So last week the LSMT were spreading grunge anarchy through the Bridewell Theatre. This time it’s the indescribably mad combination of waxworks, Victorian serial killing and spacious jail cells in Redhead.
The show runs to Saturday 2 May.
All posts by Scott Rylander
Boulevard of Broken Dreams
So how do you shoot hip-hop choreography? By drinking two litres of water the moment you get home, as it happens.
Shots from the London School of Musical Theatre’s phenomenal and utterly anarchic take on Green Day’s American Idiot at the Bridewell Theatre.
Note that if you’re intending to see it there’s only tonight and tomorrow night left of the run.
Diaspora
How do you market a play about a genocide?
It’s not a question that comes up every day but when the Finborough Theatre asked me to shoot the advertising images for I Wish To Die Singing — a highly unconventional play about the Armenian Genocide — I knew I’d have to do a bit of thinking.
As a photographer, your job in marketing work is to create images that make people want to go to see a play (and they need to be the right people — there’s as little point in showboating by producing smoke-filled horror imagery for a jolly-hockeysticks musical as there is in shooting massively stylised, massively toned chiaroscuro portraits for a play about a boy’s love for a hedgehog; you’ll just end up engaging with the wrong audience).
The shots need to capture the beating heart of the piece. While they do that, they need to make people look for more than the usual microsecond. So you need to let your imagination take flight. And, if you possibly can, you need not do the same thing — or the same thing as everyone else — over and over again.
Usually, there are a couple of things that get in the way.
The first is cast availability. Unless it’s a very big show, the publicity shoot may not be that far away from the start of the show itself, which means whatever you do is eating into rehearsal time and not everyone you might want in the shots may be available to sit for them.
The second is, as you might expect, resources. It’s all very well fantasising about shooting fashion magazine-style with ten assistants and Marrakech as your backdrop, but the chances are one-and-a-half costumes will be ready and your location is a broom cupboard.
So you work with what you’ve got.
But things get a bit more complicated when you’re dealing with a real, historical event that resulted in the deaths of well over a million people (by almost every estimate) and the creation of a diaspora of Armenian peoples around the world. There is a paramount (and obvious) need, while creating shots that engage people, to remain absolutely respectful.
So we were left with, broadly, three options:
- We could attempt to simulate genocide with actors covered in fake blood on location or in a studio. On a huge budget, you could do this and make it look real. On a small budget, you could do this and make it look cheap. Either way, it’d be incredibly crass.
- We could go in the opposite direction of very sober, plain cast portraits. They’d be very tasteful. But they wouldn’t do much to connect with audiences.
- We could do something more abstract that tries to show the soul of the subject dramatically but not exploitatively and doesn’t go near trying to show what actually happened.
With a brave client behind me and a brave and exceptionally patient cast, we went for option three, using long exposures and hand-held lights to try to illustrate with optics just how unsettling, chaotic and horrifying the period of world history with which I Wish To Die Singing deals was.
The show opens at the Finborough on 21 April.
Liberty leading the people
Some production shots from the radical reworking of Gilbert and Sullivan’s controversial Princess Ida at the Finborough Theatre.
The (extremely entertaining) show runs until 18 April.
The Other Side — Alpine Dreams: The Wild Parts 1 & 2
Returning to the natural world, some new shots and prints released from my Alpine Dreams series, taking in everything from the forests of the pre-Alps to the super-high, super-cold glacier factories of the Ecrins.
Among my favourites, a dead tree struck by lightning stuck halfway between the sky and the ground in the Chartreuse, a stream choked by snow where the car park for a mountain refuge ought to be, a marmot so camouflaged in the boulders he’s almost impossible to find and the weird, weird things that happen to snow when there’s been an avalanche.
If you’d like to browse prints from this selection, they’re available on my site here.
The Fantastic Mr Foster
I’m lucky enough to have many lovely, lovely clients, but I count Philip Foster among my favourites for two reasons. First, I’ve worked with him since pretty much the first day I set out as a photographer. Second, because in a business full of inspiring personalities he stands out as a very inspiring man.
A large number of people who’ve worked in theatre or music for any length of time will have come across Philip because he wears about a thousand hats, among them producer, director, agent, vocal coach and manager.
Those many hats have led to a need for a variety of different portraits down the years, of which some of my favourites below.
Assistant for rooftop shoot: Jiann Chyuan Ho.
Ello Princess
For a while, now, I’ve been searching for a chance to do some theatre advertising shots using a really, really classic look that doesn’t get seen much beyond magazine editorials these days because it’s a bit retro.
So when I was asked to shoot the publicity for Gilbert and Sullivan’s seldom-seen Princess Ida at the Finborough, and was told that all I had to work with was a headless and limbless torso and a big room, I jumped at the chance.
Simon Butteriss and Bridget Costello were my wonderfully in-character victims.
The show begins previews on 24 March.
Enigma in the dark
Production shots from director Matthew Parker’s incredibly inventive European premiere of Snoo Wilson’s play Lovesong of the Electric Bear at the Hope Theatre.
The show, which gives a (very) fresh take on the life of Alan Turing, runs to 21 March.
Photo geeks may be interested to know that lots of these images were shot at f1.2. Which is the production photography equivalent of “terrifying”.
Alpine Dreams: Hydroélectrique
So I have a bit of a thing about dams.
Perhaps, what with there being a French TV series all about zombies hanging around a dam and everything, more people now have a thing about dams than used to. But I accept that dams are not everyone’s cup of tea.
Nonetheless, there really is something rather compelling and, in its own way, beautiful about building giant walls of concrete halfway up mountains and stopping whole rivers in their tracks.
All these images and more are available to order from my print store. And, having completely overhauled the kinds of prints I offer, I’m pleased to announce a 10% discount on all prints up to 15 March. Just use the code “storm”.
PS For true dam geeks only, the seventh shot from the end in this series features an uncommon sight — the Lac d’Emosson’s Barrage de Barberine — now rarely seen in its fully glory because it’s normally underwater.
Pretty Woman
It’s back to the Coliseum for shots from the English National Opera’s magnificent production of Verdi’s La Traviata, with Elizabeth Zharoff as Violetta and Ben Johnson as Alfredo.
The show opened yesterday and runs for nine performances.
