Why did theatre makeup in the 1970s sometimes include a white and red dot over the tear ducts?
A lot of effort in stage makeup goes into making your eyes stand out. (Street makeup actually does much the same thing, though more subtly.) The bright lights tend to wash out your face, and they make you squint. The pratice actually died out more than 30 years ago, and I’m surprised you were taught it. It was out of date even 50 years ago. It makes the eyes stand out, but the result is very unnatural looking. It was part of standard makeup in the late 19th century through around the 1950s and early 1960s, but by the 70s it was really over. I bet your drama director had been around for a while, and was still doing it the old way. I’ve seen various descriptions of it. Some put the red dot on the inside of the eye and the white dot on the outside. The white dot expands the eyes, and the red dot helps keep the eyes from looking “crossed” (because the pupil is no longer in the apparent center of the eye). Under the kinds of lights used in the late 19th/early 20th century, the colors kinda
