We love hearing what alumni have been up to since they graduated from AMUA because they end up doing really amazing things!
Today we’re sharing Morgan Gilmore’s story, who says: “Since I’ve graduated, my career has taken off faster than I could imagine. Although I love doing makeup, working with wigs really got my foot in the door.”
Before Morgan completed AMUA’s “The Art of Wig and Hair Design” program” under the tutelage of Director, Michael Meyer, she was offered an apprenticeship in New York. Morgan continues, “I worked with Paul Huntley, a very well known wig designer in NYC. I’m on call for him whenever he needs a wig built. I also worked with the Orthodox Jewish community and their style of wigs. That was a very culture-heavy learning experience!”
Paul has hired Michael’s students in the past, and we are thankful to him for extending another opportunity to our students.
When I was working with the Jewish family for their orthodox wigs, it was probably the epitome of blended cultures. My boss spoke Yiddish, and my only co-worker was from Czechoslovakia. I could barely understand them, and they didn’t understand me. I usually had to be the translator. One time it took about thirty minutes for us to get the sentence “she needs a coarser hook” across! I get to work with a lot of different cultures, and that keeps things really interesting for me.
Most recently, I got the opportunity to work with some of Michael’s previous students at the American Ballet Theater in the Metropolitan Opera for Sleeping Beauty. They had an impressive count of 200 wigs that needed to be made. I was in charge of dressing the kids, ages 8 to 15, which equals to around 40 wigs. I was ecstatic to work with such wonderful people!
Behind the scenes can be very chaotic at times. This seemed like an easy job. The only difficult part was the 3-minute quick change! For each ballerina, I had to take a decorative head piece out, and put a wig on. The hardest part of that is that there is no time to do a traditional wig prep, so we had to pin the wig cap and wig on top of the ballerina bun. There’s nowhere to pin in the wig besides the bun, so we had to be creative. We also had no idea who or how many ballerinas we would have to change in between scenes because there were alternate girls for each scene. Some days we had 4 to change, some days we had 8. Needless to say, we had to be just as flexible as the ballerinas! :)”
Morgan has some more exciting news to share: “I will be going to Sacramento, California to be the Assistant Wig Designer on the musical The Wiz. I leave on July 22nd, and will be there until August 12th. Additionally, I have the honor of running the show after we’ve wrapped up the designing process. This new adventure will push me in ways I haven’t been pushed before, and I can’t wait!”
You can check out Morgan’s website here.