Around this time, CAPAB (the Cape Performing Arts Council) staged my ‘Blitzbreeker and the Chicken from Hell’ play.

I’d made a basic poster, which simply used the overly lengthy title itself, as the total design.

 I wanted to achieve a certain campy, and deliciously tacky B-grade ‘Zombies from Planet X!!!’ effect. (Hence the circling of the second half of the title).

This simple design, I think, was too plain for the professional theatre company - and they used my design for the titling, but added their own overall ‘poster design’ - which made for a (I felt) somewhat too ‘busy’ poster.

Here’s the initial poster, which hit the streets in Cape Town.

The ‘title’ part, the hand-drawn title is all that remains of my original poster design.

(The theatre designers evidently figured that the soldier character in the play, and the live chicken, which also featured, was somehow a useful draw for the audiences and needed to cover most of the poster).

Added to this the weird font below the title, advertising yet another Amstel Playwright nomination for the script.

It didn’t seem to matter much, as word spread fast, CAPAB apparently had a reasonable hit, and the crowds poured in to see the show, and a great time was had by all.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

When CAPAB decided to bring the Blitzbreeker play to the Grahamstown Arts Festival, they revamped the poster.

Again, they didn’t go with my initial minimalist design, and instead slapped a photograph of actor Jonathan Pienaar (as the ‘Blitzbreeker’ of the title) raving away while clutching the chicken which features in the piece.

They did use my campy and deliberately ‘B-Grade’ movie titling again though, which was kind of cool.

But, as with the poster above, it just wasn’t my poster, as I’d originally imagined it, or how I would have sold the play.

It's an interesting design - the nice balancing act done with my original titling, below the rather odd ‘formal’ fonts, layout and photograph.

I'm still unsure about why they had to put a damn chicken on the poster, though.

Maybe there's some weird unwritten rule that when a play features a live chicken, that this is somehow a draw card in its own right.