Interview: J. Jared Janas On Designing Broadway Characters Down to the Hair

Setting: Seven days a week, on Broadway. The lights drop, the low roar of the audience’s rousing anticipation shifts to a light rumble as they hurriedly take their seats. In complete darkness, a final pattering of spirited whispers disperses throughout the crowd, replaced by a great stillness as the entire theater collectively holds their breath. As the lights illuminate the stage and the cast is revealed, that’s the moment Wig, Hair, & Make-Up Designer J. Jared Janas’ storytelling comes to life.

You may not have known his name, but you have appreciated Janas’ amazing work as it has been center stage from the rise of the curtain to the final curtain call of many of Broadway’s most beloved and honored productions. Over his career he has designed over 700 shows. Quite the resume. While the hundreds of live on in his memories others are memorialized in a more tangible form, through tattoos that literally make up his body of work. 

Last year alone the work of Janas and his dedicated team at Backstage Artistry graced the stage in four very different Tony-nominated productions: Sean Hayes’ tour-de-force “Goodnight Oscar,” the long-awaited Broadway revival of “Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street,” the incredibly popular pop music-infused Shakespeare reimagining “& Juliet,” and the story of a dysfunctional suburban from New Jersey family, the winner of Best Musical, “Kimberly Akimbo.”

With an incredible 28 Tony nominations between those four shows you would expect to have heard Jared’s name in a list of nominees honored during the awards ceremony. Unfortunately, the only way he can currently be mentioned at the Tonys is if a fellow nominee were to thank him at the mic during an acceptance speech. The reason behind that injustice is shockingly simple, as a wig designer (and make-up artist), the Tonys currently do not directly honor the work with an individual award. Scenic Design, Costume Design, Lighting Design, and Sound Design are all recognized, but not hair and makeup design.

As a patron of the theatrical arts, to learn of the omission is enough to make you want to pull my hair out. The art of wig and makeup design transports audiences through time and worlds both fantasy and real. A masterful wig can transform a character or even break our hearts as accomplished by Janas’ work in a pivotal moment of Kimberly Akimbo. When I attended the play, that key moment (which I will not reveal) made the audience gasp and even shed tears – an emotional tidal waver generated by the perfect wig.

The craft behind one such wig is probably an after thought of most audience members like myself. I had thought they were made in a factory on an automated production line and that only a couple cast members would wear wigs for a production and that they were interchangeable among the cast members, if needed. I was wrong on all accounts and more. During my conversation with Jared and his team, what I learned about the craft, the skill and passion of making wigs made the idea of omitting their work from the honors only more perplexing.

Luckily, Janas takes the omission of the category from the Tony categories in stride. While extremely proud of his contribution to the art form, Janas’ biggest honor is seeing it come to life through the actresses and actors who use his work to take audiences on a journey on the stages on and off Broadway.

“I love being part of theater, because I get to do so without being the person on stage. I still get to tell a story. I help to create this whole narrative – to create this world.” Jared is the owner of New York’s Backstage Artistry, a providing make-up, hair, and wig design for theater, television, and film. that has – har makeup wigs. Forget any stuffy preconceptions you may have for a wig designer, Janas is popping with rockstar style and would fit in on stage with just about any rock or punk band. To be honest, it was slightly intimidating when first meeting him, but was quickly put at ease with his warm, inviting personality and passion for his craft.

Born and raised in Chicago, Janas did not have access to the bright lights of Broadway. He was the son of immigrants, his father born in a Nazi labor camp. “As is the case today, a lot of immigrants don’t have a ton of money, you know. So the arts weren’t exactly accessible to us.” Instead of a direct path to the creative work he does today, Janas followed the only path he knew, mathematics – a career he pursued for eleven years.

That path took an unexpected turn thanks to a small complaint Janas made about having nothing to do as he waited to graduate – a complaint that changed his life forever. Due to that throwaway comment, a friend offered him the chance to help out with a Chicago theater production of “Assassins.” The next day he arrived at the theater unsure of what he could offer knowing his lack of access to the arts left him, to that point, without a creative bone in his body, no born talent, no formal artistic training. His first assignment, hair and makeup.

It was fate. Three weeks before graduating, Jared had an epiphany. “I called my mother up and I said, ‘Oh, my God, I made a terrible mistake. This is what I want to do. This is incredible.’” The rest is Broadway history.  

The wig designs Janas creates speak for themselves when witnessed on stage and only becomes more impressive when learning some of the details behind their creation. Their production house is located steps away from the Great White Way. Behind the unassuming doors are piles of books for inspiration and research of different periods of hairstyles, a plethora of various tools of the craft, rolls of cloth, walls stacked with molds of individual actor’s scalps directly built on to ensure an exact fit and of course lots and lots of hair. 

The character coiffures Janas designs are much more than hair pieces, they are designed to help define a character, to tell a story all their own. That story often begins with the extensive research Janas performs into accurate styles of period/place. While it may be tough to tell when watching in-person, in some Broadway productions just about every cast member is wearing a hair piece, each one specifically designed for them at a time – there are no shortcuts.

The vast majority of the hair used in each design is sourced human hair, weaved into an incredibly fine mesh, BY HAND, strand after strand after strand – it’s quite labor-intensive. Janas could not say exactly how many hairs we in each wig, but online estimates say from 10,000 to over 50,000 per wig. He did share that it takes anywhere from 40 to 100 hours to build each wig, one or two hairs at a time.

It is both a craft and an art form – one that requires patience, passion, and precision to create hair perfection. Without all traits on that list a stage-worthy wig would simply not be possible. This is especially the case when using the more delicate HD mesh (the finer lace wig based to which all the individual hair strands are weaved – named for its ability to be undetectable even on HD televisions). These are used for the most prominent roles where it is crucial the hairpiece is not noticed and are more susceptible to damage if not handled by professionals like Cassie Williams and Tony Lauro (pictured below)- who I was lucky enough to meet and see in action.

In most situations the hair is delivered to the team perfectly straight, then is cut and treated to match the hair qualities needed for the character – wavy, curls, coily, ragged. It differs from character to character, be it a princess or a pauper, a socialite or a talk show host, in the 1960s or a land of make believe, each production and furthermore each character’s needs are analyzed and designed specifically for them.

The development of a character’s look often starts on his iPad where Janas sketches out hair and makeup concepts that he can reference and share even before a strand of hair is touched or a brush of makeup is applied. His close collaboration with the director, the costume designer, and, most frequently, the actors themselves help ensure a shared vision across transformations.

As theatre fans know, the show must go on. With new productions comes new opportunities for Janas to put his skills to work. Over the last six months alone he has worked on a plethora of new shows including: “Buena Vista Social Club at the Atlantic Theater,” “Purlie Victorious” and “Prayer for the French Republic” on Broadway, “Gun & Powder” at Paper Mill Playhouse, “Once Upon a Mattress” and “Jelly’s Last Jam” at City Center Encores, the national tour of “Clue”and “Peter Pan,” and the new musical version of “Beaches.” The hope is that many of these move to Broadway soon. One production that recently made that leap addition to “Mary Jane,” starring Rachel McAdams which opened on Broadway on April 25th at Samuel J. Friedman Theatre. (Read more about “Mary Jane” and in-depth excerpts from my conversation with Jared about show specifics (below.)

Long after the runs of each production conclude, Jared’s work lives on in the memories of the audiences who had the opportunity to experience a diabolical barber making mincemeat of the locals, an empowered Juliet putting her own spin on a Shakespeare classic, the trials of a very talented man battling his demons on live TV, or a coming-of-age story that defies age. The characters Janas helped bring to life make memories. And with each new Broadway season more of his wig and makeup designs help to tell new tales and create new artistic memories. Not too bad for an ambitious mathematician with a dream. 

Hopefully soon, Janas, his Backstage Artistry team, and his peers whose hair, wig and makeup work physically transforms actors into an array of characters will be honored with their own, more tangible and formal acknowledgment of their labors, a time to receive their own trophies and accolades on the Tony stage. 

As of this week, you can contribute to the cause. Just this week a petition was created to push for The American Theater Wing add a Best Wig/Hair category and a Best Makeup category into the Tony Awards. When you read about all that goes into the craft, it is a no-brainer. You can sign the quickly growing list of petition signers here.

An Up Close Look at the Work of
J. Jared Janas

Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street

With “Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street,” Janas’ approach to designing the looks was not as straightforward as thumbing through a history book and matching the hairstyles of the time. “Originally they wanted to do the 1830s,” said Janas. “What we wound up doing was really more like, between the 1830s and 1890s.” The thinking behind the creative decision was rooted in expectations over accuracy. “The issue was not going to be creating them for the stage,” he said, “it was going to be convincing every actor that this is exactly what it’s supposed to look like, because a 1830s hairstyle was not going to be pretty on their faces.”

He felt more of the cast would benefit from wearing hairstyles closer to the 1870s instead of the 1890s – something everyone agreed on. Ultimately it was less important to design for period accuracy instead focusing on creating a look “through the lens of today.” “Sweeney Todd” is a bloody Tale of Two Cities of sorts, a story of the have and the have-nots so it was crucial that the hairstyle matched the social class of the character. Part of director Thomas Kail’s process was letting the actors develop their character, choosing for themselves who was going to be more down and out, the hungriest citizens of London and who would be more well off.

“We didn’t know which characters which actors were going to be in which camp,” recalled Janas. “So, for that reason, I needed to create designs before they came up with that information. I actually designed, for each person, the make-up looks of both the upper class and the lower class. I sketched them all out on my iPad – for everybody on the cast, I have two sketches. The actors were really good about embracing the looks that I had created and then took minor liberty to make it something that makes sense to themselves through their own lens.”

The collaboration continued right onto the lead performers. Annaleigh Ashford had to step into some massive shoes when taking on the role of Mrs. Lovett, a character previously played by big wigs like Angela Lansbury and Helena Bonham Carter. “We wanted to pay a little bit of homage to two iconic characters,” explained Janas, “but we didn’t want to duplicate either one of those looks.”

The three time Tony-nominated actress’s vision was instrumental when creating the character’s look, one that transformed over the two acts along with the character. “Annaleigh really had a very specific image in mind for the texture of her hair. Her exact words were ‘Bernadette Peters hair brushed out,’” recalled Janas. Using the direction Ashford provided he came up with the perfect look for when the audience first meets Mrs. Lovett as she is baking her less than appetizing pies. His goal was to make her hairstyle “something quick and easy” and “she gets it up and out of the way” appropriate for working in a kitchen – “ and does it in a kooky way because she’s just a kooky woman.”

A long swoopy bang was incorporated serving dual purposes; it would often get in the way, allowing Ashford to clear it out of the way with comic precision. “It also allowed her to bring some of it down for flirtatious things she needs to do with it,” explained Janas.

As the character transforms for act two, so did her hairstyle. “We needed to show that this woman is now thinking about her looks, and is thinking about her hair,” said Janas. “It’s not just getting it out of the way, it needed to be more of a professional look.

“We wanted to create a style that was like no other style we’ve ever seen before. While it was still a little wonky, it’s still not period perfect – because she doesn’t fit into any period, but yet clearly is an updo. And her makeup also changes a little bit too just to show that she’s really thinking about how she looks now.” Annaleigh’s hairstyle was just one of the reasons she stole scene after scene, walking away with a much-deserved Tony nomination.

“Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street” is currently playing at the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre, ending its run on May 5th with eight Tony nominations and two wins. Tickets are now on sale.

Makeup work by J. Jared Janas w/ John Groban

KIMBERLY AKIMBO

Up until Janas worked on “Assassins” he thought that theater was all about being an enormous spectacle of a production. “It’s such a joy to me to get to work on shows that are not gigantic spectacles because they really can be incredibly special. And “Kimberly Akimbo” is that story – it is that musical. It’s just wonderful to see a little show like this win the Tony for Best Musical, because in my opinion it is the best musical I’ve seen. There’s something so special about “Kimberly Akimbo,” said Janas.

“The thing about this story is that not only is it 1999, New Jersey, with all of the New Jersey references in it, it’s also a family that’s constantly on the run. They’re, let’s say not what you would call the most high class of people, they’re poor and they’re on the run. It’s not like they’re bringing a ton of makeup with them from place to place. They’re not bringing all their beautiful hair brushes and everything – they’re sort of using what they have in the moment. So that all is part of the equation when we’re trying to figure out what to do with them.”

Our character, Pattie (Alli Mauzey) starts out having just had carpal tunnel surgery on both wrists, she’s in casts. So we have to decide ‘what does her hair look like when she can’t possibly do it on her own?’ Well, my storyline is that her daughter, Kim (Victoria Clark – who won the Tony for her work) does her hair – brushes her hair in the morning, and then just leaves. This is very simple. What can a 16 year old girl do with her mom’s hair, right? It’s the same length that Jennifer Aniston had, that length of the 90s. It’s a bit of an awkward length, and there’s not not a ton to do with it and it’s got bangs. That’s how we came up with Pattie’s hair, just trying to figure out what Kim would do with it.” 

“When it came to Bonnie Milligan’s hair. That was really a lot easier to come up with. She’s homeless, living in a library. But before that she was living in a forest, we already know that stuff going into it. It’s just literally hair that she could fall asleep with a wake up and just kind of put on water and and go because that’s all she’d ever be able to do with that hair. Also for the color we actually tried to go in and be like, ‘Okay, how can we make this color look like she somehow got our hands on a box to dye,’ but yet not look so ridiculous that you are distracted by it. We came up with a formula for actually coloring her hair to make it look so strangely self-done in a school bathroom or a McDonald’s parking lot or whatever.”

At the center of this musical is the titular character, Kimberly Akimbo and her look was crucial to selling its main concept of a girl who has physically aged much older than her teen years. “Kim is the interesting one because Vicki (Clark) has to play a character who’s 16 years old, as somebody who’s in her 60s, right? So she has to bring about this 16 year old energy. We have to believe that she’s 16 – she has to disappear into the world so that we no longer believe we’re looking at Vicky Clark – now we’re looking at a 16 year old girl.“

As you would expect, much discussion revolved around how to approach Kimberly’s hair. “We did fight with it a little bit. Originally, we wanted to do shorter hair on her because how many 16 year old girls really have very, very long hair. When you get to high school, that’s when you start cutting it off,” explained Janas. “I was just trying wigs on for color purposes on Vicky, and one just happened to be a long wig. Once we saw her in the mirror, we’re like, ‘Oh wait, hold on a second. No, this is really good.’ Because it really brings her down into an age that somewhere we can start believing from the physical aspect that she’s 16 and it was a really cool immediate transformation. We actually stuck with it. That was a happy happy accident.” 

The biggest challenge was still ahead of Janas and his collaborators. “Figuring out her color was the hardest part,” he admitted. “We figured her condition probably made her gray a little bit. So we had to put some gray in it, but we didn’t want it to be shockingly gray. I’ll leave it at that. It also needed to look like she didn’t have the money to get it colored. That means she probably had a color that she wasn’t going to necessarily love – one that normally people would consider dying.” The musical is charming, funny, and emotional – in part thanks to the work of Janas and his team. 

“Kimberly Akimbo” is currently playing at the Booth Theatre, ending its run on April 28th, after earning eight Tony Award nominations and five wins, including Best Musical Best and Best Leading Actress in a Musical and Best Featured Actress in a Musical for the aforementioned Victoria Clark and Bonnie Milligan, respectively.

& JULIET

“& Juliet” is a pop-music twist on the story of Romeo & Juliet that starts by asking the question, “What if Juliet didn’t die?” It is part Shakespeare, part laugh out loud comedy and part boy band/Britney Spears era pop concert, complete with a slew of dancing. “One of the things that was so clear to me was how cohesively the whole show was designed, there was so much collaboration, in sets, lights, costumes, wigs, direction, sound that when you see the show, it just looks so cohesive. It is one of my favorite shows to watch, because of how cohesive it looks. You see how the costume would relate to the sets and how the sound and the lights work together and you see how it all happens.” 

The musical was taps into a time period all its own. “The nice thing about this show is that it’s not set today, it’s not set in Shakespeare’s time, but it does take the storyline centers around a time when Shakespeare was alive, but clearly is not at the same time at that time.” explained Janas. “We were able to use modern day influences with touches of the Romans from back in Shakespeare’s days, to create all of the styles in the show including for the costume and the hair as well.”

The unique setting allowed Janas to be a bit more creative than many other projects that have a more defined setting. “The nice thing about the makeup is that it’s really a fun show for modern day looks as well as possibly looks to two years from now future looks like,” he said. “We also get to incorporate so many fun colors into this, which most shows do not allow me to do that. I have fun, bright, bright, unnatural reds and unnatural oranges, a little bit of blue, purple, yellow, some nice deep burgundy wine colors. I let my creativity run with it.”

When it came to Juliet, the inspiration came from the actress portraying her, but that still left him with challenges. “Juliet, Lorna Courtney, has great hair of her own,” shared Janas. “It’s quite large, it’s curly, it’s beautiful. We didn’t want to change the way she looks – we love the way she looks. But the reality is that using your own hair eight shows a week could be incredibly damaging.”

“So we made a wig that looks like her own hair basically and then we style it the way we want. This way she has no damage to her hair,” explained Janas. “The wig becomes part of her that she is not thinking about her hair. She’s thinking about what she has to do to perform, and that’s what I want for every character.” Oops he did it again.

“& Juliet” is currently playing at the Stephen Sondheim Theatre. It received nine nominations including Best Musical and Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role in a Musical for the aforementioned Lorna Courtney. Tickets are now on sale.

GOODNIGHT, OSCAR

Goodnight, Oscar a comedy drama set in the late 1950 and starred Sean Hayes in a powerhouse performance that earned him a well-deserved Tony. What Hayes pulled off eight times a week, live on stage is hands down one of the most impressive performances I have ever witnessed. The play tells a fictionalized telling that captures the spirit of a real life incident where troubled actor, humorist, and pianist Oscar Levant (Hayes) is given a four-hour leave from a mental health facility to appear on Jack Paar’s “Tonight Show.”

The relatively small cast consisted of one woman and five men but its share of challenges. First, Janas needed to replicate Levant’s hairstyle, choosing to use Hayes’s natural hair instead of a wig to avoid it being a distraction. Upon first meeting, Hayes had just gotten his hair cut and was directed to grow it out to allow it to be styled correctly. Once the proper length, recreating the look was relatively easy, but that is only where the biggest challenge began.

For the play’s climax Hayes delivered a blazing piano rendition of “Rhapsody In Blue” for every performance. To do so the actor unleashed his talent and energy on the ivories for over seven lively minutes. “When we were doing his hair up, we were very much aware of the fact that what was going to happen in the last scene,” recalled Janas, “and how active his head alone would be. Only one time did we not use enough product that his hair started like falling apart and had a flopping on his forehead. A little bit of falling apart is fine, but you don’t want his finale when he puts his arms out after that performance, looking just so disheveled that you don’t even recognize him anymore. We use a lot of thick, heavy product.”

“I’ll give away the backstage magic. The hair supervisor starts on his hair, while Hayes is sitting at his table, soaking his hands in ice water, because of the swelling that happens to his hands from playing the piano so much and then he sits back there. Once all the hair product is in and all the waves have been put in, then we actually have to transfer him over to a wig dryer to sit underneath a dryer or a hairdryer that he sits under a hairdryer while then the supervisor starts doing his makeup. At that point, he’d go into his warming gloves to go from cold to warm. So he’s in that while we’re doing his all makeup. It’s a really busy period of time backstage for him.”

“Goodnight, Oscar” concluded its planned four month run at the Belasco Theatre in August. The play earned three Tony nominations and a win for Best Leading Actor in a Play awarded to Sean Hayes for his aforementioned work.

MARY JANE

Since “Mary Jane” just opened this week, it is the only show on this list I have yet to see. I hope to correct that soon. Once I do this be updated with more details about Janas’ work.

Jared did share with me the following. “I’ve been with the show for seven years. When I first did it, we had not only wigs in the show, but also a bald cap that had to go on each performance. Each actor (other than Rachel) plays two characters, and one actor has to play both a building superintendent and a Buddhist monk. So, she needs a shaved head.

In the first production, the actor didn’t want to shave her head. So, we used her own hair for the building superintendent, and then we had 30 minutes to put her into a bald cap for the Buddhist monk. In the Broadway production, the actor agreed to shave her head. I made her a wig for the building super, and we use her own shaved head for the monk. That said… should the understudy go on, we will have to go back to the bald cap plan as the understudy will not shave her head on the off chance that she might go on in the role. “Mary Jane” seems like an easy show, but it very much keeps us on our toes. 

“Mary Jane” opened on April 25th at Samuel J. Friedman Theatre. Tickets are now on sale.