Why-oh-why do I love an amateur publicity shot from an undergrad production, or a regional theatre, or a high school play?
It's got to be in the faces. Everyone's pushing sincerity real hard-- you have to be, 110%-- everyone's hitting a peak while standing frozen in hyper "stagey" ways to fit in frame, forced into melodrama, posing in ways never seen in the show. It's nothing like the smooth passive glossy movie stills we know. This type of photograph stands proudly alone, in a noble ageless tradition of pure Theatricality.
I've been in a few of these and when you're there in that hyper-character pose, confronting other characters, right-in-their-faces, holding, holding, waiting for the camera click, emoting just as hard as your little actor-heart can emote... you're selling this fucker hard, you better werk. You're clickin so real you're givin off Drama Radiation.
Radiation so hot it's gonna grab the reader by the balls with the sheer force of your passion! THIS is the play to see! Look at this photo, take a look at it! My God. I don't even know what's happening and I'm hooked. Where's the phone? Debbie, where's the phone, we need tickets for this thing.
So I decided to run a few Google image searches for "in a production of" and got the following pictures. I love them. I love the actors in these productions. And at least... at least I love these pictures of the production, who knows what I missed. So you're gonna sit there and look at these pictures. And you're gonna feel the power of performance or else.
These are actors, goddammit. Actors in a production of.
Brilliant!
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