Program notes

At rehearsal yesterday I didn't get a chance to sketch...I created the program for the staged reading. But instead of Jeffrey Stock's calm back (music director) I had bouncy Mark Allen (composer) leading the "Hot Hot Girls" in their series of show-stopping, toe-tapping numbers. Mark would play, then leap up, jump back, watch them, chime in with a few notes on the piano to maintain key and sometimes our eyes would meet and he could see that I couldn't stop grinning, just as he was.

When the show goes to Beijing, I am sure this hip-hop quartet will be played by a well-matched young cute girl band Chinese dancer/singers, but for this staged reading there is an utterly delicious mix of women of all colors. Some of the actors had never imagined they would be singing hip-hop style songs for a Broadway style show. They're really getting into it! Hooray! When Jim and Tony came to listen they were happy. Jim has that cowboy habit of minimal facial expression but even he looked  gobsmacked.

I have never designed a playbill before. Jim loaned me an Into the Woods (older) playbill and I still had my Shakespeare in the Park Merchant of Venice (Pachino! Yes he was great!!) in my purse. I couldn't identify the blocky thick-thin font used for the heads but it was close to Poster Bodoni, so I used that. I eyeballed the thick and thin line that goes on top of heads and figured that Times Roman for the text would be just fine. I added a hint of playing cards to the title page... And, la voila, it was done. I know  volunteering to do something I am good at is always better than trying to help where I am helpless. The director's wife, Marilyn Stimac (also a producer) gave me the copy and I used Jim's script to fill in the scene and musical number list. Marilyn said it would have taken her far far longer to do it. But of course, I'm a book designer using professional layout programs (inDesign) so yes, goes faster than  adding endless spaces and paragraph returns to place things in a simpler text program. Here is the unproofed title page...