While working at Bishopsgate Institute they decided to produce Ahrens & Flaherty's "Ragtime", a musical with dark and serious themes set after the turn of the century, based on E. L. Doctorow's book of the same name.
As well as acting as Assistant Director on the show I also had the opportunity to design the promotional materials (posters, flyers, online assets) which included capturing the cast in a way that mimicked early portrait photography ( Daguerrotypes) . This was achieved in a windowless yoga studio with three IKEA lamps and a velour tablecloth. Oh… and an amazing stylist Lemington Ridley whose name you'll find throughout this portfolio site, linked to much of my photography work, who handed me ready-made brilliance. It was a long day as we aimed to capture most of the cast with two or three looks each to reflect the fact that they would be multi-role-ing throughout the show which featured the established New Rochelle set, residents of Harlem, and immigrant arrivals ( as well as real figures from history) .
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Featured here are, above, Coalhouse Walker Jr ( Michael Onabanjo-Whittaker), and , below, Houdini (Gabi Benton-Stace), Little Girl (Marsha Ventimiglia) and Evelyn Nesbit (Siobhan Aarons)
While "Ragtime" is an amazingly powerful and important musical it is not necessarily the most well known. Because of this we had to pull out all of the stops to trail content to create a buzz. There was a large cast and so shareable quality assets meant their own word-of-mouth/social sharing would potential net sell out audiences for the limited run of the show. Banners, photos, countdowns and even a small trailer gave them plenty of material to generate ticket sales just among family , friends and social contacts.
