Inside A.C.T.

An Interview with A.C.T. Wig Master Kate Casalino By Shannon Stockwell The Unfortunates is now playing at The Strand Theater. Get tickets here! “The wigs for The Unfortunates are a special beast,” laughs Kate Casalino. “This show is a lot different than what I’ve traditionally done at A.C.T.” As A.C.T.’s wig master, Casalino works closely with costume designers to create the hairstyles for the show. For The Unfortunates , she had the opportunity to work on a design that balanced a World War I–esque time period with a “funky, weird” factor, resulting in some truly impressive (and massive) wigs. We visited Casalino in the Unfortunates dressing rooms to get the story behind the hair. How did you go about building the wigs? Luckily, The Unfortunates had been done previously at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashland. Even though the show has changed a lot since then, I rented the wigs that they used, to have a starting point. Only half of one of those wigs made i...