If you went to watch the Santa Rosa Junior College Theatre’s rendition of “Les Misérables” last semester, then you’ve seen the work of Mollye Kestler-Tobias. And chances are, you didn’t even notice it.
But don’t feel bad about that – few people pay any attention to the makeup that the actors are wearing on stage, even if it was carefully picked out to accentuate their features and in the case of historical performances such as “Les Misérables,” evoke something about the time period. Kestler-Tobias is used to her makeup work going unnoticed, even though it’s arguably just as important as other aspects of putting on a play, if not more so.
Besides, Kestler-Tobias has hardly gone unappreciated. She has received two certificates of merit from the Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival (KCACTF), one for “Les Misérables” and another for her work as an assistant makeup artist on “Beauty and the Beast,” last spring. Her work on the makeup and wigs from “Les Misérables” has also nominated her for the Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival’s Design, Technologies and Management Expo in Boise, Idaho, where she’ll compete in the makeup and design department. If she wins, she’ll get to compete nationally.
Kestler-Tobias left SRJC for several years, and found it hard at first to readjust to school life when she came back. “I really had to force myself to get up and go,” she recalled, although now she’s glad she had that experience. She started off in the SRJC Theatre Department’s 2011-2012 season, working in the productions of “Our Town” and “Sweeney Todd” as a makeup applier.
The next performance was “Beauty and the Beast,” where she was made assistant makeup artist to Maryanne Scozzari, the faculty makeup designer. She received her first nomination for her work in designing the mask for the titular Beast, including the prosthetics. She was the co-designer for “Legally Blonde,” and by “Les Misérables” was nominated the head makeup designer, where she received her second nomination and a chance to compete.
As far as Kestler-Tobias is concerned, the art of makeup and application is a sorely underrepresented and unappreciated art form for the theater. When she looks at other theater companies, she often finds openings for costume and set designers, but hardly any mention at all of makeup designers. And that’s a shame, because her past experiences have taught her that the design and application of makeup is incredibly important to make the show cohesive.
Obviously, good makeup is important for roles like the Beast, which infamously takes lots of work, but even the smallest of bit parts still need a bit of lip rouge and blush to combat the natural whitewashing effect of the spotlight. The world’s greatest actor can’t do much if the audience can’t see his face, after all. Makeup is also essential when one actor is playing two different roles in the same play, differentiating the two so audiences don’t get confused.
But makeup and design can do much more then accentuate features – they can also establish time periods and add to the authenticity of a scene. Adding dirt and grime to the beggars and prostitutes in “Les Misérables” allows the audience to immediately recognize the squalor and desperation they live in before the actors so much as open their mouths. It can even say something about a person’s character – in “Legally Blonde,” for example, Kestler-Tobias and her co-designer Roxie Johnson worked to make the already naturally blond actress of lead role Elle Woods even more stereotypically blond, and then gradually changed the design of her hair and makeup to better reflect Wood’s character progression throughout the play.
Designing the makeup can take more work then you’d think. The design for Marius and the other schoolboys in “Les Misérables,” for example, were all based off of French paintings and portraits from that time period, while the greedy Thenardiers had deliberately smudged make-up to accentuate their comedic roles. Kestler-Tobias was especially proud of the false beard she made for Mr. Thenardier as an in-universe disguise. The mask for the Beast was a combination of a boar, bear and wolf. Kestler-Tobias made the original cast of his face and designed the wig and the horns. Interestingly, she found the hardest part of designing makeup was making sure not to replicate what had come before in earlier productions, especially for “Les Misérables,” as the movie was also coming out. “It was hard,” she said, “but I tried. Sometimes, that’s just how they look.”
Kestler-Tobais is no longer a part of the SRJC Theatre Department, but still recalls her time there fondly. “Even when I hated it, I loved it,” she said. “[It was] crazy stressful, things going wrong, things breaking, and you get home, and you want to go back.”