As thick makeup, heavy headdresses and embroidered costumes were put on during the first dress rehearsal, cast members of the Beijing Opera stand astonished at their physical transformations into colorful characters of a cherished Chinese tradition over 200 years old.

After putting on layers of a silky imperial Chinese robe, carefully trying not to get the pink makeup on her hands all over her garment, Pauline Anderson, 25, a political science and Chinese major, finalized her costume with a heavy blue and pink phoenix tiara, an intricately detailed traditional headpiece worn only by an empress, princess, or imperial concubine.

“My head is very tight,” said Anderson of the foreign feelings of the traditional costume and headdress. “I can feel the blood pulsating through my brain.”

Two SF State classes, Asian Acting for Western Actors and the Asian Theatre Workshop, will come together this weekend to present the hour and a half long “Beijing Opera and Suzuki Acting Recital” in The Little Theatre.

After hearing that the theatre department was going to put on a production of Beijing Opera, Anderson, who taught at Beijing University, jumped at the chance to be a part of the cast.

When director Jacie Wong learned that Anderson spoke the language, she added her to the cast, not only to act but also to sing in the performance.

A popular scene from professional Beijing opera, Anderson plays the “tipsy concubine” Yang Guifei, beloved consort of the Tang Emperor Xuanzong and renowned classic beauty in Chinese history, who anticipates her meeting with her emperor in the imperial garden under a full moon.

The singing is highly stylized, with high vocals that, according to Anderson, are sung in your head and not in the stomach.

“The speaking is stylized, archaic, like Shakespeare,” said Anderson of her vocals.

Backstage, with their eyes hidden underneath vibrant, hot pink makeup, Beijing Opera students rehearsed the intricate movements of each piece, in which even a slight twist of the wrist or turn of the head is equally as important to the storytelling as the words that leave their lips.

“[The] beauty is in the eyes, hands, body,” said Arlene Fong, who plays a white skeleton in “The Monkey King Defeats the Skeleton Demon.” “Each detail is so important to the story,” she added.

Twelve students from Asian Acting for Western Actors will perform three parts from classic Beijing operas, “The Cow Herd and the Maiden,” “The Tipsy Concubine” and “The Monkey King Defeats the Skeleton Demon.” The students from the workshop will present the Suzuki Method of Actor Training, a rigorous technique developed by Tadashi Suzuki that is based on ballet, traditional Japanese, Greek theater and martial arts.

Though Beijing Opera and the Suzuki Method are from two very different traditions, Tamara Cooreman, 31, who is writing her master’s thesis in the Suzuki method, feels that both strict practices are strengthening her as an actress.

“You learn discipline, focus on how your body moves and you learn your center,” said Cooreman. “Once you know the methods, they help you ground yourself onstage.”

In “The Monkey King Defeats the Skeleton Demon,” Yusuke Ozaki, 24, a theatre arts major who plays the beloved trickster of Chinese folklore, the Monkey King, will end the show with a little martial arts while fighting the Skeleton King, played by Edison Dominguez, 28, who is also a theater major.

“Beijing Opera is more about movement,” said Ozaki. “When I do acting in other productions, I play the character in real life, more natural. Here, I have to memorize the order of movement and act at the same time."

While placing short ebony colored hairpieces on her students and powdering their faces with makeup, Wong constructed each actor’s look, layer by layer, using her expertise in the craft from the Beijing Conservatory of Music and from years of performing.

“This is the old fashioned way,” said Wong, a guest instructor who teaches Asian Acting for Western Actors, of her makeup techniques.

In 2000, Wong had SF State’s first Beijing Opera production with theater professor and chair of the theater department Yukihuro Goto, who had created the choreography for the first play. After the play was a big hit, Wong was asked to return for the past three spring semesters to construct more Beijing Opera productions at SF State on her own.

Because she is not teaching Beijing Opera actors who have studied the craft since childhood, teaching American students is both new and different for Wong.

“It’s a lot different, you have to speak English [to them],” said Wong. “The Chinese [students] already know, but Americans never seen Beijing Opera. You have to teach them the basics,” she said, adding that “they are young and learning fast.”

Shawn Einck, a 31-year-old theatre arts major working as the productions stage manager, believes that the cast’s performance will express students trying something different and will capture a new generation reaching out to an old tradition that is foreign to young people in the Western world.

“I want people to come away seeing that these students were thrown into it, it’s a huge operation for them to experience,” said Einck. “We are trying to come to par with what Beijing Opera has done, not imitating but doing our own interpretation."

The Beijing Opera and Suzuki Method recital will be playing May 10 and 11 at 7:30 p.m. and May 12 and 13 as a matinee at 2 p.m. in The Little Theatre in the Creative Arts building.