In this edition of The All Worlds Traveller, I’m proud to present the key art for Promethean Theatre Ensemble’s production of Blood of the Lamb, by Arlene Hutton, directed by Anna C. Bahow. The show runs from September 3 to October 3, 2026, at the Den Theatre in Chicago.
In this article, we’ll show how the piece came to be.
The Consultation
In late June, hot on the heels of our work with Promethean’s Antigone, Blood of the Lamb director Anna C. Bahow, artistic director Jared Dennis, and I gathered to discuss the concepts and ideas inherent in the show and the logistics behind creating a key art/posters for it.
For context, here’s a brief synopsis of Blood of the Lamb from the Promethean Theatre Ensemble website:
A gripping two-woman, Kafka-esque, thriller. In a time about two days from now, Nessa, traveling from LAX to JFK, finds herself diverted to Dallas. Trapped in a room with Val, a lawyer, Nessa just wants to leave on the next plane out. But this is Texas, and Nessa is pregnant and Val is on the phone with legislators who are pulling the strings.
Summary from Promethean Theatre Ensemble
Promethean Theatre Ensemble’s production features two casts, each portraying the Nessa and Val. The two-woman show will alternate casts for each performance, so audiences will see one pair performing the roles or the other—or both, if a member of the audience decides to attend two different shows; each of the two pairs will inevitably convey a different experience in their performance.
As we discussed ways to communicate these ideas conceptually, I wrote down words and phrases Anna and Jared spoke: “shattered,” “fractured,” “the ceiling pressing in,” “putting curved people in a square box.”Also, “Spanning ages, colors,” “Eyes feel like faces.”
Inspirations
Anna had put together a Pinterest board that compiled several images of double exposures and fragmented compositions. As we analyzed these images, I suggested we choose one to use as our main inspiration, primarily because our time to execute the concept was limited, and whatever we ended up shooting and compositing would inevitably look different from our inspiration anyway. What we needed was a place to start.
We settled on a direction I thought would be the simplest to implement in a limited amount of time. That inspiration was from a 2014 Spanish language film called Musarañas; one of its posters depicted rows and columns of square boxes dividing one subject into a jarring composite. Ours would follow that idea but would instead merge four different women into one rough idea of a single person.
The Session
Summer is fleeting, and each summer more so than the last. We booked our session in late July on a day when everyone was back in town from travel. There, Heather Dennis, Meghann Tabor, Kirsten D’Aurelio, Delia Ford, Anna C. Bahow, and I gathered to make the session happen.
We photographed each subject against a gray background under more or less even light (just a big, diffused umbrella with some fill, if I recall correctly) and directed them to pose this way, that way, and act through a range of expressions. Tilt head up, down, left, right. In this way, we created the options we would use to place in the sections of the composite. We experimented with bright, smeared lipstick, with big expressions, and with small ones. The shoot was fast and fun.
An Anecdote
As some of the actors were meeting for the first time at the shoot, it was my pleasure to talk about my friend Delia Ford, who is cast in the show. Delia and I have known one another for many years, as we used to see each other at Babes With Blades events all the time.
In 2012, I photographed the preproduction shots for Babes With Blades Theatre Company’s Trash, by Arthur Jolly, which Delia directed. That was also a two-woman show with an alternating cast, featuring Jennifer L. Mickelson and Elizabeth MacDougald, as well as Alison Dornheggen and Megan Schemmel. I hadn’t seen Delia for a long time, so I was overjoyed to get to make something together again. During the session, we took a couple new shots to compare to our old ones from Trash.
But all of the creatives at the shoot were people I’d collaborated with before (or adjacent to, in Kirsten’s case). Anna and I had worked together on Promethean’s Richard III; Meghann was in Promethean’s Antigone and Idle Muse’s Jane. Heather and I have worked together on Richard III, Antigone, and Distant Era’s own Golden Age of the Silver Screen. Kirsten—also a storyteller—told me she once got to introduce the legendary Megan Wells at a story festival. We were all connected collaborators there on that night.
The Composition and the Clock
The most challening part of the process was the ticking clock. Thanks to my summer 2026 schedule being what it is, I had two days to work on the poster. After that, I would be leaving town for a day, then photographing an event all day with an immediate turnover the following day, after which I was leaving town to photograph thirteen separate small portrait sessions, an event, and run sound for a show, after which I would return to immediately photograph two theatre preproductions and one giant personal brand session in the same week. It seemed strange to look at the calendar knowing there was not a single scrap of time between July 22 and August 8, but there it was. Two days to work, and everything must be complete.
I began work on the composite the following day and worked through the day selecting pieces and placing them on a grid I created in Photoshop. I wanted to make sure every actor was equally represented. In a 9 x 9 grid, that meant each actor would be shown twice, and one would be shown three times.
I made it my goal to ensure that no actor would be in the same row or column, which was an interesting sort of sudoku, I suppose. We didn’t ultimately stick to that arbitrary goal in the final version, but we came close. In the initial draft, I went for the more dramatic expressions, something I thought would grab eyes, and the further I got, the more Lovecraftian it became.
At the end of the day, I sent the composition over to Anna and Jared and waited for notes.
A Second Draft
The next morning, Anna and I touched base on the direction further, and we discussed the possibility of choosing smaller, more neutral expressions, leaving the bigger emotions to be discovered by the audience within the play itself, rather than telegraphing them on the poster.
I worked through the second day, doing the same process, a little more efficiently this time. I had the benefit of my experiences from the first day of layout. At the end of the second day, we touched base again, made a few adjustments, and we got on a Zoom where Anna helped direct placement of a few pieces she wanted. I had initially planned to change the background to some other texture and add layers on top, but Anna pointed out that the gray background and photographic quality of the images was in keeping with the play. And then we had an image!
The only thing we didn’t have was the graphic design and text, but thanks to a late UPS delivery (new light stands!) on the day we were leaving to photograph Gen Con, I had some time to sort through Adobe fonts and try a few, arrange text, and lay things quickly out.
This past week, the poster came out to the public, and it’s received some great response, which feels awesome after our whirlwind of creation.
On Collaboration
And while the summer conspired to make it a whirlwind, it only could have happened with the organized plan that we made.
Jared, Anna, and I made our plans in advance. Promethean knew their play, their concept, and what they wanted to emphasize. They shared that information with me. We scheduled the time to make the poster, chose our direction—which we were all clear on—and then we executed it in the time we had.
I have commended Promethean for the forethought that is their namesake; for their planning over the past year; and for once again communicating the goal of what we were doing, getting everyone on board, and scheduling to make it happen.
My thanks to Jared, Anna, Heather, Delia, Meghann, Kirsten, and everyone at Promethean who communicated to bring the poster for Blood of the Lamb into the world.
