Repurposing Arabic Gum for Actors Characterisation in Theatre, Film and Television Productions

Abstract

Abstract The theatre, film and television world is a make-believe world where actors are transformed into the characters they are impersonating in the presence of an audience with the aid of cosmetics for the purpose of informing, entertaining, and educating their audience. It is however disheartening, to note that in Nigeria, most of the standard makeup kits and equipment utilised in the transformation of actors are scarce because they are imported products brought into the country at exorbitant rate. In view of this challenges, Arabic gum; a very useful ingredient in food, pharmaceutical and medical industries was investigated and processed through extraction, dissolving, mixing, fermentation and filtering methods as a viable alternative to foreign theatre adhesive products used for attaching hair pieces such as beards, moustaches, side burns on actors. The effectiveness and reliability of the indigenous invented Arabic gum Adhesive was tested on 150 actors on both stage and screen in 4 productions through control and experimental groupings( the control group represents actors tested with foreign make-up products while the experimental group were actors on whom Arabic gum adhesive was applied) and the data collected from questionnaires administered on the 150 actors was subjected to descriptive statistics using histograms, pie-charts, percentage, mean and chi-square. The findings revealed the efficacy, relevance and durability of the Arabic adhesive as a viable substitute to imported adhesive products in actors’ characterisation on both stage and screen. Keywords: repurpose, Arabic gum, actor, theatre, film, television and production