Tuesday, March 19, 2019
The Art of Designing Black Hair for the Stage
Theatre Development Fund – TDF: Looking at Cookie Jordan's extensive New York City stage credits, it seems like she's the go-to hair and wig designer for productions with predominantly black casts. After all, her résumé includes Eclipsed, Once on This Island, Choir Boy, An Octoroon, Fairview, Sugar in Our Wounds and School Girls; Or, The African Mean Girls Play, which earned her a Drama Desk Award nomination. But Jordan will not be pigeonholed. "I did Sunday in the Park with George, too," she says. "Of course I can do Caucasian hair -- my training is in opera!"
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
4 comments:
This article was particularly interesting to me because I am very intrigued by the art behind hair/wig design, and I want to learn more about it. As someone who can’t personally identify with the nuances of the black community and what it is like to style black hair, I really want to learn more about it so that in the future, when I am in the circumstance of having to style black hair, I can do it right. I really like what Sitole said: “I've always valued the notion that your hair is your crown, and Cookie has given us the ultimate symbols of black girl royalty." I know that hair and what you do with it is a very important part of many different cultures, so it’s nice to see someone so devoted to making sure actors’ hair is being designed in the best way possible. Attention to detail and the ability to empower actresses through the way their hair looks is incredibly important and it sounds like Cookie Jordan is doing an amazing job at it.
This article was so informative to me because neither do I have any knowledge about hair/wigs in general nor am I aware of the nuances of styling black hair.
Hair and wigs play such an important role in transforming actors to the characters that they are playing on stage. They can literally make or break the effect of the character. That is why it is so paramount to achieve the scope the hair and wig in a production.
In addition to that, this article accurately points out the importance of handling and portraying black hair to its reality, in a time and age where awareness is in the minds of everyone and misrepresentation is not a path that anyone wants to walk on. This article accurately articulates this importance in the most appreciative way, which is extremely respectful to everyone.
I feel like this article has done a good job in capturing the reality of this aspect.
I love how this designer approaches hair with the knowledge of how to style black hair but also the knowledge of the cultural and personal significance of expression through hair. Hair is a really important part of transforming a character and I think there are still many designers out there who do not know how to style non-white hair. I hope that in the process of education about wigs and hair styling, designers at top schools are taught about these nuances. I also like how this opens up the conversation about how it hair is an important aspect of identity, but especially the identity of people of color. This is because of the suppression of other avenues of expression, but also it is as a rebellion against the efforts of white people to force assimilation of people of color. Wearing natural hair or returning to the specific styles that have been looked down on in the past is something that has recently come back from this assimilation and is a really important aspect of design, especially when the character you are designing is written for a person of color. Their experience and understanding of their identity can be expressed through their hair and I think that is a really cool tool to have as a designer.
Reading this article, it makes me so happy that topics like this are becoming more discussed in theatre. This has been a huge problematic topic for me just because not many people are interested in learning, or are just scared to learn, how to style black hair. Especially in the hair and makeup world, I have seen some truly fucked up hairstyles on black people in shows and found out it’s because of a non-educated stylist. In the past decade, a huge push for black people to wear their natural hair and not assimilate into white culture of having to relax your hair to look “respectable.” It has transformed into being able to wear your hair ANY way you like without judgement or discrimination. The topic of wigs/weaves in the article is talked and discussed in the perfect way because people overcomplicate it. It is another way of expression through hair and should be treated as another accessory to whatever head it is on.
Post a Comment