I recently received the promo images for the upcoming season closer for the Boulevard Theatre. Stations of the Cross is one of those ideas that sounds so simple and promising that it’s kind of surprising that no one thought of it before. Opening April 28th, it’s a series of monologues detailing different aspects of the life of a waitress. The stories are patterned after the 14 stations of the cross from Christian literature.
The images (I have a strange desire to call them “poster images,” though I’m not sure why . . . I very rarely see images like these on actual posters for shows. More often they appear on postcards and websites . . . ) that the Boulevard has been using for this season have been some of the best promo images of ‘08/’09.
The iconic Boulevard images this season are courtesy of photographer Troy Freund who has been doing an impressive job of framing visuals for Boulevard promos thus far. Pictured above are Boulevard Theatre Artistic Director Mark Bucher and actress/Boulevard poster model Rachel Lewandowski who has appeared in a number of boulevard images including this one from Secrets of a Soccer Mom:
There's a kind of a classy, well-composed minimalsim to Freund's work that took a while for me to ge into. And though it didn’t strike me as much at the time, this Troy Freund photo of Joe Fransee from Boulevard’s Misanthrope earlier this season has proven to be one of the more iconic promo images from the season.
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Freund isn’t the only one doing decent poster images this season. There’s a kind of elegant, dynamic simplicity to Rex Winsome’s ongoing poster art for the Insurgent Theatre/Alamo Basement-produced BERZERK!!! experimental theatre series. The mascot has a kind of agressive line-art comic book quality to it that’s very appealing.
By far, one of my favorites from promo images from this past season was Next Act’s production of Jeffrey Hatcher’s Murderers.
Hatcher’s show is a series of different monologues all taking place in the same retirement community. Someone did a great deal of work putting detail into the bulletin board for the poster, including quite a few details specific to the story. It’s a really interesting piece. Click on the thumbnail for an enlargement.
The detail in THAT “poster image” kind of reminds me of some of the detail on the image for In Tandem’s holiday production from local sketch comedy group The Show.
The resolution on the above image is too low to see finer details, but the items in the holiday gift basket include a bottle of “Goggles” beer, and a blister pack of “Greek Tragedy.” (both titles of shorts in the program) have witty little bits of text on them . . .
Like the Boulevard, In Tandem has had some of the most artistic poster images this season, including this beautiful piece from its upcoming season closer Romantic Fools, which opens April 30th. The image below doesn't show the detail on the three faces, which provide a really interesting dynamic. This is one that I'd want framed in my home office . . .
