In digital wanderings as Spring slides into fall, I’ve run into a few interesting promotional images for shows opening later on this week. Here’s what next weekend looks like in pictures so far:
Opening Thursday, June 17th, is Carte Blanche Studios’ promising farce Out Of Order. They recently posted this line drawing on their website. Personally, I kind of like the ambiguity of a standard out of order sign, but the through-the-keyhole look of this one adds a bit of mystery to the show and offsets the rest of the black on Carte Blanche’s page quite nicely.
Also opening on June 17th is Alchemist Theatre’s production of Closet Land. The dark, contemporary two-person drama about a children’s author being interrogated is going to be pretty chilling. The pair of images above end up looking quite a bit disturbing if you look at them for long enough. Jenna Wetzel looks so sweet with the wig on. Seeing the image defaced has an obvious impact, but there’s something beyond that that’s a little creepy and I’m not sure what . . .
Also, also opening on June 17th is Bite Theatre’s production of Ken Davenport’s My First Time. I’ve already mentioned the show in a recent blog, but I just thought I’d add it in here to be complete and because the promotional image for the show features four evidently naked people standing in what appears to be a cornfield in front of a red barn. It’s kind of difficult to get that visual out of my head . . .
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Opening June 18th, is Optimist Theatre’s free outdoor production of Shakespeare’'s The Tempest. The above pic is listed as the “program cover” for the show on Optimist’s website. It was also featured on promotional postcards. The image is really iconic, particularly for those of us familiar with the actors involved. There’s James Pickering as Prospero, Angela Iannone as Ariel and Tom Reed as Caliban. The text in the background is actually a classic image of the first page of the script, but for me the initial visual impression is that of a newspaper clipping . . . odd . . .