[0:07]Welcome to this performance of Disney Beauty and the Beast. We all delighted you're here.
[0:32]Here we are backstage at Marina Bay Sands. Now come with me and be our guest.
[0:41]Hello, I'm Brendan and I play the Beast in Disney's Beauty and the Beast the musical here in Singapore. I've arrived obscenely early to the theater, so I think I leave myself around an hour and a half to get ready before the makeup goes on. Hi, my name is Shubshri Kandiah and I play Belle in Disney's Beauty and the Beast. This is not everyone, but I like to get here as late as possible. So, we're called an hour before the show starts and I'll get here five minutes before that to slap on a very quick bit of makeup and get to warm up.
[1:15]The first thing wardrobe does is we have two local staff that are probably the earliest people in. They start at 9:00 every morning and they come and do all the washing. That have been used in the previous show to get it ready for the next show. Me, I come in at about midday and the first thing I do is look through, we have a maintenance book which the local dresses write. If anything's been broken or caught on a piece of set and torn, we fix that ready for the next show.
[1:46]So, this is Jackson's Gaston wig, my favorite in the show. So he's just like a simple pony and then like a nice fringe. So this wig will get redressed every day because he's got quite a physical track, so he's moving his head a lot, he flips upside down, gets quite messy. So we usually call like one to five hours before the show depending on how much maintenance we need to do. Last count, I think we have about 200 wigs including like facial hair and all of that kind of stuff. The most maintenance, I would say either like from start to finish, I would say a Madame wig, because it needs to be steamed straight and then set, steamed again, and then dressed, so it takes a while. Or a Beast wig.
[2:35]What was our record? Our record's under five minutes.
[2:40]Yeah, there was a time that we want to like hit the record for mostly like 10 minutes, 10 to 12.
[2:51]Applying this prosthetic nose is very important part. This prosthetic needs to come out during the show for quick change. So we need to put just enough amount of glue that make Brendan feel comfortable. But then also we can take it off easily during the quick change. As a person, I'm, I, I get a bit like self-conscious and shy. But then once the makeup goes on me, I feel like there's sort of like a barrier that goes on to me that um separates me from people. Which then makes me feel more comfortable to play the character and like be angry and scary and getting people's faces because it doesn't feel like me anymore. And this is my favorite part now. Get to put on the wig and they put it on my head very gently, very nicely. Then I get to sort of adjust it. Find my very intact hairline and and make sure it's very straight. How's that, Min? Beautiful. And I do this very strange thing that every time that my wig is set, what do I do Min? Double tap. I double tap my horns every time. But I think it just um signifies that I'm done and I'm like happy with the position that it's in. The last thing we need to do is the gloves. Once these go on, it feels different. It feels like it's now a bit of a claw, you know, which is great. When we first arrive in the theater, the first thing we do is turn on all our lighting and video equipment. So we have over 110 of these uh lights in our lighting rig and each of these lights you can see can change color, they can change shape, size, pattern. So we have 49 different attributes in these and every day when we come in for the show, we've got to check every single one of those.
[4:39]Every single light's important in the production. We want to make sure that they're all functioning properly. My role on the show is an interesting one. The easiest way I can describe it is it's kind of like a understudy for the crew. I cover 16 different roles across four different departments. They can't be on site for the show. I step in and do the job so that the show goes on. We call off of a script here which tells us everything that we need to say during the show. Basically sounds like us telling all the operators what they need to do. So we'll say LX go, which means to talk to the lighting operator or automation go or flies go. Um and it all happens in time with the music that we follow along with the music and the script, so that everything happens with perfect timings. I'm the musical director for Beauty and the Beast, which means I'm the conductor of the show. The orchestra can't see the stage and the actors can't see the musicians. So I'm sort of like a conduit between what's happening on stage, making sure that the music accompanies and lines up with the things that are happening on stage. And it's lovely at the end of the show, we often get a lot of the audience coming down looking into the orchestra pit.
[5:52]A lot of times when you have to work that closely with with an actor, when you audition for the show, you generally have to have like a chemistry test, but we didn't have that. And on the very first table read, we just had this kind of magical kind of connection, and we've become very, very good friends. Uh, we get on each other's nerves. We're people think that we're like a married couple. It's very funny, but we get along famously. Honestly, I think when you put the costumes on you can't help but feel like, you know, costumes, wig, makeup, that is just transformative in itself. It is our final stop of the tour of a two and a half year long tour. I think it's just enjoying every moment.
[6:35]We're done. We're ready for a show.
[6:42]Please silence your phones, the Beauty and the Beast Orchestra will be conducted by Luke Hunter. Enjoy the show.
