Stage Makeup: Wig Master Class with Dennis Bergevin

We were lucky enough to spend a Saturday from 11 AM to 5 PM with Dennis Bergevin. He brought some of his own wigs to show us the different between hard front and lace front wigs. We worked mostly with human hair wigs and he talked about how you can ventilate a lace front onto a hard front wig or have the entire wig be lace or ventilated by hand. He showed us a fully hand made lace cap for ventilation and showed us how to block a wig (aka put it on a wig block, tape out the lace line and pin it down), brush out a wig, wash it with slightly diluted shampoo from a spray bottle, and how to set curls on human and synthetic hair wigs. For the synthetic wigs you have to steam set the style in curlers because the fibers of the hair need to melt for about 20 seconds to hold the shape of the curl. We tried to copy a style that Dennis had made on one of his wigs on a sample wig of our own then pin curled and wrapped each others hair then put on our self-styled wigs. Not counting the amazing information Dennis was able to share with our class, it was wonderful experience to learn a few basic skills about wigs and be taught by such a seasoned expert. It was phenomenal to watch him unset and style a wig fully in under 10 minutes like it was making a sandwich or some other menial task not requiring much effort. His skill and stories was inspiring and I will remember this day for a long time to come.