Kandis Guice adjusts her wig before attending a Mother’s Day tea party event dressed as the character Rapunzel.Then, of course, there’s that cumbersome dress, complete with bloomers, petticoats and a hoop skirt. Wearing it is only half the struggle – have you ever tried to pack an outfit like that into a Ford Mustang?
“I had to buy a new car just to fit my costumes,” says Ashley Broockman, 26-year-old owner of Magic Lamp Entertainment, a Chattanooga-based character performance company specializing in princesses. The company, which launched in March, currently employs 10 actresses, trained to play multiple roles among a cast of 12 characters ranging from Cinderella to Pocahontas. The most common event for which they are hired is, not surprisingly, little girls’ birthday parties.
And little girls, the actresses quickly learn, will keep a princess on her toes.
“In a [play], there are parameters. Someone has told you what to say and do. It feels pretty safe,” says Mary Beth Torgerson, 28-year-old local actress and part-time contract princess for Magic Lamp (and former editor of Chatter Magazine). “The thing that’s challenging [about playing a princess at an event] is that there’s no script. And kids know some obscure things about princesses.”
Torgerson remembers once, while playing Cinderella at a Rock City event, a 4-year-old girl pushed through the crowd and rushed to her side. Her family had driven six hours just to meet Cinderella. Tears of joy streaming down her cheeks, the little girl stared up into Torgerson’s brown eyes and said, “You’re supposed to have blue eyes like me.”