ANKE + SKYE  


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PROJECT: Poster, Playbill, and Lobby Design for the Hastings High
School Theatre Department’s 2024 production of URINETOWN, the MUSICAL.


 

     

   

PLAYBILL


Cast & Crew T-SHIRT BACK
  
T-SHIRT FRONT

 

 
Urinetown is an unusual musical, it tackles corporate greed, environmental pollution and destruction, a doomed love story, a complicated father-daughter relationship, the perils of populism, and so much more. The citizens of fictional Urinetown have to pay to relieve themselves in poorly run public facilities, and those who cannot afford to pay are hurled off the headquaters building of a Urine Good Company whose President benefits from the dire state of affairs.

I chose to work with black, yellow, and red as the dominant colors of the design, black for the bleakness and hopelessness of the story, red for blood (many characters get killed), and yellow for well, urine.  I decided to showcase the ominous building, the “evil” CEO, and the line of desperate people waiting to use public bathroom as main points of the poster and playbill design.

For the lobby, I wanted to create a conceptual experience for the audience by designing a “set” of iconic visuals from Unrinetown drawn in my own style. I chose to focus on the line to Public Amenity #9 (aka public bathroom in Urinetown) by creating life size drawings of people and placing them in a line. The characters were attached to existing lobby columns that were wrapped in bathroom paper towels mimicking toilet paper.  The drawn characters, like the audience, were in line to see the show, the auditorium was labeled “Public Amenity #9,” so spectators and characters were both waiting for the “bathroom” and the show.  Many high school productions sell concessions in the lobby to generate funds for the Theater Department, so we turned the concession stand into a UGC enterprise, with parents selling concessions dressed like UGC employees.  I wanted to create a feel of a UGC corporate office, with a large portrait of Caldwell (the CEO) at the center — implying cult of personality —overlooking the concession operation, flanked by mounting boards with senior headshots in UGC “Employee of the Month” frames.  We changed the color of the light in the lobby by attaching sheets of yellow cellophane to ceiling lamps.  I designed and handmade letters from recycled cardboard for the signage — “Public Amenity # 9” for the entrance to High School Auditorium, and “Urinetown” for the cast and crew entrance. The letters were spray painted in rust and yellow colors with splatter of red for Urinetown letters mimicking blood.

We had no budget for any of this work, but I was fortunate to have a small team of very enthusiastic freshmen willing to help and a lot of recycled cardboard and discarded markers.  Everyone had fun and we won the 2024 Metropolitan High School Theater Award for Outstanding Lobby Display.