Don’t walk too fast past that statue, it may be living. Being a living statue sounds easy and simple, but there’s more work that goes into it than standing still and hoping to frighten a few souls who aren’t paying attention.
Prep
Applying the paint is the most time consuming part of statue’ing. Every piece of skin that may show has to be covered in order to give a realistic effect. While face paint is used on the face, a can of body paint spray is used everywhere else. Depending on the costume, assistance may be needed for spraying hard to reach areas.
Posing
Standing still is hard to begin with, then painful, and then meditative. Finding a pose to hold can be difficult when taking into consideration how much it can hurt after thirty minutes. There’s a hyperawareness of every twitch and spasm, then the pain begins in one (if leaning weight) or both feet. This can make changing poses every ten minutes sound promising, but after a while it becomes a second thought, as comments can start to be heard about, “the fairy statue over there.” This is when scaring people with slow movements, shoulder taps, and speaking can begin.
Clean-Up
Turn on the shower and promise everyone the mess will be cleaned up, because it gets everywhere. It’ll take a few rinses, lots of scrubbing, and maybe even cashing in a favour with someone to get the paint off your back. It even feels nice to run a hot bath and let the steam loosen extra paint to give an all over clean feeling. But everything you own will be covered in gold fingerprints.
“I enchanted children and scared the sh*t out of adults.” Living Statue, Katy-Jane Harrington