I’ll Be Your Mirror.

Posted on October 12, 2007
Filed Under Events, All about (ahem) us, Curious Frog | Leave a Comment

Thanks to the rather determined prodding of a friend over a decade ago, I’ve been an avid theatergoer. Even though I harbored an interest in set design in college, perhaps my early experience with musicals (Showboat, my first Broadway production experience) soured me for a while. But after Moon for the Misbegotten (with Gabriel Bryne and Cherry Jones) and True West, I was fairly hooked. My first subscription was to the New York Theater Workshop, in order to see Caryl Churchill’s Far Away (who has two plays this coming season — the MTC is mounting the first Broadway production of Top Girls and the Public is featuring the premier of Drunk Enough to Say I Love You?).

Since them, it’s been mostly a solo experience. I’m constantly confounded by friends who can’t see the value in attending, but still spend $80 on $15 worth of liquor in a bar. Last year, a cousin whom I had never met moved to town, who also happened to have a MFA in Theater. This welcome surprise means I’ve seen more productions than ever. Newcomers also have a little more energy to organize (or, you know, theatre people are required to have boundless optimism), so it was even more of a surprise when Renee (Rodriguez) invited me to be a board member of a company she was forming.

Surely, being a board member is more thanklessness than honorific, but the timing was about perfect. I would prefer to more than simply a consumer of the arts (my work with Jen Bekman has often been very hands-on: helping with installations, moving art and the like), and even as the process had proven to be as varied as I expect (start a non profit and mount a production simultaneously), the simplicity of the idea was more than appealing.

The overall identity is still simmering, so I’ve save the story of that for later. The name, ‘The Curious Frog Theatre Company‘ is inspired by identity and our mission. Though Renee is from the Croat half of my family, her father is Puerto Rican. Our mission is to present both ‘classical’ and emerging works in a non-traditional manner. In more blunt terms, it is about addressing the issues and expectation inherent in casting. Rather than take dogmatic approach and simply invert expectations, we are seeking to make the process integration to play selection and production. Attaching ‘curious’, with the dual reading of both inquisitive and novelty to the informal symbol of Puetro Rico, and we had a name.

Our first production, Shakespeare’s The Comedy of Errors — his first play — was symbolically very apt: an initial foray that deals directly with issue of identity confusion. Since we are very much upstarts, economy is key. And though our aspirations extend well beyond the notion of ‘community’ theater, we don’t want to be alienated from the issues and realities of the communities our innovative approach to casting can both draw from and comment on. So productions are in parks in areas of the city that have historic associations with Latino communities.

So, how to visualize all this? As a designer with a strong aversion to anything ‘cutesy’ I struggled to developed something concise and compelling, all the while knowing I was willfully ignorant with every iteration of typographic error or play on twinning ever imagined.

The typesetting is a little obvious, by that standard. Flop the R and voila, erroneous! I did it initially with the hopes of transforming the ‘Rs’ into faces, perhaps inverting emotions — a play on the masks normally used to signify theatre. I didn’t have the time to invest in illustration, so I went cheap: stock art. Finessing stock art can be tricky, because while there is lots of it, there is lots of it that is bad.

Keeping with the twins theme, and allowing that the play itself requires little to no explication (it Shakespeare! …and you’re done), I focused on effective communication (read: attention-getting). I wanted fun with a little edge. Some very cute babies, with a little color and repetition to make it, well, yes, a little creepy. Since we are doing the productions in the park, I added some grass to leaven the creepiness. Tie it all together with a dominant visual for the logo and you have a postcard. And some good opportunities for swag. We will be offering tee shirts, mugs and the like very shortly (sorting out all that non-profit ticky tacky).

And it’s not too late to see a show. Tomorrow at Astoria Park, underneath the absolutely stunning Hell Gate Bridge (just south, near the water’s edge), or Sunday at Fort Tryon (which I hear is lovely as well, though I haven’t been). The show is fun, and funny — an excellent introduction into Shakespeare that doesn’t require four hours, or a concordance.

I’ll Be Your Mirror.

Priceless.

TONY meets jbSL

Soon to be Famous(ly).

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