MCC student leads makeup design for Julius Caesar theatre production
Mesa Community College actress Gabrielle Monroe will shift from performing to designing as she leads the makeup and character design for Julius Caesar, opening Dec. 5 at the MCC Theatre.
Monroe is a student in the Theatre and Film Arts (TFA) program at MCC. While she has acted more, she has also gained experience from being a stage manager and a makeup designer for previous shows.
“I have done lots of different things, but right now my focus is more on the design element,” Monroe said.
She said her role in Julius Caesar allows her to create things that she is both interested in and good at. One of her projects is designing the eye makeup for the senators in the play.
The character designs and their symbolism
Throughout the play, the eyeliner worn by the senators will become more pronounced and “feathered out” to the point where they have smokey eyes.
“In the world of Julius Caesar, I decided that the eyeliner is like a standard senator piece,” she said, “almost like how judges wore white powdered wigs.”
The amount of eyeliner indicates degrees of corruption, she said, and alludes to the “cold, harsh world” that the production team has created for the play’s setting.
Monroe took inspiration from historical makeup, specifically Arabic kohl eyeliner. It is a natural charcoal powder that is applied with a metal rod to create a dramatic depth around the eyes.
She said she wanted to use something from the real world to represent the “smokeiness” and the dark theme of the play.
For the higher ranking government officials, Monroe used silicone molds to create prosthetic facial scars which are a status symbol. She said the more scars they have, the more experienced they are and the higher they rank.
The soldiers are at the bottom of the social pyramid, Monroe said, and will wear metal muzzles with chains that attach to their ears. “It’s indicated that they’re very much controlled by the government and people who are in charge,” she explained.
Monroe is currently in the process of designing bloodstained gloves and hand prosthetics for a few of the other characters.
The play is anachronistic, meaning that it is not set in a specific era. “These particular issues in the world aren’t tethered to a particular time,” Monroe said. “We ended up just building our own little world.”
How theatrical makeup is used for the play
According to her, the stage performers use a mixture of drugstore and professional makeup brands.
“In theatre, typically the actors use their own makeup and they do their own makeup,” she said. People in opera or higher levels of theatre often have their own makeup artist, she added.
Monroe posted a timelapse video on Instagram to demonstrate the contouring technique she used with foundation to create masculine features for her character Sir Bernard Humphries from the previous play The Explorer’s Club.
All theatre students must complete a mandatory makeup class, which covers sanitation and cleaning techniques, she said.
Balancing roles within the theatre production
Being the lead makeup designer and playing one of the characters at the same time would be too overwhelming, Monroe said. “But I definitely feel like this has kind of shown me what is expected from a theatre professional,” she said.
“We do like to encourage our students in the theatre department to experience lots of different opportunities,” said Adriana Diaz, technical theatre faculty at MCC.
Diaz mentors Monroe and other students in the design emphasis class as part of the TFA and technical theatre programs.
There are currently nine students in the class who each get to be a designer in different areas for every show.
“They don’t necessarily need to have experience designing, but they have to have the passion and show that they can handle the workload,” Diaz said.
Monroe said while there is an evident difference between acting and makeup designing, she enjoys doing both roles in the theatre.
The overall takeaway from the production
Julius Caesar written by William Shakespeare will be directed by former performance faculty member Kevin Dresser, according to Diaz.
Dresser, founder of Southwest Shakespeare, retired from MCC in 2023 and then returned this semester to direct the play.
The play has upcoming performance dates from early to mid-December. Tickets can be purchased online via PurplePass on the MCC website.
The MCC Theatre is located on the south side of the Southern and Dobson campus where free public parking is available nearby.
“From an actor’s perspective, opening night is just like any other day. But from a designer’s perspective, I’m pretty much done with everything I need to do,” Monroe said.
