CLIENT – Theatre Smith Gilmour

CLIENT – Theatre Smith-Gilmour (by Jennifer Radford)

The Company:  In 1980, Dean Gilmour and Michele Smith formed Theatre Smith-Gilmour and have since created 38 shows, 25 of which have been original plays. The company has toured across Canada several times and to 14 countries throughout the UK, Europe, Asia and Russia. Their work has been nominated for 35 Dora Awards (winning 10) as well as being nominated twice for the Chalmers’ Best Canadian Play Award.

As I Lay Dying/Take Me Back To Jefferson

An original adaptation of William Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying, Take Me Back to Jefferson is the evocative Southern gothic chronicle of the Bundren family odyssey across the Mississippi countryside to bury their wife and mother. Calamity haunts their 40-mile funeral procession, an absurdly tragic journey through the grotesque intersection of character and circumstance.

Early iterations of the show were titled  Take Me Back To Jefferson; later productions are titled As I Lay Dying. I designed promotional materials for both versions.

I created publicity and marketing materials for two incarnations of the show, at Factory Theatre and at Theatre Passe Muraille, including posters, rack cards, print/digital advertising, social media, and a pair of giant vinyl banners.

Because of construction on the Factory Theatre grounds, the advertising signs normally available to visiting companies were not accessible. To maximize neighborhood and passerby awareness of the production, I designed two large vinyl banners to be hung on the fences at the north-east corner of Bathurst and Adelaide streets in Toronto.