Production Productions
Production Productions is a Chicago-based theatre company dedicated to networking and creating opportunities for early-career theatre artists.
When taking over as Marketing Director in September of 2025, I spent time with the company's Artistic Director to form a plan for marketing and fundraising for the company's next show, Love, the Sinners, premiering in September of 2026. For this project, I executed multiple pre-production and post-production campaigns, all surrounding the aesthetics of high school, Catholicism, and queer identities.
LOVE, THE SINNERS
In early 2026, we began pre-production for Production Productions' show, "Love, the Sinners." The play focused on a group of queer teenagers they attempted to block a series of anti-LGBTQ+ policies being put in place at their Catholic school. As a part of these campaigns, I combined common Catholic imagery with queer culture, tying both in with the aesthetic of high school. This resulted in a unique set of social media posts, flyers, videos, and posters for this production.
TEASERS
We started our social media presence with a series of teasers, images depicting "essays" by each of the students, each addressing the intersection between queerness and Catholicism. This idea was put into place by creating my own staging of the school principal's desk, as well as writing each essay in the characters' voices.
POSTERS
Three posters were created to advertise the show. The first was a traditional show poster, created to look like a Bible, sharing the dates and location of the show. The other two were what we called "fake-out" posters, seemingly advertising for a different, show-related event, and then revealing that the posters are for a theatre production. The first is an advertisement for the "Underground Queer Alliance," a high-school group that exists in the realm of the play. The second advertises a protest that occurs near the end of the play. Both then have information at the bottom of the script stating when and where the production is, along with other basic information for the performances.
CASTING ANNOUNCEMENTS
In keeping with the high school aesthetic of the play, our casting announcements and spotlights were all created to look like page from high school yearbooks. For the initial announcement post, drawings and doodles were added to the yearbook page to create the feeling that it had been signed by fellow classmates. When creating the spotlight graphics, I spoke with each cast member about what they believed their character would doodle on their own pages and those of other characters to create a posts that follow their interpretations of their characters. Additionally, I asked each performer to choose a "senior quote" for their yearbook page to tell audiences what to expect from each character when they see the production.
PROGRAM
A key scene in the play features the characters making poster boards and shirts while planning a protest. To evoke the feelings of an arts and crafts night with friends, I created a program for the show using the aesthetic of a homemade poster board.
AUDIENCE RESPONSeS
After our first public reading of the script in June 2026, I compiled quotes from audience members at our talkback to promote the script. Using photos from our rehearsal process thus far, I overlayed the photos in a transparent rainbow image to celebrate the queer themes of the play, and placed the audience quotes on each image.