By Keysha Drexel
Journal editor
While most girls her age would be horrified if their makeup made someone sick to their stomach, 17-year-old Shannon Pitts of Hoover says that is just the reaction she wants.
Pitts, a senior at Spain Park High School, is a student makeup artist in the theater department who’s making her mark on the stage in the most gruesome of ways.
“I love to create makeup effects that look like real wounds gushing with blood–the more gory it is the better,” she said. “I never want someone to say, ‘Oh, that looks nice,’ because the reaction I’m going for is a big, fat ‘Yuck!’”
Pitts’ interest in one of the more gory art forms springs from her interest in horror films.
The youngest of six children, Pitts said she has always loved scary movies.
“I started watching them when I was pretty young,” she said. “My older siblings would be watching horror movies, and I’d sneak in and watch them, too. My parents hate that I love those kind of movies so much, but now when I watch them, I can tell them I’m doing research.”
And while she’s been a horror movie fan for as long as she can remember, Pitts said her foray into the world of stage makeup began on a lighter note.
“Like most girls, I was fascinated with cosmetology and that kind of makeup,” she said. “I was always doing makeovers on my friends.”
But it wasn’t until she started taking theater classes during her freshman year at Spain Park that Pitts said she realized she could turn that passion for makeup into a career outside cosmetology.
Pitts’ older sister, Jessie, who incidentally is a contestant on “The Voice,” a reality television singing competition on NBC, was already involved with the theater department at Spain Park High and encouraged her younger sister to take some classes.
“It was very intimidating at first because I was walking into a class, into a department with so many talented people, and I wasn’t sure how I could use my makeup skills or how I would fit into the whole thing,” Pitts said.
But pretty soon, Pitts said, she felt right at home among the young thespians at Spain Park.
“The older students really guide the younger students, and they really helped me learn who I was and how to develop my talents,” she said.
Pitts said when she first started taking theater classes, her goal was to stay behind the scenes but knew the curriculum would call for her to step out of her comfort zone.
“I had absolutely no acting experience, no experience with building sets or making costumes, but I’ve learned all that at the same time I’ve been able to develop my stage makeup skills,” Pitts said. “We get a hands-on education in all aspects of staging a show.”
The Spain Park Theatre Department is under the direction of Eric St. John, a graduate of the University of Montevallo. He’s been teaching at the school since 2011.
His students affectionately call him “S.J.”
“S.J. has been a huge influence on me,” Pitts said. “He’s been a great supporter of my goal to be a makeup artist and has taught me so much about theater.”
St. John said he knows Pitts will be successful in the theater world because of her strong work ethic and willingness to learn.
“She’s a hard worker, and what that means to me is that she understands that success doesn’t happen overnight and that you have to develop your skills and keep learning,” he said. “And that kind of transcends theater. No matter what my students do next, I try to teach them that if you say you are going to do something, you do it and you do it to the very best of your abilities.”
St. John said Pitts is one of those students who steps up and embraces his philosophy as the theater instructor at Spain Park.
“I don’t teach high school theater,” he said. “I look at it more as running a theater company. I’m here to direct them, but I want them to be in charge of the set designs, to learn how to make the costumes themselves, to learn what it takes to put on a show from the ground up.”
To that end, Pitts said, she’s not only become skilled in stage makeup but has gotten pretty handy with a power drill, too.
“I think it’s important for us to learn about all aspects of theater, and even though I’m not really good at building sets, I keep trying anyway,” she said. “I know one day those skills will pay off and all the hard work will be worth it.”
Her attitude about the necessity of working to find success is another thing that makes Pitts a star student, St. John said.
“I’ve actually had kids come in on the first day of their first theater class and ask me how they can be a star,” he said. “It’s funny to me that a lot of kids come in and expect that they can achieve celebrity instantly. The reality is, to succeed in theater–or anything, really–it takes a lot of hard work and usually a lot of time. One of my favorite quotes on that is something to the effect that it takes 15 years to be an overnight sensation.”
While she has no illusions of instant stardom, Pitts said she does have big dreams and big goals for life after high school. When she graduates in May, she plans on attending Cinema Makeup School in Los Angeles.
“My sister wants to move out there to pursue her singing career, and so it will be cool to live out in California together while we both try to get our careers started,” Pitts said.
But before she finishes high school, Pitts said, she has a lot more work to do on her portfolio.
Right now, she’s working on creating masks and prosthetics based on “The Hobbit” for the district-level Trumbauer Theatre Festival, which will be held Nov. 1 at Pelham High School.
“I kind of taught myself how to do the foam and latex work to create the masks and prosthetics,” Pitts said. “Once I find a technique I want to master, I research it and research it and practice and practice until I perfect it.”
Pitts said one way she is getting lots of practice in her stage makeup techniques is through the special effects company she co-founded about a year ago.
“It’s called SPFXmakeup, and I started it with a Spain Park graduate, Phoebe Miller, who now works as a makeup artist at UAB Theatre, and Laura Byland, a makeup artist at Samford University,” Pitts said.
Pitts, Miller and Byland conduct special effects makeup workshops throughout the Birmingham metro area and have even traveled to Chattanooga to host a workshop for aspiring stage makeup artists.
The SPFX crew members also get a lot of practice in gruesome makeup techniques when they work with first responders in Huntsville and Montgomery during training simulations.
“The last one we did in Huntsville was at an airport, and the EMTs were training for how to respond to a plane crash, so we had to do makeup for 72 people in about an hour and a half that day,” Pitts said. “I had about two minutes to apply fake wounds to each person, and by the end of the day, I was covered from head to toe in fake blood and flesh.
“It was awesome.”
And while most self-professed “girlie-girls” would be disgusted by picking fake flesh out of their hair after a long day’s work, Pitts said it’s all part of a process and job she loves.
“I love to get dressed up and wear pretty clothes as much as the next girl,” Pitts said. “But what really makes me happy is creating something that just grosses people out because it looks so real.”
To see examples of Pitts’ work, visit http://shannon-pitts-pzbe.squarespace.com.ϖ
