hi my name is shireen pimentel i'm a
broadway actress and this is how i work
it i'm going to take you through 24
hours of my beauty and wellness routine
i am practicing social distancing um
in teaneck new jersey with my family i
recorded my work at interview
the week that we shut down broadway i
was
maria on broadway before all this
happened and i am still maria on
broadway i made my broadway debut in the
lion king
when i was nine years old even though i
made my debut at that time it feels like
i'm
doing it all over again at 21 to star as
maria in west side story
is that maria is that maria tonight
tonight give it to me
things have definitely changed now but
that will be the routine i get back to
probably right when we start back up
from being cast
all the way to previews and opening it
was a six-month process
we started previews december 10th and we
opened february 20th
we rehearsed for two months six days a
week
for eight hours and then we went into
tech rehearsals tech rehearsals were
three weeks six days a week for up to 12
hours
we perform eight times a week and the
show is an hour and 45 minutes without
an intermission
on top of playing maria and west side
story i am also a full-time
student at juilliard
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i will be a college graduate when we get
back i really love my job i think the
best part is
having people come and it's their first
broadway show
ever and they really take to the show
and end up wanting to see more broadway
shows that's really exciting
i think that there was this like hope
that we could stay open
that's what it always kept feeling like
was that we were gonna stay open as long
as we possibly could
and maybe weather the storm of what was
happening i'd say
three days before we ended up like going
dark just slowly
the progression took hold of like no one
could come backstage at first but we
still had the stage door
then no stage door no one backstage and
then it was
we're shutting down rules will go into
effect
five o'clock on friday
except for the broadway theaters in
manhattan
where it will go into effect five
o'clock today
i definitely remember like what what was
happening that entire week and like how
everything was going it's like so vivid
because
of how it like stopped yeah it's
definitely something that i'll
think about and remember for a really
long time a very large amount of like
shock i think i went through like the
seven stages of grief you go through
them you have a long time to go through
them we were going into such an
exciting time for theater of like the
award season and spring and it's nice
outside and i feel like we were just
really revving up and getting into like
the big
part of the season i am so thankful to
be named as one of the outer critic
circle honorees for this season
i know that it got cut short but i am
just so honored to be
among some amazing women and artists i
normally wake up around
8 or 9 o'clock in the morning my body
naturally wakes up at that time
waking up around 10 to 1 anywhere within
that range
of time the shower is the biggest thing
for me to wake up to
the steam in the shower is really great
for my voice i do have a shower in my
dressing room
i don't have breakfast at home i am not
much of a cook
and then i make breakfast no matter what
time i woke up even if it's one o'clock
it's breakfast
which is two hard-boiled eggs and four
slices of toast
i have learned the perfect way to make
your toast you must butter the toast
directly as it's
hot or use the other hot pieces of toast
to let the butter
melt into the bread it's my favorite
part of my day
it's my breakfast now and then i sit and
i watch friends
or the office depending on what time it
is
that's my morning that's how i start off
my day now
i like to use skinceutical as my face
wash and it's great to
like do it in the shower i've been
paying attention to like
my skin care and like making sure i wash
my face at least you know once a day
i normally have one class per day i take
french vocal literature
german vocal literature they're
performance-based courses my theory
elective is centered around sondheim's
music
studying the way that he wrote i'm
finishing up my semester
over zoom as many people are
school stayed the same it's still 11 to
12 45.
the two times that i kind of like
stopped during everything that's
happening was when we
um shut down broadway and then
when they told me that like we weren't
actually gonna have a ceremony i think
those two have been kind of hard to deal
with for me the highlight of 2020 was
like doing a broadway show and
and graduating from college i think it's
at some point gonna like teach me some
great things when we like get out of it
and and somehow possibly i will have
evolved but right now it was definitely
like really upsetting
and i just had to like take the day for
myself and process through what that
felt like
i'm also excited to graduate and be done
with school yeah
i wanted to like see what was happening
inside shereen how was she feeling
when we go so fast like we let go of our
ourselves and like self-care and what's
going on with me
um so i really wanted to tap into like
how are you feeling today
i've kind of like become a lot more
content with with uh
not moving a million miles a minute i
have a lot of my meals at the theater
and just grab them and
and head there i have a futon so i'll
open that out i'll lay down and like
eat my lunch there i'll also eat dinner
there a few hours
later and that gives me enough time to
get my hair and makeup done
and kind of relax and warm up and get
ready for the whole thing
the product i like to use the most for
my hair is olaplex
their three to six regimen is really
awesome and i put the three on
right before we start the show when i'm
prepping my hair
so that once the show's over i can take
a shower
and then wash with the four and the five
and then put the six on as
as a leave-in conditioner great
self-hairdresser
getting my bangs cutting them i uh
watched a few videos
and then i was like okay i got this whoo
and i went to my
bathroom and i cut them because at first
i was like yeah there we go
and then i looked at myself and i was
like oh no what did you just do
and that's when i got scared but i
already cut them so there was no turning
back
um and then yeah i just kind of kept
following the video and made them
shorter and shorter
um and yeah now i have bangs i love them
here they are i like to just lip trill
honestly through everything
because of the confined space for me
being too loud before i start a show i
don't know why it kind of bothers me
so i lip trill through scales and
arpeggios and
kind of do that for about 15 minutes and
then i start with the first phrase of
the tonight balcony scene because that's
the first thing i say
something i learned in school is that
tea doesn't actually help your voice in
any way
all it does because it's hot it helps
with blood flow
the only thing that actually touches
your vocal cords is steam
i definitely sing every day but i don't
sing any like theater
i only sing the things that i can
accompany myself on
on guitar and on piano trying to get
better at the two instruments
and i also bought myself a ukulele i do
theater because i
i hope but i think i'm good at that i
think i'm good at doing west side story
and playing maria and stuff but i wanted
to start creating things that felt like
vulnerable and like unique to like
feeling and just whatever that was
and so accompanying myself i like 99 of
the time make mistakes
every time there's something so
interesting to find
inside of that the biggest self-care for
me is leaking i love to like
listen to music and and bake at the same
time
we took a pause on the jam only because
i don't know how long i'll be inside and
my whole family can't eat all the jam in
the world
i'm knitting a blanket since i have so
much time like
a big project why not i've been painting
on the back of this denim jacket there's
like a painting
i don't like this one as much as my
other one which is a harry potter themed
one
i dyed my hair pink so there's like
light streaks of pink i used overtone
rose gold for brown hair and that was
really fun
because i've always wanted to have pink
hair semi-permanent it washes out
i'm really enjoying it i do my own
makeup and i do my own wig prep someone
puts on my wig and
pins it all in maria is
a really strong-willed young girl
i was really interested in creating not
just a character but instead something
that you could
naturally see on a new york city street
before i start the show
get my alexa on board with the music and
i just listen to music
the whole time just to get into whatever
mood honestly i'm feeling that day
a really big thing in creating each
character was
finding out how to keep them as
realistic as possible anytime you got to
a place where you were like oh i can't
tell that they're
wearing a wig or oh i can't tell that
they're wearing makeup that was the
thing we ended up going forward with i
have done my hair and makeup in 30
minutes
that's just i'm rushing a lot when i do
that
so i like to give the hours so that i'm
really calm when i'm getting ready
everything's provided they buy us our
makeup and our makeup brushes
i love this primer ren clean skincare
it helps with many things on the stage
i sweat a lot from doing the show no
matter what i still have makeup on
every single time when i walk off stage
so i really think that it helps to keep
everything in place and there's like
almost no makeup ever going on my face
every so often there's like someone who
asked me to
record something and i kid you not i
throw on like
a good enough amount of foundation and
like some mascara and that's it
and i i call it a day nothing else
nothing else is going on my face really
i'm a big full coverage foundation
person
since i was young i did the thing that
people should not do which is pick your
skin so i do have a few scars my
foundation
is bobbi brown i do warm honey or honey
it looks like i did paint by numbers on
my face because we are on camera on the
stage
there's a certain kind of lighting color
so we have to kind of combat
that with the foundation make sure that
everything
matches and mixes together the cameras
are like flies on the wall it's a very
big
video wall it projects really big on the
screen which i think is exciting
my mother has seen the show about five
times and she has seen it from the last
row
in the theater and she said you can
still get
such a great experience from there
because the
wall is so big i'm just putting a
translucent powder just to kind of like
set the foundation
i get really oily and it's as i said i
get sweaty this is my little secret
i dab this sweat off and the person who
does my wig when he comes to check on
the wig
during the show he will dab for me as
well
so we really check on the sweat so
people don't have to
see it anyway um that's my secret about
it i picked this really bright pink
blush because well it's theater from mac
i don't know the name but i love it it's
so bright
there's a lot of i think myself in this
iteration
of maria i am half puerto rican have
jamaican and it's really nice to
be able to play this role of woman who
is puerto rican and there are so many
people who are mixed ethnically
to be able to show that like there isn't
one look
to being puerto rican or a specific look
to being hispanic
being able to represent that is really
special
this is still my blush when i use it on
my eyes i
go a lot heavier there's a lot of like
pink and purple for this maria there are
three
colors in here that i use this top
eyeshadow i do
it's got like a pink and gold in it i
belt and do musical theater but i also
can sing classical music i don't know my
full range i have a feeling it's
somewhere around three octaves
um on the piano yes
some people might know what that is some
don't honestly
i didn't know until like a year ago but
that's what i think my range is
i love working with my tony we
found out and that we had really good
chemistry from the first time we met
when we do the show and there are times
that he makes me laugh or i'll make him
laugh
and and it's real we will laugh
throughout the songs and throughout the
scenes and
so i definitely hope that people um
feel the the love that we do feel
because
because it's really great to fall in
love with him we've all been
staying connected in different ways we
definitely have a bunch of like group
chats we did have a
full cast zoom which was a lot
because zoom does this interesting thing
where it doesn't mute anybody
like they all talk all at the same time
so that can be difficult
i just fill in my eyebrows a little bit
i do like the shape of my eyebrows so i
think that's why i don't
get them done right now when i first
learned to put on eyelashes
it used to take me 45 minutes per eye it
still
sometimes can take me a hot second to
put them on but i definitely have gotten
a lot faster this is the transformation
part that i like
the most it's really a signature of
maria's look
and is that waterproof mascara it is not
there are days that it does run during
the rain
sometimes it doesn't it's pretty good
covergirl exhibitionist
there's eyelash one i have had an
eyelash hanging on by a thread by the
end of the show
and i did not know until i got off stage
so i like
did my full bow and like it was like all
the way
it was like hanging in the middle like
in the corner of my eye
i'm quite a sweater so i use clinical
strength secret
it works like a charm
that's it the lipstick is last i would
say it's basically the color of my
bottom lip
maybelline color jolt we tested it out
one day with like camera testing and
stuff and they really like the color so
we kept it
there's maria's color this is my
completed
maria makeup and so this is what i'll do
before i start the show
then i will wig prep my hair put on my
wig cap my microphone and my wig
alright folks it is saturday on broadway
um so this is your places call places
for the top of the show
the call is places say it one more time
have a wonderful
last show of this week i don't have
stage fright now i did when i was
younger
when i first did the lion king and they
said to think of your stage fright as
like excitement and energy
and use it to be able to do the show and
i have carried that through
everything i've done and so that makes
it a lot easier
with stage free i had these on for about
four shows we get our tattoos at the
beginning of the week and then we get
them again on thursday
we apply them ourselves unless you have
a back tattoo and it's
basically like a temporary tattoo that
you remember from when you were a kid
nowadays i i don't feel like doing my
makeup or doing my hair is a hassle
because i only do it when i
i want to do it for myself like oh i
want to go take some pictures of myself
like i'm going to go
get all done up and that's it just for
me
there's been a lot of like i'm going to
do that for myself
it is definitely a great sense of
accomplishment when we bow and when we
finish a show and
the audience receives it in such a such
an amazing way
it's also a really exhausting one for
maria specifically just because of that
final monologue and the way that the
show ends
so it's a mixture of a lot of emotions
because
me as shireen is very happy that the
show went well
um but the character maria just kind of
went through
so much so it's yeah it's mixing both
once the show is over we head off stage
and they have
towels for us right away so we can dry
off and
i take my wig off first and then i have
a hot towel to be able to take off
the eyelashes are basically coming off
so they come off easily and then you use
the hot towel to take off all the makeup
before i get into my shower and wash my
face again
and do all that kind of stuff after i
take my shower i
pack up for the day and i'll head out
the stage door and sign autographs and
then head
home it depends on the day sometimes
i'll take the subway sometimes i'll take
an uber it just depends on how i'm
feeling and what i want to do
if it's really cold outside stuff like
that
and then i'll head home sometimes i will
stop at chipotle before i even go home
sometimes i'll just eat a box of cereal
it just depends on how i'm feeling that
day
and what i'm craving after the show but
i definitely eat after the show
i'm always hungry i go to bed around
midnight each night
i try to make it 11 o'clock but i get
hungry and
i end up watching some tv i'm definitely
going to bed a little later
watching netflix has been keeping me up
honestly
somewhere between midnight and 3 a.m
i'm definitely excited to get back to
like performing but i think i'm
also really excited to get back to
seeing theater and
and seeing what everyone wants to create
and and what else we have on broadway
the arts are so special and so i'm
definitely excited for us to
get back to creating and watching each
other create
i'm definitely interested to see what'll
happen
when we get back into rehearsal i think
just like as people you
things will change and especially with
something like this where your lives
change so drastically and you feel so
much
there has to be something that i think
maybe will change something yeah
i have done a dog so this is thor
and he is three months old he's not
looking at the camera at all he doesn't
he's
tired i think hi but yeah this is thor
and he has definitely been a bright spot
of this quarantine