One of the ways Curtain Call marketed their shows was a big display at one of the local grocery stores. But in addition to a big poster, I started adding head shots to draw attention to the poster, and the general consensus was if folks saw people they knew in the cast, the chances of their attending increased.
I was also asked to take photos for Neil Simon's Rumors. It was Truman State's Summer Show for 2008. This was the first show where I took head shots of the actors in full make-up, and it's undoubtedly where I got the idea for Rocky Horror. They also posed as the character they were portraying. I saw this show at least five times. Personally, I think it's good for college actors to do a "classic" and Simon was definitely at the top of his game when he wrote this one. Verbal gymnastics galore. Among the original Broadway cast were Christine Baranski, Ken Howard, Ron Leibman, Jessica Walter and Joyce Van Patten.
Stage makeup does not photograph very well in color when taken in close proximity and under normal lighting conditions. Especially old age make-up. (It's one of the reasons Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? was filmed in black and white. An aged Liz Taylor would not have looked convincing in color.) For these head shots, I simply took the original, applied the grey scale, and added text. Here are two of my favorite couples from Rumors.
Ernie & Cookie Cusack
Glenn & Cassie Cooper
He's just a sweet transvestite ...
Yikes, a little bit of red-eye in the original. We had several people say he looked like a young Johnny Depp.
Yeah, a little bit.
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