From Page to Stage

How an idea evolves from the initial design phase, through makeup testing and up to the actual finished work that the theatre going public get to see...

One of my favourite characters in The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe is the White Queen, Jadis. She is described in the books as being a fierce and handsome woman and I wanted to try and get that across in the makeup by making sure she looked cold and cruel but also inescapably beautiful.

My initial designs attempted to capture both the attractiveness of the witch, and her icy cold demeanour. After all, she made Narnia always winter and never Christmas.

In my notes I suggested using rich blue eyeshadow with a streak of silver running through it, dark blue lipstick, shimmery silver dust on the cheekbones, new brows to be drawn in and possibly some silver eyelashes applied.

I tried out my design for the first time at the photo shoot for the play's programme. Straight away I saw there would be some obvious problems in carrying the design over onto the stage.

The eyeshadow and lipstick were far too subtle, and the eyelashes idea was clearly impractical. The silver dust looked wonderful, but again, I knew that it wouldn't be enough to show up on stage. Back to the drawing board for some refinements of the design...

This second time around I used brightly coloured face paints to do basically the same design, they showed up brilliantly, but I still wasn't entirely satisfied. Lining the lips in black seemed a little messy and the light blue shading under the cheek bones was far more intense than I would have liked. But the finished look wasn't far away...

The third and final design of the White Witch was exactly what I had been trying for. Instead of silver dust on the cheekbones I used large iridescent flakes mixed with a clear gel, they glittered like ice crystals even when viewed from a distance.

No longer lining the lips, I used a thin brush to define the edges with the same dark blue face paint that the lips were coloured in. I redid the light blue shading, making it define the cheekbones subtly and also used it to define the sides of the nose and to give her chin a small cleft. Enhancing the element of 'handsomeness' that Jadis was said to possess

The look was complete, and The White Witch took to the stage in all of her malevolent magnificence