Blocking Notes: Poster Process

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.