I have always managed to take a week's holiday from work to be able to concentrate on show week, which meant that I did not have to be quite so rigorous with my make up removal, or hair styling. I have hair that behaves better if I don't wash it every day, so I tended to try and keep whatever style was required in place for as long as possible. Sometimes this meant coming home to have my hair done up in rags or rollers as soon as I got in, and sleeping in them, and leaving them in till the last minute the following day. I have friends who bemoan their wavy hair, but mine is straight and won't hold a curl without being bullied into doing so, and I don't begin to understand what they have to complain about!
We also used greasepaint when I started out, the joys of Spotlite Klear Peach Special by Leichner! Which went on beautifully but was a devil to get off, with lashings of liquid paraffin and cold cream; body make up was a coloured liquid, based on calomine lotion, which dried your skin. If you didn't have a combination skin when you started, you did by the end of the week. It was also worth making sure you had your oldest sheets and towels available for use, as no matter how good you were at cleansing, the make-up had seeped into your pores and you would wake in the morning to find smears of bright orange on your pillow. By the second production, when I had to use a darker make up as a Puerto Rican girl, pancake make-up which was applied with a wet sponge had arrived, and that was much easier to get on smoothly and to wash off. It still took about an hour of layering coat after coat of it on to get the right shade under the stage lights (you couldn't do it at home, because you always looked washed out as soon as you went into a properly lit stage.)
The luxury of time away from work also meant that I had time to spend socialising, and we often went for lunch together during the week, or to dinner all together on the Friday night after the show, which meant the crew could come along too, with nothing that needed to be done to finish up. Our local Chinese restaurant would stay open for us, knowing that at least 20 people would be ordering a full meal even if it was after eleven when most of us got there. Nowadays it is more common to visit an Indian or Chinese restaurant, but the choices were more limited in the 1970's, although there were a lot more pubs around, most of them only served food up until 9pm at the latest and their menus were of the steak and chips variety.
As West Side Story was my first show as an adult I was not really prepared for the gift giving between my fellow thespians, and I don't remember what I bought as gifts at that time. I think it was sweets, probably tubes of love hearts, or balsa wood planes for my fellow “Jets”. Later I got more creative with my ideas, and found tubes of American hard gums for my Shark friends, along with toy sharks, various pencils and erasers on a shark theme, and some other bits that arose from jokes and events at rehearsals. There was a tendency to name dance steps after food, and croissants (entrechats, if I remember rightly) and potato in a basket (pas de basque) made their appearances in the gifts that were given between dance partners.
Next time..... some gift suggestions
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