Curtain Call

I knew in January before the pandemic hit that my turn illustrating posters for Portland Stage was over. The marketing director, Eileen Phelan, had left for other frontiers and it was likely the new hire would have other plans. But what a good run: 48 posters over the course of a decade of theater seasons. Thank you, Portland Stage!

I owe this gig to my dear friend, island neighbor, and fellow illustrator, Doug Smith. He illustrated a poster for Peer Gynt by Henrik Ibsen, and gave us a pair of complimentary tickets to see the show, my first trip to Portland Stage. He enjoyed working with the marketing director then, Carole Harris, and suggested she involve more illustrators in her advertising plans.

Carole assigned The Gin Game by D. L. Coburn in late summer, 2009. She’s a joy to work with, and the project was truly satisfying. This one remains a favorite (the original is framed in my studio.) It was on stage at this time, 11 years ago.

As if often the case, I went in search of reference and my neighbor, Betty, was a perfect hand model.

Compensation included payment as well as some tickets, which I ALWAYS used. Never miss an opportunity for live theater! And I learned quickly that the creative team at Portland Stage are wizards at making the unexpected happen. I read each script before doing any sketches, and it’s often many months before the play hits the stage. Seeing it come alive is a spectacular treat.

Next was 2 Pianos 4 Hands in 2011. I was happy they liked my type idea for the title. The stellar designer, Karen Lybrand, was in the house then, pulling it all together.

In 2012, I illustrated Marie Antoinette, The Color of Flesh by Joel Gross, and I had way too much fun researching this one, particularly the period costumes and hair.

The next season I was thrilled to do two posters. First, The Sisters Rosensweig by Wendy Wasserstein. It was also the first poster that included my hand-lettering.

The illustration for Song at Twilight by Noel Coward is a personal favorite. Looking at vintage fashions and alluding to the drama that turned on a batch of old love letters was a delicious challenge.

And I happen to have a batch of old letters written by my father during WW2 that proved to be a useful prop.

For the 2013/14 season, I did Words By: Ira Gershwin and the Great American Songbook, easily the longest title I ever tackled. Combining a mosaic approach with hand-lettering and music sheet collage made a lively statement.

I did the poster for Veils by Tom Coash after seeing a staged reading of the play during the Little Festival of the Unexpected.

Around this time, Portland Stage hired a new marketing director between seasons. Executive and Artistic Director Anita Stewart asked my partner, Marty Braun, and I to do the new season’s visuals. I worked with new Marketing Director Eileen Phelan on The Whipping Man by Matthew Lopez.

I got Marty to pose for me on the illustration for Red by John Logan. Using lush reds in homage to Mark Rothko, the central character, was a blast.

I also did a poster for A Christmas Carol, the classic by Charles Dickens.

I had done many ideas, with more complexity, but Eileen loved the simplicity of the mood here, and the empty space allowed a photo of the cast and text to be inserted in the ads.

What good fortune to do the poster for Monica Wood’s Papermaker! Having grown up in a mill town myself, I found a deep resonance with the compelling script. And later, this illustration won a Broderson award from the Maine Ad and Design Club.

An Irish themed play, Dancing at Lughnasa. by Brian Friel opened the 2015/16 season.

This one is another personal favorite, and also won a Broderson award, Lost Boy Found in Whole Foods by Tammy Ryan. I like the loose feel of the drawing and visited a local Whole Foods store to look at the chalk signage.

Next was The Mountaintop by Katori Hall, another powerful production.

I got to do the poster for The Snow Queen by Hans Christian Andersen! Having seen the play before, I loved incorporating the costuming and set design into my illustration.

While I was working on this illustration in February 2016, Eileen Phelan and photographer Aaron Flacke came out to my studio on a bitter cold day to document the illustrating behind the season, which became this little package shown at the Season Launch.

In my poster for My Name Is Asher Lev by Chaim Potok, I again used pastel textures to suggest the painting done by the lead character, to the disdain of his Orthodox Jewish mother.

Every season, Portland Stage finds some mad-cap comedy and this one was pretty hysterical, Hound of the Baskervilles by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Whenever Dustin Tucker is cast (as Sherlock) I’m all in.

Yet the next show was also a bit madcap, too, a farce titled They Don’t Pay? We Won’t Pay! by Dario Fo.

Besides the Main Stage season, I also did posters for other productions, like the Little Festival of the Unexpected, where new scripts are given staged readings in the smaller box theater each May. The idea of a flower blooming from script pages got all the green lights.

The From Away series highlights plays written internationally. Notice how I make ample use of the script pages flying about.

In August 2016 Portland Stage partnered with the Maine State Music Theater to present a musical, before the fall theater season began. I did the poster for The Irish and How They Got That Way by Frank McCourt.

After doing 10 posters that season, I wondered if Portland Stage would want a new look. But I was tapped again, to my utter delight, for the 2016/17 season. Eileen Phelan wanted all the posters done by the March launch, which meant a big hustle between January and March to get 6 scripts read, sketched, and illustrated all while the company was juggling negotiations with casting, rights, directors, etc.

This is Later Life by A. R. Gurney, set in Boston Harbor. I used myself as the hand model with that glass of wine, of course!

This was a favorite poster of mine, inspired by vintage travel posters, for Sotto Voce by Nilo Cruz.

Portland Stage’s production of Arsenic and Old Lace was a great send-up of the chestnut, and I had fun drawing lace, and another wine glass!

For Buyer and Cellar, they knew Dustin Tucker was cast as the solo actor, so I did my best for a portrait. His manic abilities are beyond capturing, though. He played all the roles.

String Around My Finger by Brenda Withers was next.

The final play that season was Disgraced by Ayad Akhtar, the first Muslim playwright to win a Pulitzer.

When the sketch was chosen for this idea, I invited my neighbors over to pose with, yet again, wine glasses. Cheers!

The 2017/18 season began with Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar & Grill by Lani Robertson, a haunting take on Billie Holiday.

Complications From a Fall by Kate Hawley hit home for me, triggering memories of my mother in her final chapter. I used her walker as a prop.

I had retro fun with the poster for the holiday production of It’s a Wonderful Life by Joe Landry.

I had to do two finals for Babette’s Feast. The first one went through all the usual stages of sketches, approval, etc. but the players involved needed changes big enough that I had to start over.

This version allowed for more mystery and and a dramatic setting.

Marty helped with the typography on many of these posters, especially this one for Red Herring by Michael Hollinger, a screwball comedy that meets pulp noir.

The Niceties is a killer script by Eleanor Burgess, about racism in academia. As an adjunct professor myself at the time, it took my breath away.

Sex and Other Disturbances by Marisa Smith looks racy but it was actually a great comedy.

I also did a poster for A Dark Week Project, what Portland Stage called the productions that fell between Main Stage shows. This one became a poster for Dear Elizabeth by Sarah Rhul, a fantastic adaptation from the letters between Robert Lowell and Elizabeth Bishop.

For the 2018/2019 season, Eileen asked for a distinct look with a limited color palette and all hand-lettering. OK!

This one set the tone for the rest of the work ahead. Ben Butler by Richard Strand was about an enslaved man, Shepard Mallory, who gains the respect of a Union general.

It was very gratifying to work on a poster for a local playwright that I know and admire! Illustrating Bess Welden’s Refuge Malja involved learning a bit about Arabic for the title hand lettering. The layered script weaves the crisis of refugees and one young photojournalist’s actions into a complex web of relationships.

This was another classic done with superb madcap touches on stage. Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest was another trip down fashion history I was delighted to take. My favorite quote of Wilde’s is, “Work is the curse of the drinking classes.” To all Dubliners, I say “Slainte!”

The Half-Light by Monica Wood is perhaps my favorite play and one of my favorite posters. It sparked so many ideas, and the limited color palette proved useful in making a simple statement of color.

This poster required many roughs, and revisions to pull off. But Skeleton Crew by Dominique Morisseau was spot on, from the direction, powerful cast, music and lighting. Wow.

It’s a little known fact that I enjoy what I coined bridespotting, a kind of spectator sport on Peaks Island where destination weddings take over this Rock every summer. So I was totally down to illustrate a bride and groom for The Last Five Years by Jason Robert Brown, in which a couple’s romance is told in opposite directions.

Illustrating the 2019/20 season was another challenge of time, theme, and color scheme. The Clean House by Sarah Ruhl had a quirky plot that I struggled to capture. Here’s a rare shot of me with a poster outside the theater.

Read to Me by Brendan Pelsue was by far my favorite script of that season. I’d gone to the staged reading it had received as a Clauder winner. That snail mail could be a leap of connections for a terminally ill boy made it even more poignant.

I’d seen Almost, Maine before, down at the island club with my neighbors in the cast. Seeing a production with the playwright, John Cariani, acting was a delight, as was drawing a northern Maine winter.

Marty had illustrated the poster for Last Gas, also by John, and we met him after the season launch, a huge thrill!

Native Gardens by Karen Zacarias would be the last play on stage before the pandemic closed the theater. We attended the first weekend, when I was pleased to see bus advertisements around the corner.

The next two productions were cancelled, a total tragedy. I’d been eager to see this one, The Children by Lucy Kirkwood about a trio of old friends reconvening on the edge of a nuclear disaster. It was a sad irony to see the ad in the New Yorker, part of a pre-paid campaign from well before the Covid times.

Sabina by Willy Holtzman is on the new season’s schedule but when is anybody’s guess.

The good news is that Portland Stage is one of only 13 theaters nation-wide to be approved to reopen, winning the endorsement of the Actors’ Equity Association for it’s health and safety precautions. Tally’s Folly by Lanford Wilson features a pair of actors who are married, and in fact met thanks to John Cariani. I’ve seen Dave Mason in Last Gas and Kathy McCafferty was a knock-out in the recent Almost, Maine. The play is directed by Christopher Akerlind, who co-directed at Portland Stage with Anita Stewart from 1996 – 1998. Limited seating is available as well as online viewing. Who wants to go with me?!

I remain ever grateful to this company of resourceful makers of memorable theater, not only for the many creative challenges I had, but the encounters of joy that seeing live theater can bring. I urge you to GO SEE anything Portland Stage presents, especially now. You will grow, change, and head back for more.

Lastly, thanks to Anita Stewart, seen here in the lobby discussing the current production for PBS New Hour. The show must GO ON!