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."
In order to work for Magic Lamp, actors must audition, a process that includes cold reads, sing-alongs and being asked a series of questions, to which the actor must improv answers in-character. For instance, to someone auditioning as Rapunzel, Broockman might say, "I thought your hair was so long it dragged across the floor. Why is it shorter now?" To Cinderella, she might ask, "Can I see your carriage?"
That day at Rock City, Torgerson told the little girl, "My eyes are blue. Sometimes eyes look like different colors in different light."
"To them, you are Disney. You can't break the magic," says Kandace Shipley, a 28-year-old local actor and fellow contract princess for Magic Lamp. "In these kids' eyes, you are that princess. If you sneeze, if you scratch your nose, you have to do it as that character."
While the members of Magic Lamp's cast can play different roles, they each have a signature character, which they study in detail, usually by watching the film "a cajillion times," Torgerson says, in order to learn the princess's posture, diction and movements.
Broockman, for instance, most commonly plays "The Little Mermaid" - the public domain version of Ariel from Disney's "The Little Mermaid" - whom she describes as youthful and curious. Torgerson's main role is Ice Queen, based on Elsa from Disney's "Frozen," who "is more smirky than smiley in pictures," Torgerson says.
Kandace Shipley"Beauty has been my dream role since I was 5 years old. I love her sense of adventure, how she wants to get out of her small town," says Shipley, born and raised in Chattanooga, with plans to move to Atlanta next year to pursue a more serious career in stage work. "Every girl envisions her life as a fairy tale," Shipley says.
"You can't be a jaded person and play a princess," says Torgerson. "None of us ever lost that love for magic."
They just learned to look for it in different places.
Broockman remembers the first time she dressed up as a princess. In 2013, she competed in Miss America's Miss Tennessee pageant, which partnered with Children's Miracle Network Hospitals. Each contestant was required to raise $200 for the organization, benefiting children's hospitals throughout the United States. Broockman, with a background in musical theater, decided to visit the young patients dressed as a princess.
"I was in college and broke, but I bought this Elsa replica dress, and it was super-terrible. It wasn't accurate at all," Broockman says. Still, she put on the dress and blonde, braided wig and visited Erlanger's T.C. Thompson Children's Hospital.
"I was standing out in the hallway. I hadn't even walked into this little girl's room yet. She had been in a really bad car accident and was hooked up to all these machines. When she saw me, she jumped up and ran out to me. Her parents said it was the first time they'd seen life in her," says Broockman, who realized in that moment that she could help bring magic to life.
Broockman did not win Miss Tennessee that year, though she was named Miss Chattanooga in 2017. All the while, she continued to volunteer her time at charity events dressed as a princess. Ultimately, she helped raise more than $4,000 for Children's Miracle Network.
"That's when I was like, wow, I could make this into a business," Broockman says.
While Magic Lamp is a for-profit business, Broockman says part of its mission is still to give back. In May, Magic Lamp hosted a Mother's Day tea party featuring the entire cast of princesses. The ticket proceeds, which totaled $1,100, were donated to local nonprofit Partnership for Families, Children and Adults.
But Broockman says she wants her business to benefit local artists, too.
"There are no [local theater] companies that you get paid well to do performing arts. I wanted to have a company where people had the opportunity to do what they love, hone their skills and get paid for it," says Broockman, who pays her actors, on average, $60 per hour for birthday parties.
Still, there is no guarantee how often any one of Magic Lamp's actors will be booked. The princesses must have day jobs. Broockman is a Verizon sales representative. Torgerson is a marketing director at Keller Williams Realty. Shipley is a restaurant manager at Southern Star in downtown Chattanooga.
"I've had to go from work to throwing on my makeup, my wig, the whole thing, in my car. I'll pull into a random parking lot and just hope nobody's looking. Sometimes I have to ask people to help me make sure I've got all the pieces of my dress in the car," Shipley says.
Being a princess, after all, is not for the fainthearted.
"You may have to work a two-hour or longer party. Your legs may hurt because you can't sit for hours; your head may be pounding because your wig is too tight," Shipley says. "There are some days where I just don't feel like getting glitter onto every inch of my house. But then I put on my costume and for awhile I forget everything else. I am that princess. That's the magic that drew me in."