BLOOD OF THE LAMB Production Photography with Promethean Theatre Ensemble

Last week, Distant Era photographed Promethean Theatre Ensemble’s production of Blood of the Lamb, by Arlene Hutton, directed by Anna C. Bahow and running at the Den Theatre through October 3, 2026.

Earlier this summer, we showed off the poster for this two-woman show, which Promethean has implemented with a rotating cast: Delia Ford and Meghann Tabor form one cast; Kirsten D’Aurelio and Heather Dennis make the other.

In our poster for Blood of the Lamb, we composited pieces of each actor into a whole in the semblance of a person, but fractured and disjointed.

Blood of the Lamb is set in a windowless room in an airport in present day Texas occupied by two women with opposing beliefs. The summary of the play from the Promethean Theatre Ensemble website reads as follows:

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.
Blood of the Lamb summary from the Promethean Theatre Ensemble website

Production Photography

Because we had two casts to photograph, Promethean selected moments from the show to capture with each cast, coordinated by assistant director Vanessa Copeland and stage manager Ella Joyce Johnson. (Regular readers of The All Worlds Traveller last saw Vanessa Copeland praying, fighting, and posing in multiple roles for Idle Muse’s The Three Musketeers in spring 2026.)

In the space in which we photographed the show, the front row was inches from the stage, and the actors are seldom next to one another in the scenes, so I used a wide-angle lens that could capture as much of the stage as necessary.

This lens would create some distortion at its widest focal length. However, our discussions about the show had always centered around feelings of claustrophobia and the female characters in the show being squeezed into boxes, and the poster for the show had set a precedent. I resolved therefore to vary my shots, some taking advantage of the wide angles and accompanying distortion and others more standard closeups of the characters.

Two rotating casts perform *Blood of the Lamb*.
Left column: Kirsten D’Aurelio and Heather Dennis.
Right column: Delia Ford and Meghann Tabor.

Character Portraits

For Blood of the Lamb, I wanted to adhere to a unified vision with the direction we’d set with the poster. Thus far, this has been the trend with all three Promethean Theatre Ensemble productions I’ve photographed in the past year. For The Book of Will, we used a painterly background and lighting with traditional costumed portraits, similar to the poster. For Antigone (which also featured Heather Dennis and Meghann Tabor) Promethean selected an image we photographed on a red background under a hard light source for the key art, and so in keeping with this theme, I used similar hard light and the same red background for the character portraits.

We had photographed the images for the Blood of the Lamb poster on gray and then scrambled the pieces of those images into disparate little boxes. As I brainstormed character portrait ideas, I thought about shooting double exposures, but given the time we had available, I wasn’t sure this would be possible, and furthermore, I wasn’t sure it would actually reference what we had done previously. I also considered photographing each character and merging them into one image, with both actors playing the character fused together. However, I questioned how this would look with actors of different heights—unless I decided to only photograph faces.

Using the Location

For the past year, I’ve made an effort to use set elements in character portraits (in A Year with Frog and Toad; Kassandra at the Top of the World; The Hula Hoopin’ Queen). This lets me travel light and get creative with the environment.

The day prior to our production photography shoot, Promethean sent a picture of their set. I noticed there was a white-on-white painting in the middle of the white wall at the center of the set. We had discussed this idea in our preproduction meetings, specifically referencing the minimalist, abstract, conceptual work of painter Robert Ryman.

Space and Minimalism

Our earliest discussion of the poster for Blood of the Lamb took place the night I went to see Promthean’s previous production (Antigone). After the show, artistic director Jared Dennis mentioned that the poster might be inspired by one of the posters for the movie Backrooms, in which the subject is pressed into the far side of the frame.

I thought about photographing each subject against the white painting on the set but placing the character far to the left or right, a manifestation of our original idea. So we did that with my portable lighting kit, using one light only.

As I considered this and the double exposure idea, I was playing around with BorisFX Optics software and used one of their presets to fragment the subject into boxes and strips layered on top of one another. I applied this effect in multiple layers, which I stacked on top of one another, masking the parts I didn’t want. The white background painting was made up of vertical stripes of white, so I fragmented each subject into both horizontal rectangular fragments to contrast with the design, as well as vertical fragments to unify it.

These two directions were a fusion of all we had previously discussed. And so I implemented both for the character portraits, which this time are very wide, with lots of white space. Finally, I used the same (Komu) typeface from the poster image to place white text upon a white background, referencing the Robert Ryman painting example, though I didn’t ultimately stick to that choice, as it was difficult to read.

Instead, I sampled the colors from Rachel M. Sypniewski’s costumes for each character and made those the text colors for each individual portrait.

Thanks and Credits

It was a pleasure once again making production photography for Promethean Theatre Ensemble’s Blood of the Lamb. Thanks to the cast and creative team for their hard work, creativity, innovation, and willingness to try new and different things.

Extra special thanks to (my dear friend and) Promethean dramaturg Christina Jones, who created this awesome lobby display for the poster.

Blood of the Lamb runs at the Den Theatre in Chicago through October 3, 2026. During that time, tickets are available via the Promethean Theatre Ensemble website.

*Blood of the Lamb* poster at the Den Theatre in Chicago.

Cast

Nessa Heather Dennis and Meghann Tabor
Val Kirsten D’Aurelio and Delia Ford

Creatives

Director: Anna C. Bahow*
Assistant Director: Vanessa Copeland
Technical Director: Line Bower
Production Manager: Alexa Berkowitz*
Stage Manager: Ella Joyce Johnson
Scenic Designer: Amy C. Gilman
Costume Designer: Rachel M. Sypniewski
Lighting Designer: Karen Wallace
Sound Designer: Emily Hayman
Props Designer: Tristan Brandon*
Dramaturg: Christina Renee Jones*
Scenic Painter: Breezy Snyder

Production Photos & Promotional Graphics
by Steven Townshend, Distant Era

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Steven Townshend is a fine art/portrait photographer and writer with a background in theatre, written narrative, and award-winning game design. As a young artist, Steven toured the US and Canada performing in Shakespeare companies while journaling their moments on paper and film. In his transition from stage to page, Steven continued to work as a theatre photographer, capturing dramatic scenes while incorporating elements of costume, makeup, and theatrical lighting in his work. Drawn to stories set in other times and places, Steven creates works through which fellow dreamers and time travelers might examine their own humanity or find familiar comfort in the reflections of the people and places of a distant era.