Our Artists - Our current company of twenty freelance "Transformation! Artists" includes professional painters, sculptors, educators and performers, most of whom have worked with us for more than six years. In addition to their initial training in the "Transformation!" technique, we hold occasional master classes as we develop new concepts, plus we all share research, found images and new ideas for faces. Facepainting like this is an adventure, and we have a wonderful company of artists with their own passion for the art.

Speed - The application technique we've developed is remarkably fast. A full face can be painted in 3 or 4 minutes; an individual artist can paint 15 - 20 people in an hour. Facepainting at an event generates lines of waiting people, but our lines move quickly. With a team of six artists, for example, a new face will be finished about every 30 seconds.

Even the time needed for full body paintings and specialty make-up can be tailored to suit requirements. For example, when Bruce Weber decided he liked the look so much he wanted all the models painted instead of just three, the face and body painting of the 18 Abercrombie & Fitch models was finished by one artist in just 3 hours.

Themes and Imagery - With 25 years of doing this, we've determined that a human face can be transformed into just about anything. Our general repertoire for events includes animals, Nature scenes, fantasy and mask images from world cultures. We have an additional repertoire of specific themes, including Sea Life or Science Fiction faces, for example. For events with cultural themes we research and develop styles from that part of the world, such as Peking Opera make-up, Rainforest faces, or the summer of African mask imagery we did for the Bronx Zoo. And for private or corporate events with a unique theme we can design faces. We have designed Rugrat faces for Nickelodian and a host of children's book characters for Scholastic Publishing.

Displays - Our set-up for events includes displays of our work. This isn't a menu of faces for people to choose from, rather it's our way of letting people know this is not your average facepainting. We encourage people to use their imaginations to come up with their own ideas of what they want to be, and then to let our artists be creative as we paint them.

Event Logistics - Our experience includes a thorough understanding of how to manage facepainting for any size event, including numbers of artists and set-up requirements. We regularly work for event planners within their design of an event. (See Links page for some of the Event Planners we work with in the New York area.)

Our Performers - The seven performer/creators that present our ten shows are all true professionals, each with more than twenty years experience in theatre.

Length of Shows - These performances are designed to run 45 - 60 minutes, without intermissions. Lengths can be altered to fit school schedules, as required, and several programs have a built in flexibility to be presented as shorter, repeatible performances in an open festival setting. The Transformation! Heads & Tales combination of storytelling and facepainting is designed as a continuous stage presentation that can run for four hours or more as required.

Production Requirements for all of our shows are minimal: basic lighting and a bare stage. These solo and duet performances are self-contained and designed to travel. For New York area performances we travel with a portable sound system.

Arts-in-Education Programs - All of our shows have versions available for schools, and several of our programs were designed specifically for school audiences. Our "Bodacious Book Show" was originally created with a NY State Grant to support community reading programs, for example, and has appeared in about 500 schools since its introduction in 1995. Our newest school program, "GOTCHA! The Don't Be Fooled Show", was written to fill a need we perceived for informative entertainment programming for Middle and High School audiences.