“The characters felt so real that it gave me a sense of pride to give them a life that exists beyond the confines of a page.”
Taylor Martin came to AMUA last summer to jump start her career with The Complete Track. Last fall, she completed The Art of Wig & Hair Design. Taylor is now in charge of designing the wigs for an upcoming show at Belmont University School of Theater & Dance called “The Man of Mode.”
This challenging and ambitious project involves outfitting the show with 24 custom wigs that need to be completed in a short amount of time. Our current wig students and a few recent graduates are building and styling the wigs as a class project. They are getting hands-on experience, a project that looks great in their professional portfolios, AND they are receiving school credit for it!
Taylor shares about this experience
“When my wig instructor, Michael Meyer, first came to me and told me I would be designing the wigs for Belmont University’s rendition of The Man of Mode I was not only shocked, I was a little frightened. This was the first ever design credit I would receive in the theater industry and it was not something I had ever considered doing. However, when I looked further into the history of the period and the script of the show, I quickly fell in love with the task I had been given.
My process began first with reading over the script of the show and getting to know the personalities of the characters I would be helping bring to life. Once the characters revealed their traits, it was left to take my cue from the costume designer. With Maggie Fitzgerald’s designs for the costumes, designing could officially begin. I spent time thinking of what the different characters showed on stage, who they were, why they were that way, what drives them. Vanity? Passion? Love? Hate? Social status? All of these things had to be shown through the design and from these questions, I put my pencil to paper.
Working on these wig designs felt like I was giving a voice to something from the past. The characters felt so real that it gave me a sense of pride to give them a life that exists beyond the confines of a page. And the further into my journey I went the more real everything became. Suddenly my drawings had come into reality. Something I could touch, something I could run my fingers through. It reminded me why I fell in love with wig making in the first place!”
