IT’S HAIR TODAY AND HAIR TOMORROW FOR THIS STYLIST
You might think that after 30 years of curling, cutting, waving, bleaching, frosting, perming, styling, teasing and combing, Jeffrey Sacino would have seen enough hair to last him a lifetime. Quite the opposite.
“I’m doing what I always wanted to do,” beamed the Chicago-born, 38-year-old hairdresser. Sacino, who designed the wigs for Jean Claude Van Itallie’s “The Traveler” (at the Mark Taper to April 5), has been wild about hair since he was 8, when he began accompanying his mother on her weekly trips to the beauty parlor. He then began duplicating what he’d seen on dolls. (“Of course in the ‘50s when you threw the doll’s hair in the sink, it fell out--because it wasn’t glued on.”)
Sacino persevered, started experimenting on live subjects and by the eighth grade had mustered the confidence to design the hairdos for a school play. Why theater? “I wanted to do drama, but I was too afraid to audition. So I said, ‘I’ll work backstage.’ ”
While that work has kept Sacino busy, it doesn’t matter to him whether he’s running a brush through the real thing or an incredible facsimile.
“I prefer hair, period. Of course, you don’t get to create as much on a person (as with a wig). And if you’re using wigs in a show, you can change the look several times through the evening--and the audience doesn’t realize it.”
(It often works for a single wig as well. Although most people were quick to recognize the fact that John Malko vich was wearing a wig in the Taper’s recent production of “Burn This,” nobody guessed that co-star Joan Allen’s flowing locks were equally artificial.)
Since most of Sacino’s work is largely spelled out for him by the show’s designer, he relishes those opportunities when he’s given the chance to create the look totally.
“That’s the best,” he nodded. “I did that for ‘Lu Ann Hampton’ (recently closed in Pasadena) and ‘Quilters’ (at the Taper, 1983). In ‘Quilters,’ they were prairie women; they could never look like they were done. So I designed the braiding, which would’ve been something they could do to themselves. During the show, if the hair fell out (of the braids) that looked fine too. . . .”
Sacino also eschewed wigs in “Berlin to Broadway” (at the Zephyr, 1985), designing hair styles that traveled from 1920s Berlin to 1940s New York. Yet for a period look for “Soph” (ongoing at the Callboard), he coiffed brunette actress Wendy Westerwelle in a Sophie Tucker look-alike wig: “Marcelled and bleached out to the max.”
“I have many research books,” Sacino added, anticipating the next question. “I’ve saved and collected magazines from the early ‘40s: all the Vogues, the Bazaars, Vanity Fairs. I have a lot of art books, hair books. They don’t have to be beauty books; that’s not the idea. You want to know what (ordinary) people wore. I used to go to the (Central) library--before it burned--and go through these stacks of magazines, Xerox them and put them in my file at home. You never know what you’re going to need in theater.”
Sometimes, of course, he doesn’t have to research or design at all. For “Green Card” (Mark Taper, 1986), Sacino merely had to trim the cast members’ hair. Yet at other times, the pace can get frantic. Consider “Nicholas Nickleby” (Ahmanson, 1986), for which Sacino and four other hairdressers were employed.
“That was such work,” he said happily. “There were 200 wig changes for 35 actors. We had booths stationed around the theater, a whole timetable telling us what we had to do: ‘At 7:05, do this. At 7:06 do that. At 7:09 carry wig to stage right.’ Everything had to be in the right place at the right time.”
He also counts as one of his favorite stage experiences his 1985 stint with “Sugar Babies.” That time, there were five stylists attending to the cast’s hair needs. Sacino himself was responsible for setting finger-waves for 16 wigs every night. (As for the leading lady: “Ann Miller is such a hoot. You know, she’s the lady I expected to see when I came here. When you’re in Chicago and it’s freezing cold, you look at Ann Miller and think, ‘That’s Hollywood.’ ”)
Which brings Sacino to the subject of celebrity clients (his own include Taper alums Rene Auberjonois and Lawrence Pressman, actor Greg Evigan and “the little blond girl in those Purina Cat Chow commercials”).
“I live in this city, I work on these people,” he beamed. “It’s a dream come true. Sure, I’m (affected) when I work on a famous person. But you rise to the occasion and act very cool. What my stomach is doing they don’t have to know. Luckily, the first time I worked at the Taper (‘A Month in the Country,’ 1983) I didn’t even have time to get scared, because there was so much work. Lots of wigs, beards, mustaches: The place was filled with people--and hair.”
Doesn’t he ever yearn to drop his scissors and join them onstage?
“Oh, I guess I could,” he joked. “If I could cover myself up completely, wear enough wigs. . . .”
