The copy
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"This Island's mine"
In Shakespeare's final play, a magician casts away his powers.
After 12 years of exile on an enchanted island, Prospero has
the chance to punish the brother who wronged him. The Tempest
is a remarkable study of betrayal, forgiveness and compassion.
Derek Jacobi plays Prospero and Daniel Evans
plays Ariel in the opening production of this new season in
the Crucible Theatre. Directed by Michael Grandage
and staged by the creative team behind this year's acclaimed
Richard III.
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 The
image
Choosing the right image is often the most difficult part of putting
the marketing materials together - and the most fun. The image has
to strike a balance between capturing people's attention and giving
a flavour of the show, so we're looking for something striking but
not misleading.
The first part of the process is to read the script and get a feel
for the imagery within the piece. It's good to know at this stage
whether the director has a particular approach in mind, or even
just a colour that says something about the production. This can
be quite difficult when you are selecting images for a show in 12
months time, as the director's mind will be focussed on more immediate
projects.
We need an image that will work just as well on the page of a brochure
as it will on one of the huge poster sites you may have seen around
Sheffield. We also need to consider whether it will lose any of
its impact through being backlit (as in the Decaux poster sites)
- block colours and sharp lines work best for this.
Theatre is about live performance and connecting with other people
- audience and actors alike - so I prefer to use 'human' images
for our productions. Sometimes this will be a member of the cast,
on other occasions it will be an image sourced from a book or a
photo library or the internet. We also prefer to have one image
that stays with a production, so that there is continuity in our
marketing materials from when the production is first announced
to when it is finally staged. This means spending hours in libraries,
bookshops and online before each season is made public.
With The Tempest, Michael was clear that he wanted the dominant
colours to be blue and white. The first images we discussed were
of sailors, fishermen and shipwrecks but nothing quite worked. When
Michael cast the two key roles of Prospero and Ariel the picture
fell into place. From a marketing point of view we wanted to capitalise
on the presence of Derek Jacobi in the cast. From an artistic point
of view, we wanted to illustrate the relationship between Prospero
and Ariel, with Ariel almost hovering above Prospero's shoulder
as both an accomplice and an adversary. The picture is one of almost
50 taken at a photo shoot in Charlie Carter's London studio. We
had to get it right on the day as Sir Derek was flying back to a
filming commitment in Australia that afternoon.
You may be interested to know that in the original image, Derek
Jacobi was sporting a moustache. Michael Grandage felt a moustache
would not be right for Prospero, so we had it digitally removed
by the designers.
Angela Galvin
Marketing and Development Director
August 2002
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