Elephant and Piggie's We Are in A Play—Production Photography with Young People's Theatre of Chicago

In early September, we photographed Elephant and Piggie’s We Are in a Play for the Young People’s Theatre of Chicago. The play opened on Saturday, September 27, and runs through October 19 at the Greenhouse Theater Center in Chicago.

Elephant and Piggie

Elephant and Piggie is a popular children’s book series by Mo Willems that began in 2007. Like many of the best children’s series, it shows how characters learn and process emotions, and the play I photographed was very much in this vein. Along with the title characters, Elephant and Piggie, the musical featured a trio of squirrels, a mail delivery dog, and a penguin ice cream vendor (the latter characters portrayed by some of the Squirrelle actors).

Elephant, Piggie, Delivery Dog, Ice Cream Penguin, and the Squirelles.

I love photographing shows like Elephant and Piggie’s We Are in a Play for similar reasons to why I enjoy commedia: in colorful, cartoon worlds like these, life makes sense, characters encounter difficulties and figure out to how resolve them equitably, and in the end, everyone has learned something; nothing too dreadful happens. The plays are full of music, joy, laughter. They’re a very lovely place to be for an hour.

Photography

At Elephant and Piggie’s We Are in a Play, I was close enough to the action to capture the character moments we were looking for. However, with a wide-angle lens attached to my backup camera, I could photograph the entire stage. This proved very useful in providing a range of images for the Young People’s Theatre of Chicago, from intimate close-ups to wide landscape shots of every design element onstage at once.

Elephant and Piggie’s We Are in a Play is a vibrant, colorful show with, full of light and life, a joy to capture and to edit. Thanks to all that light, I could keep my shutter speed high enough to capture the action in the fast-moving dance numbers.

Wide angles and big dance numbers in Elephant and Piggie’s We Are in a Play.

Thanks

Many thanks to Kira Nutter and Randy White at the Young People’s Theatre of Chicago, as well as the play’s musical director Danny Kapinos (of Blank Theatre Company). And an extra large helping of gratitude to the show’s costume designer Cindy Moon (also of Blank Theatre Company), who recommended me to photograph this show. I wish the Young People’s Theatre of Chicago great success in their run!

Cast

Gerald: Sam Shankman

Piggie: Diana Alvarez

Squirrelles: Julia Limoncelli, Lili Galluzo, Marta Bady

Gerald Understudy: Callan Roberts

Piggie Understudy: Marta Bady

Squirrelle Understudy: Tuesdai Perry

Creative Team

Script and Lyrics by Mo Willems
Music by Deborah Wicks La Puma
Directed by YPT Artistic Director Randy White
Choreographed by Matthew Weidenbener
Music Direction by Danny Kapinos

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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.