the right, the same wig is seen from behind in a photo taken in a test during a rehearsal a few weeks earlier. |
| On the left, Mary's 1945 hair as seen from behind and up on a stand. At right, the same wig on stage during the show's finale. Below, Erin paints Vicky who sports the same wig in the make-up chair shortly before the show's opening scene. |
