When 900 years old you reach, look as good you will not.

My first time with aging makeup.

In 2006, I participated in the Houghton College Shakespeare Player's production of "As You Like It." I was a friend of the director, so I thought I had a pretty decent chance of getting a good role. (Hey, that's how it works in a student-run group.) And then at auditions, as I was reading one of the scenes for the lead, this tiny little background character jumped at me. His name was Adam, he was in his nineties, and he had an attitude. He also had stage time in about 4 scenes, with a total of around a dozen lines. I told the director I would rather play Adam than the romantic lead, by far. And when the cast list came out, I got Adam.

I figured out a new talk, higher than my natural, and scratchy and shaky. I taught myself how to shake and twitch. I learned to walk on a walking stick, more than just slightly hunched over. I became a slow-moving, decrepit, wheezy, belligerent old man. Friends who came to see the show didn't recognize me. And at curtain call, when I came out to the hoots and hollers of the crowd, I knew I had nailed it.

I also had a lot of fun creating the look for Adam. I figured out the best way to do aging makeup for the character, in our small auditorium. I had some experience adding crows' feet and darkening smile lines. This project required a whole lot more than that. I shaded my nose to make it more prominent, I shadowed in my eyes, to make them seem sunken. I added some subtle crepe-ing on the cheeks to remove any hint of a healthy glow. I even smeared dark makeup along the tendons and knuckles of my hands and bare feet. I have refined and re-used these same basic makeup techniques on many occasions since, some of which will surely show up on this blog.

I also bleached my hair for this show. A friend of mine (visible in the picture above; she later went on to play Puck in "A Midsummer Night's Dream," when I co-directed) wore her hair bleachy white, and I figured that would help my character along... How wrong I was. Well, to be fair, it did make the white cream stuff they put in my hair for performances that much more effective. But if you look at pictures of me from before this show and then pictures of me after this show, you can clearly see that my hair has never forgiven me. But then, if you saw my dad's shiny head, you would know it's only a matter of time anyway. I think I just accelerated it.