Egregious Facial Hair

Back in 2001, I was doing a show that required me to grow a moustache.

“Required,” of course, is a word of my own choosing.  The advances of theatre technology have resulted in amazing objects, made of fake hair (or hair of dubious origin), that can be attached to the face by way of wondrous substances such as ‘tape’, to simulate things like moustaches.  But taping hair to one’s face is a bit of a pain in the ass, and it can be argued that it’s easier to grow facial hair than tape facial hair onto your head every night.  Unless you’re a woman.

But I digress.  So back in 2001 I grew this moustache for a show, right?  And it looked ridiculous.  I felt like a sleazy used car salesman, and most strangers who saw me with it asked me for directions to strip clubs and sex addiction meetings.  Worst of all, the legacy of the 2001 moustache lives on forever, because my brother-in-law got married during the run of that show, and so I am present in all of the wedding photos as the guy who’s waiting to steal the dress off the bride’s back and pawn it for heroin money.

When I have some highly-visible physical change in effect for a role, I become That Guy who apologizes emphatically in public every time the physical change is noticed. “It’s for a play,” I utter sheepishly, and then wait for whomever has noticed the shaved head or toplessness or moustache or unfortunate weight gain to imagine the circumstances under which they’d willingly look like a dork in public for “art”.

What a ridiculous reaction, though. Isn’t it? I mean, I’m in a play, sure — and this is my job, and I get paid for it, and I’m doing very well with my work, thank you, so why not just be happy to look like a dork?  After all, isn’t it at minimum a conversation piece that helps promote the show?

I think I trace it back to a number of Formative Experiences at an Earlier Age, when the response to my pride over growing facial hair for a role in a show was a patronizing assertion of my quaintness that belittled my career choice — especially at a time when my career choice wasn’t earning me anything.  I was forever at the mercy of people who finished such encounters with statements like “Yeah, well, I had a dream once, too…” that trailed off judgmentally, leaving me in a pit of artistic despair of the sort that has occasionally been celebrated in seminal films like Forgetting Sarah Marshall:

So, you know, growing hair for a part is now connected with a great deal of Silly Past History.

Enter A Christmas Carol — set in London, 1843, when I can only assume that the cost of things like razors and soap made hygiene and a clean shave impractical.  The designer for the production asked most of the guys to grow some variation of lambchops; some said yes, and some said they’d rather tape dubiously-originated hair to their heads.  I have a hard time saying no to anything or anyone — least of all to a designer I deeply respect — so I acquiesced.

Last night I trimmed the beard I’ve been growing into the facial hair that I’ve been asked to keep for the run of the play.  It looks a lot like this:

I got out of bed this morning, looked in the mirror, exclaimed “Good MORNING, Brother Jedediah!”, and wondered how long it would take me to milk the cows.  Then I got dressed and got on the bus to go to rehearsal.  This is how I’ll look for the next month.

This time, however, I will make no excuses.  This time, I own the Egregious Facial Hair I have grown, and aim to set a new trend.  So many of the shop windows in the downtown mall already feature Victorian-era top hats and waistcoats, so… buy all that stuff, yeah?  And then why not go all pre-Puritan and complete the look with facial growth that will save on shaving cream and inspire hipsters everywhere?

My name is Jedediah Joseph, and my Egregious Facial Hair is sexy. It’s ALSO for a play.

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