Once I knew that I would be directing The Glass Menagerie, I talked to Damian about creating a poster for auditions and for the production. Damian has helped me many times over with posters and headshots in the past. Damian is always able to infuse the feeling I'm going for in an image. Just as I want the production to be engaging, I want the poster to engage people as well.
We used this to advertise auditions
in the program of our October show Dracula.
Originally, we had discussed having each character in the Wingfield family pictured with something that correlates to their character. Laura would have her unicorn, Amanda jonquils and Tom a notebook or perhaps on his fire escape. The idea being to show each character and their preferred reality or the world they take refuge in. However, shortly before getting ready to take photos for the poster, I came across a trailer for a recent production of The Glass Menagerie in Greece that completely captivated me.
This is a very stylized production of the show, and nothing like what Black Box Fire's production will be like. I loved the unfocused nature of the video, and how that speaks to the theme of memory in the play. I love how this video represents the 'vapour-like' (Gail who plays Amanda used this word and I thought it was so perfect) quality of memories. Just out of reach and hazy. My favourite part of the video is at about 50 seconds when each character is lined up on stage and their image is projected overtop of another image of them. The gentleman caller is just out of reach and the other characters shift and seem to be the embodiment of memories that are a little unclear. So, I thought why not use this as inspiration for our poster? I just couldn't get that image at the 50 second mark out of my head. I thought it was so beautiful and haunting, which is exactly what this story is for Tom.
So, I talked to Damian, showed him the trailer and he went to work.
"Tom" takes it easy with a giant coffee.
Tom, a slave to texting.
"Laura" receiving direction from the photographer.
Damian Ali did the photography for the poster as well as our headshots for The Glass Menagerie. I sent him examples of headshots of actors from the 1930's to use as inspiration. I thought it would be nice to have a nostalgic look to the shots since it works with the theme and time frame of the play.
Danielle Dean-Alton, our stage manager, is not pictured here as she was working on a beautiful cruise ship when these were taken.
When I was eight years old my dad took me to the set and prop shop at Theatre Calgary where he worked as the head scenic artist, and he showed me the props for their upcoming production of a play called The Glass Menagerie. My dad showed me this tiny glass unicorn which broke and lost it's horn in the play, but then showed me that each night it was 'fixed' and ready for the next performance. There was something very intriguing about the notion of this single glass unicorn being broken each night and then like new again, only to be broken again. A couple weeks later, my dad took me to see the play and I feel in love with it. I didn't fully understand the play, but loved it nonetheless. It is one the first stories I remember not having a happy ending.
I am currently directing a production of The Glass Menagerie for Black Box Fire, which will open in about a month. I know it is one of the most produced plays in amateur theatre and that it is a classic which is loved by many, which does make it somewhat of a daunting task. I do however, have a wonderfully talented cast who are as dedicated as I am to telling this beautiful story. And that's all I really want to do. I don't want to re-invent the production, I am not concerned with doing something that has never been done before; I just want to tell the story. Who doesn't want to hear lines spoken like " blow your candles out! - for nowadays the world is lit by lightening", or "For time is the longest distance between two places", and "I give you truth in the pleasant disguise of illusion" and my personal favourite "Unicorns, aren't they extinct in the modern world?"
Cast and production team
Thanks to Damian Ali for the photo!
