During Pretty Woman: The Musical, the cast sings, dances, jumps and flips—and their wigs stay perfectly in place. You’ve probably never thought about what a feat that is for a Broadway show. “I always say that the beauty and curse of a wig person is that if we do our jobs well, no one knows we are there,” says Victoria Tinsman, Wig and Makeup Supervisor of Pretty Woman: The Musical. “No one is going to be saying, ‘oh look at that wig.’ The whole point is that it’s not a wig, it’s their own hair up there. I like to say if you don’t notice my work we are doing a good job.”
There are 60 wigs in Pretty Woman: The Musical and about 100 total because of all the understudies that play the different characters. “Josh Marquette is our wig designer, so all of the looks in the show are designed by him and then my team and I make them come to life,” Tinsman says. “He used the movie as a guideline and then did some more modern pieces. Depending on what each character needed, he styled each wig to fit their face in particular. If there was a style a certain way in the movie, he would transform it to make it work for the stage.” Once the show opened, Marquette’s job was done and now it’s Tinsman and her team doing everything backstage, from styling all of the wigs to helping the cast with their wig changes. “It’s our job to make sure the wigs are washed, styled and looking perfect for eight shows a week,” Tinsman says. “We are there for the entire show for all the wig changes. Every time someone exits the stage, they are usually getting their wig changed and we do all of that for them.”
A lot more goes into styling a wig than you’d expect. Wigs are built on a foundation, so you have to be careful not to damage the foundation during styling. “Regular hair that’s on a human head is constantly being nourished by the oils in the scalp,” Tinsman says. “Wigs don’t have that luxury—that’s where products like Kenra come in. Using a curling iron on a wig, the hair is going to get damaged a lot more than on a human head because it doesn’t have that daily oil replenishment, so we have to make that happen with product.”
Kenra is the official hair partner of the show, and Tinsman and her team use Kenra Shine Spray and Daily Defense Oil on every wig to replenish the oils. “We also use a lot of their Fast-Dry Hairspray—it’s very flexible and doesn’t get hard or buildup. With other hairsprays that are very strong we would have to wash the wigs more often. It has enough hold so you don’t see a lot of flyaways onstage. On a lot of our updos, we use the Diamond Deflect Spray because it has a nice shine and a good hold, and doesn’t dull hair. I use the Heat Protectant Thermal Spray on basically all of the wigs that we use a curling iron on; it protects the cuticle and hair from breaking. Every time I wash a wig I use a hair strengthening mousse; it’s anti-breakage and helps keep the hair a bit stronger. We like using their Clarifying Shampoo to get any excess product out of the wigs after we wash them.”
The wigs are styled much the same way that regular hair is. “The usual techniques are pretty much the same,” Tinsman says. “We still use blowdryers, curling irons and one thing we do a lot more in theater that you don’t do much anymore in a salon is we use rollers. Anything we can achieve by a roller we would prefer to do because it keeps the hair happy and healthy for longer.” Take Vivian’s wigs, for example, who is the show's title role, played by Samantha Barks. (And Julia Roberts in the movie.) The character’s big curly wig gets washed once a week or every other week depending on how it holds up. It is set into pincurls every night and then Tinsman freshens it up with a curling iron before the show. Tinsman and her team arrive an hour before the half hour call before curtain, when actors are called to get ready. They restyle all the wigs that need a touch up. “If any updo has to come down and go back up, in that hour I’m working on that,” Tinsman says. “Samantha Barks wears six wigs in the show, so I am touching up all of those wigs every night. Once the half hour before the show hits, we have different wig call times when the actors come into the hair room to get their wigs on.”
To prepare their hair for the wigs, the cast does a wig prep. For Pretty Woman: The Musical, the ensemble does their own wig prep and Tinsman does the principals’. Essentially, they put their hair in a whole set of pin curls. In small sections, they wrap a piece of hair around the finger and lay it flat on head and put two bobby pins in it. This is done to the entire head so that their hair is laying flat. Next, they put a wig cap over it, and that is pinned to the pin curls so you have a base to pin the wig to. Finally, the wig goes on the head and hair pins are used to secure the foundation to the wig prep that was just created. “If good pinning is done, they can do flips, dance, flip their hair back and forth, and we shouldn’t have any issue,” Tinsman says. “If they rush and do a fast wig prep it won’t be as tight and that’s when you come into problems with wigs being loose. Luckily, on this show we have not had a wig emergency. That is a wig person’s worst nightmare.”
Another challenging part of the job is the speedy changes backstage. “I think people would be surprised to know how quickly some of the changes happen back there,” Tinsman says. “When Samantha Barks exits the stage we have about 30 seconds to change her shoes, wig, costume, jewelry—it’s very much like a well-choreographed dance backstage because everyone needs to be doing exactly what they need to be doing all at the same time without getting in each other’s way. There’s one change that happens in the show, when Vivian is going from her hooker outfit to when she’s dressed up to go to the club, and we have dressers zipping her dress, two people changing each shoe, people changing her wig—there are five people all in one small area, all hands on deck. When she exits the stage it’s like a Nascar race where they change the tires on Samantha. The audience doesn’t even realize she has completely changed because it happens so quickly.” But for Tinsman, it’s just part of the job she loves. She says, “I basically get to play for work all day.”
