BRENNA MCGATHEY

Hair and Makeup Designer

BFA Theatre Design and Technology

bgmcgathey@bsu.edu (773)-251-6871

Brenna is a Hair and Makeup Designer from Chicago, IL. Her areas of focus include avant-garde, SFX, and body painting. Some of her past show credits include She Kills Monsters: Virtual Realms (Ball State University), The Wolves (Ball State University), Sweeney Todd (IHSTF All-State). Besides design work, Brenna has worked several children's theatre camps in the Chicagoland area and is VIRTUS certified. Hair and Makeup have become Brenna's passion in life, using it to transform beauties into beasts and creating magic and art.

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Why do you do theatre?

I do theatre because it's the closest thing to magic we have in the real world. Through theatre, I am able to create worlds and people and don't even live in the minds of the most imaginative people. Through my area of focus, I can transform people into their wildest dreams or their worst nightmare, and I think that is true magic. Especially in today's world, theatre is one of the best ways to escape and find new worlds. That is what originally drew me in. The spark of magic that fluttered in my chest when I saw my first musical as a child, it was the most incredible feeling and I never wanted to part with it. Discovering that there was more to theatre than just performing was like finding Narnia in the back of the closet, only in this case the closet was the stage and Narnia was backstage. To this day I still get that flutter in my chest every time I see a show and when it's my design I get to see on stage, it's an explosion of magic.

Inspiring moment?

When I was a senior in high school, I was chosen to be on the costume crew for the Illinois High School Theatre Festival production of Sweeney Todd. At this point, I knew I wanted to pursue something in theatre, and my director at school really pushed me to interview for the selective theatre company. When I was chosen, I realized that this was the first time that I was being recognized for my design work rather than performing. This was my first experience working on a large scale production with the best of the best students in Illinois. I was nervous and scared to mess up, but what it told me was that I was chosen because my art and talents were valid and worthy to work among the best in the state. I come back to this experience a lot as a reminder that when I had little to no experience as a designer or makeup artist I was chosen out of all the students from the state who interviewed and that I have made so much growth from when I was just a scared seventeen-year-old who had no idea what they were getting into.

Community Engagement?

For the past eight years, I have worked with different theatre camps and organizations for children in my home city. I think that it's incredibly important to teach and expose children to theatre arts. In this time, I've been able to see some of these children grow up and turn into super talented and well-rounded theatre students. We have all been able to see these children become more confident in their performances and art but also their everyday lives. Community engagement and getting children involved with theatre has always been something super important to me. I would want nothing more in the world than to be the person that gave a child the spark and inspiration to want to pursue theatre.