Who’s Got the Time: The Poster

This time next week, the 24 Hour Show will kick off.

At the Bradford Playhouse on Friday night, Bradford Uni’s musicals society (BUSOM) will learn what show they’re performing for the paying public exactly 24 hours later. Everyone stays up all night, learning songs and lines, building set (safely!), painting, rigging, sewing… and eagerly anticipating the breakfast butty run.

I thought the show poster had featured on this blog already, but my post about the 2014 event pre-dates it. Let’s rectify that right now. Behold, the 24 Hour Show 2016 poster:

24 Hour Show 2016 Poster
Audition Friday – Perform Saturday – Sleep Sunday.

A Whale Of A Tale, Act 2

Part 1, talking about making the posters for this show, can be read here.

A couple of months after the posters were completed, I sat down with the show’s producer to work on the programme. Having made the programme for Maskerade last year, and doing a bunch of layout work at my job, I had more experience at it this time around.

For a start, I asked the producer how many pages it was going to be, and what the basic layout was. This is the very very first draft:

Folded paper with "Director", "Plot" and "Song List" written on it

Don’t laugh, it’s useful!

A Whale of a Tale, Act 1

The Bradford University Society of Operettas and Musicals – BUSOM for short – performed their 2015 main show last week. Moby Dick! The Musical sees a St. Trinian’s-like girls school (complete with headmistress played by a man in drag) putting on a musical version of Herman Melville’s novel to save their bankrupt institution; hockey sticks for harpoons and all.

BUSOM’s staple poster creator has graduated, moved away, and become very busy. I was picked to work on the main show this year. That meant it was up to me to get that ‘play within a play’ message across.

First up, posters for the cast auditions. Over the post-Xmas holidays I came up with the below pic, for the production team to surround with the relevant text. This was the birth of Audition Whale, drawn with Illustrator’s standard but useful Charcoal brush.

Audition Whale quickly gained fans.

Chalk drawing of cartoon whale on blackboard
Look at its stripy school tie!