SUMMER THEATER CAMP

Each summer an amazing musician stages and directs a fantastic play in our community. It is put on by the children in our community and nearby towns as part of the Summer Theater Camp in Peterborough,NH.

Mary Ann Fleming makes magic each year with children from grades 2-5 and a handful of teenagers who help with lighting, costumes and more. This year's play will review the life of PT Barnum and will feature  an intergenerational cast.

For the play I created  a number of oversized posters for parts of the backdrops and other scenery.  These are what I have done so far. One of our daughters, a very talented artist in her own right is completing the set of posters and I will put those online later when they are finished.

I don't want to throw the posters away after all this work... actually months of work, so we are going to offer them for donations to the Summer Theater Camp... or auction them off, whichever works best.

There will be quite a few and they are rather large.  Most are over 3 feet wide and some are taller than that.  They are based for the most part upon the vintage circus posters I was able to find in my old circus catalogs from when my dad took me to the circus and when I and my dad took our children (his granddaughters, ) to the circus.

I really liked the wording on some of the posters.  It has a timeless feel for a the spectacle that was the circus of Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey.

I had to hang these in the hallway to get a good place to put them up so the area was a bit crowded and I cut off some of the lettering in the shots, but all the letters are there and the posters look good from the distance the audience will be from the stage and sets.

For the paintings we are using acrylic paints, computer printed lettering and painting the letters into the posters with the closest match to the background paint.  Since they are seen from a distance it works well.  I used brown craft paper to paint on because I have a lot of it in a big roll and it takes the acrylics very well.

I don't want to tear the posters off the flats after the play, but will carefully remove them, and if anyone is interested in having one, they can make a reasonable donation to the summer theater camp.