Candidate Posters

The Goat or Who is Sylvia?

Wanted: Poster With a Bit of Goat

 By Liz Welch (February 17, 2002)

The poster is a play's coming-attraction trailer -- but you don't want imagery that tells you what happens in the play,'' says Drew Hodges, the creative director of the Manhattan-based graphic-design and advertising company SpotCo. Hodges and his company usually design posters in-house, but for Edward Albee's new play, ''The Goat or Who Is Sylvia?'' -- which just began previews and opens March 10 -- they also enlisted outside artists and then passed along ideas to the three lead producers. The play, about an architect with a secret that threatens to wreck his life, was difficult to capture in one image. Here's what some of those involved had to say about the making of the poster.

 Drew Hodges: ''We wound up with 20 concepts. Some are successful designs but don't say what we want to say, but I like to show a range of things to producers, because people love to kill things. We don't, however, include things that are bad, because they will often be picked.''

 Elizabeth McCann, producer: ''Jerry Robbins once said, ''Fiddler on the Roof'' is not about poor Jews in Russia; it's about tradition."

When you isolate it to one word, then you solve all your problems. The origin of the Greek word 'tragedy' is 'goat song,' because a goat was sacrificed to Dionysus. But that gets too esoteric.''  

Paul Sahre, graphic designer: ''The play is very disturbing. I did a bunch of wildly different conceptual sketches. My favorite was a cropped photograph of a goat's rear. But in the end, it was too edgy.'' 

Edward Albee: ''From the playwright's view, it has to have something to do with the play! What was interesting to me about the minterpretations I saw was that there were minds at work. Even the most wrongheaded ideas were interesting. The bouquet of half-eaten flowers was great, but only after you had seen the play might you relate to it. Then it occurred to me -- the play is about four people and a goat. Family play, family portrait.''

 Alastair Thain, photographer: ''Drew's briefing was scrubbed, upright, upper-middle-class all-American family. It's the first time I've done a goat casting. Drew found quite a few goats, and we had to decide on the best-looking goat. We were very fortunate -- the goat wound up being a real star. Her name was Champagne.'' 

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