Distant Era congratulates Eos Theatre Company on opening their production of Caroline Bird’s The Trojan Women at the Bramble Arts Loft in Chicago. This week’s special edition of The All Worlds Traveller combines two different sessions with Eos between February and April 2026.
Eos Theatre Company
Eos is a new theatre company co-founded by Rachel Sledd, Ashway Lawver, Morgan Lavenstein, and Morgan Burkey. In accordance with their mission statement, Eos strives to amplify female voices and narratives and to produce bold, diverse, and thought-provoking works that challenge and inspire their audiences.
Eos’s website (designed by fellow photographer/designer/actor Collin Quinn Rice) beautifully tells their fascinating collective and individual stories and is definitely worth checking out.
Our work together began in mid-February when Ashway Lawver discussed the idea of a “Vanity Fair Hollywood cover” kind of image to promote their then-upcoming production of The Trojan Women.
One year earlier, in February 2025, the co-founders of the company had gathered together for the first time to work on The Trojan Women. The initial short run of this work planted the seeds for the company that would grow into Eos with a bigger remount of The Trojan Women in April 2026.
For the company’s inaugural production, Eos wanted to do something stylish and special. As Ashway and I discussed the Vanity Fair Hollywood style image, I showed her some of Distant Era’s other work. She fell in love with the Golden Age of the Silver Screen series, so to support Eos’s new endeavor, I offered to do an extra round of portraits in that style, just for them.
The Promo Session
On February 16, Distant Era MVP Elizabeth and I set up a mini studio on location while Eos worked on a video to promote the show (check out that video at the bottom of this page).
We brought portable lights and stands and set up a white background for the portraits, standard for the Silver Screen series.
I soon realized that half the actors were wearing white, while the other half wore black. I thought white clothing on a white background might make half the subjects look like floating heads, so I changed tactics.
Zones in Monochrome
Subjects wearing white would only blend in with the background if the background was lit. So for those wearing white, I angled my light away from the background to create some contrast. Then, to create a second option, I short-lit the subject, moving the light even farther behind them or to the side, creating moody shadow pattens and making the background effectively black.
I repeated this for each subject, whether they wore black or white. Sometimes Elizabeth sprayed some atmosphere aerosol to give texture to a few portraits. We photographed directly into the computer so that subjects could examine what we’d shot and then try an alternate take if they wished.
After we’d finished the portraits, we struck the background and assembled the cast like one of those Vanity Fair Hollywood covers. To add a little Hollywood ambiance, we turned the fresnel light on and included it in the frame. This was the light we used to photograph all the black-and-white images, so it was legitimately part of the session that day.
The Trojan Women
A month and a half later, we photographed a technical run of The Trojan Women at the Bramble Arts Loft in Andersonville, two days prior to the show’s opening.
I’ve photographed inaugural shows for brand new theatre companies before. I don’t think I’ve photographed a new theatre company as technically proficient as Eos on their first production.
The show’s prologue is a very authentic-looking newscast that plays out as a giant projection, catching the audience up with the final act of the Trojan War, interspersing scenes from present day with glamorous black-and-white pictures of the main players in the drama—the pictures we’d made back in February. I was positively gobsmacked, seeing the pictures as giant projections zooming and panning Ken Burns style when the newscasters (Poseidon and Athena) mentioned the characters.
For the show’s ninety-minute runtime, I ran back and forth around the stage capturing the action of the play as it happened.
The Cost in Blood (Spoilers)
I’m hiding a brutal image behind TWO clickable layers. Don’t click if you’re casually reading. Please do not click on this text if you don’t want to see it.
Second warning: I’m hiding one of the strongest images from casual scrolling. It’s a photograph of a soldier carrying a bloody, mangled infant on top of a riot shield. It’s brutal. Eos outdid themselves with the special effects. It looks quite convincing. In my opinion, it’s the image that summarizes the cost of the violence. Please do not click on it if you don’t want to see it.
Musing on the Greeks
Caroline Bird’s play sets The Trojan Women in present day, inside a women’s prison, but the story of the events leading up to the play is consistent with the tale from Greek myth. It was the Hypocrites’ twelve-hour production of All Our Tragic in 2014 that first brought this story close to my heart. (I saw it three times.) More recently, Stephen Fry’s Troy and Odyssey have retold the story in all its gory, tragic detail. If anything, these retellings have revealed how human nature remains the same across the eons. Whether set in ancient Greece or present day, the story remains the same.
Familiarity with the story may have helped in photographing the show. While my primary focus is to capture the most interesting stage pictures and action, I’m also able to follow that action closely, since I know the story and can anticipate what’s to come.
Perhaps the ancient Greek gods united Distant Era and Eos as we worked on this classical story. Athena is the Distant Era logo, after all. Eos is not only the goddess of the dawn but the kind of camera with which we captured the images (the Canon EOS line). Distant Era’s ongoing art project, Gods and Heroes of the Aegean, features Hecuba (as portrayed by Laura Jones Macknin in 2023, once I get around to compositing that piece), the central character in the play.
Gratitude
I am grateful to the co-founders of Eos—Rachel Sledd, Ashway Lawver, Morgan Lavenstein, and Morgan Burkey—as well as the cast and crew of The Trojan Women, for being such awesome collaborators on this project. Glowing reviews have begun to trickle out for the production, which enjoyed a sold-out opening night.
Many thanks as well to Dustin Rothbart of Blank Theatre Company, who connected me and Ashway.
Speaking of Ashway, a thousand thanks to her for being my main contact at Eos and for all the great conversation and brainstorming. I’m very proud of the work we did making images for the show.
Finally, thanks to Distant Era MVP Elizabeth for helping me haul gear across town and assisting in the promo shoot back in February.
The Trojan Women runs through April 18 at the Bramble Arts Loft in Andersonville. There’s a ticket link on the Eos website, so get them while they’re available!
Cast and Creative Team
Eos Theatre Company’s beautiful digital program includes bios for the artists who worked on the production, as well as a wealth of additional detail. I love the way they’ve used the portraits from our February promo session to create a unified, consistent look for the program, which starts with our full-color Vanity Fair Hollywood style image. Here’s a condensed summary of the artists who created this production of playwright Caroline Bird’s The Trojan Women.
Cast
Ashway Lawver
Morgan Lavenstein
Ben Page
Liliana Mastroianni
Jazmine Mazique
Morgan Burkey
Marcus Castillo
Brian Weddington
Rachel Sledd
Understudies
Cassandra/Helen of Troy: Nadya Bendeck
Menlaus: Ryan Hale
Creative Team
Director: Rachel Sledd
Set Designer: Shayna Patel
Light Designer: Garrett Bell
Costume Designer: Rachel Sledd
Sound Designer: Mason Absher
Videographer: Kevin Reodica
Consulting Editor: Ashway Lawver
Stage Manager: Michael Lesko
Fight Choreographer: Thomas Russell
Technical Director: Will Hughes
Master Electrician: Jackson Mikkelsen
Assistant Stage Managers: Harold Washington College Students
