When we created Steam Punk Mimes

My friend Wilri is one of those people that comes up with crazy projects and ideas. Before you know it you are swept up with this idea and there is nothing left to do but shut your eyes and roll with it. This specific project was one of those moments.

Looking back now, it came out rather good for the time we had to do it in.

To give a little background on what we were doing, at Pukke (North West Uni) they have a yearly Acapella competition, yes, like Pitch Perfect. Every “house” gets a group together and then they compete against each other before competing country wide. We became involved with the group from “De Wilgers”, we were instructed to turn them into steam punk mimes to match with their theme. Now on paper this seems simple enough, white face, dark eyes, red lips, done. However there is only a couple of types of Make Up that will make a face that white. We also learned through trial and error that the black and red must be done before we apply the white, otherwise it just turns into a grey mess. In short, imagine someone’s face as a colouring book, you can not go over the lines, especially with unforgiving colours like red, black and white and there are 25 faces. Suddenly not so simple anymore.

We had to paint these faces four times, and each time we only had a couple of hours to do it. Not to mention the touch ups, because boys sweat especially when they are dancing and singing under bright stage lights.

Oh yes, did I mention how tricky it was not get the beards white?

By the end of day four we were nothing more than Zombies with make up stained hands. But it was all worth it, listening to these boys singing and watching them practise. It really is something else to see a huge guy with muscles to spare break out in song and dance. It was like living in a real life musical. Unfortunately our Mimes fell out of the competition, otherwise we would have been painting faces all the way to Stellenbosch and back.

We had an amazing time getting to know these guys and once again Wirli’s crazy ideas paid off.

If you are looking for someone to change your crazy make up ideas into reality contact me and I will put you in touch with Wilri. Or just click on her name and message us on our Facebook page.