It has just been announced that Stephen Sondheim will be awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom along with many other notables at the White House on November 24th. This seems like a good time to recall the character portraits from the recent presentation of Assassins at The Modern-CDA. I'll let the review of the show speak to its excellent quality but I was thoroughly impressed with this show. Though I'm fond of all of our shows, some are certainly better than others and this one was top-notch.
Recently, a dear friend caught me downplaying the value of the images that I create. I said something about how the images that I create don't have much to do with the final quality of the show and he disagreed firmly. He made a strong case for how show imagery and strong marketing material help to set the expectations that the public has for a production. The stronger the promotional imagery, the higher the expectations. If a cast and crew feel that their expectations are high, well, they'll work harder to reach that goal. For a low bar, they'll aim for that.
There is some sense in that. I do what I can to capture or create themes that are relevant and I'm proud of what I accomplish. I'd be lying if I said that having awesome artists with which to work didn't matter. They're super awesome!
For this show, we took all of these images in the basement of The Modern-Spokane. Though the place is much more well-organized now, when we moved into the space. It was a creepy mess; dirty, dusty and dark. Perfect setting for a bunch of assassins.
