March 15, 2022

Middletown Theatrical Poster

Soooooo......I have to say that to some degree I was wrong but I will get to that in a moment. 

I was given the task of creating a theatrical poster for the play Middletown by Will Eno that will be performed at the Pollack Theatre on the College of the Desert campus in April. Not knowing who Will Eno was I did my due diligence and while who Will Eno is might be important in some other instances it really didn't matter in this particular case. I was to read the book, watch the play and design my own interpretation of the play that would spur people to be curious enough to want to see it. 

“A piece that’s a bit like Thornton Wilder’s Our Town if it had been penned by Dr. Seuss and edited by Samuel Beckett.” — Chris Jones, Chicago Tribune

I read the book and I'm sorry Will Eno but I found it to be painfully slow. I watched the only video available (which was only 3 parts of the 1st Act) on YouTube performed by the Theatrical Mining Company, Directed by Barry Feinstein Recorded on December 5th, 2015 in Baltimore, MD. and I'm sorry Barry Feinstein but your rendition of the play was even slower than the book with lengthy pauses and an entire cast of just really awkward people. The play is touted as "a bit like Thornton Wilder’s Our Town". In actuality, it is a lot like Thornton Wilder's Our Town complete with a town drunk, a pregnant woman, and a suicide. Alas, this is not an entry of an analysis or a review of Middletown, I digress, this is a post about my process in designing the poster and why I was wrong....to a degree.

I do have to give you an overview of what the play is about or I'm guessing you would have no idea what the meaning of my poster is and a summary it shall be.

Middletown on the surface weaves a story of a middle-class, suburban town anywhere in the center of the country........Anywhere, U.S.A., whose characters are searching. It is filled with metaphysics, Indian folklore (that, I didn't get at all), and the enormity of the cosmos. The characters have generic names. It's almost avant-garde how the characters all speak English yet seem to be speaking different languages. Everyone in town talks, but no one seems to listen.

The focus of the play is newcomer Mary Swanson, pregnant with her first child, spending her time preparing for the arrival of her baby, handling it on her own as Mr. Swanson is constantly out of town on business (we never meet him). Much of the play centers on her exploration of the quaint community and her getting acquainted with the locals. John Dodge, the plumber who openly contemplates suicide. The Cop who observes and maintains order where there is no order to maintain. There's the loopy Librarian, the drunk Mechanic, the doctor, the tourists, and otherwise faceless residents. Some of them know each other; others meet by chance. They are all very mundane with isolation and loneliness in common having conversations with no real meaning. Mary wants to fit in but in the end she is on the outside looking in.....alone.

Anyhoo, you get the idea.

Back to the poster......if you read my last post it was about exactly this......Theatrical Poster Design.

"The basic foundation of a Poster is made up of four key elements: a title, graphics, text, and white space. The layout, color, and flow of the design affect the order and style of these four key features. Posters also feature a visual representation of setting, tone, and symbolism...combining visually stunning design with historical significance. A great Poster is balanced in type and image. It should capture attention, intrigue and excite the senses, lead the audience to the main plot twist, and then leave them waiting with bated breath to experience it for themselves."

Here are some of the posters for Middletown that have been done for the many productions of the play:

I don't know about you but all of these posters feel the same to me. All focusing strongly on the cosmos and the house(s) and the Earth....like sooooooo obvious, no originality, no imagination. There are the ones with the Bench which I would say is as prominent a character as Mary is so those are okay but the Tree with the roots making the letters of Middletown is just kind of creepy. I do like the Earth (You are here) idea, the enormity of the Universe and the Earth, and how insignificant we are in relation to them however, I don't think that reflects what Middletown is really about.

My gist of Middletown, in a nutshell, is Birth and Death and the Life in between that we, people, humanity take for granted and don't really Live which oftentimes can make us Isolate ourselves in turn creating Loneliness that we may not even be aware of. How many times have you said, "How time flies!" or "Where has the time gone?" This is exactly that. And so, my poster leans more towards that.

In retrospect, I could've added the bench or part of the bench off to the right but I really thought that Mary, alone in her Isolation and Loneliness contemplating Life and the coming of her Baby with the shadows of the residents of Middletown lurking behind her and the abstractness of it all was enough. Period. Not obvious in your face yet TOTALLY obvious at the same time.

So here's where I was wrong.........it is true that I did not like the book, I liked the play that I saw even less but......and that's a pretty big but, lol, Middletown is a story that you have to experience, digest, digest it again, think about it some more and then you will realize or I should say, I realized that I really need to be those clichés "Be Present," "YOLO," "Appreciate the Simple Everyday Pleasures," "Stop and Smell the Roses," because I cannot remember how many times I have said more recently than ever "Where did the time go?"