Old School Hand Painted Show Signs

[jtweigandt]

I went in this week to charge the scissor lift.. which barely would move away from the wall after months of neglect.
Lots of deep facility cleaning going on by retiree volunteers. I saw a stack of old show signs from the early days (our group started in 1949)

Worried that someone had these slated for the chopping block, I went over today with some lighting, camera, and tripod to photodocument
just in case. I told some people it took me 3 Brigadoons to fininsh, but I captured 64 signs from the 50's to the 80's

It was dusty and dirty work, but took my mind off of other stuff, and hopefully preserved some history. Had one poster that said "Our 10th Anniversary Season"
I would have been 3 months old in 1959 when it was painted.. May upload some pics when I get them transformed to a smaller format.

 

[JonCarter]

Love 'em! Bring on some more.

 

[almorton]

Fabulous. They really should be preserved, not thrown away.

 

[jtweigandt]

One thing that amazed me was how quickly they got rights to shows in the 60's and 70's They did Superstar when it was barely 2 years out. .. Now days, Lloyd Weber has Phantom in lockdown like forever, Chicago has been our "Lucy holding the Football" for years. Wicked? fuggedaboudit...
c'mon Charlie Brown.. we'll give you a contract.. whoops just kidding.. 600 seat house means if anything is touring within 500 miles, we can't get it. If these geniuses would realize that every time we
put on a local show, we probably inspire a dozen new kids who now "have to get to New York" to see a show some day, and cultivate the ongoing habit/love of seeing a live musical, it would add to the
audiences in New York and the tours, not subtract. We also have a large live pit for every performance, which is hard to get anywhere else these days.

 

[Crisp image]

One thing that amazed me was how quickly they got rights to shows in the 60's and 70's They did Superstar when it was barely 2 years out. .. Now days, Lloyd Weber has Phantom in lockdown like forever, Chicago has been our "Lucy holding the Football" for years. Wicked? fuggedaboudit...

What are you talking about We have had amateur productions of Wicked and Phantom locally. In fact we held the rights to do Wicked when it was first released but decided it was too hard musically for our cast (up to 18yo) so was sent back.

 

[jtweigandt]

Junior licensing is a whole different animal. Full production rights for a 600 seat house are much more restrictive than the schools and kids troupes. US rights are also different than those for the Land Down Under.

 

[Crisp image]

Junior licensing is a whole different animal. Full production rights for a 600 seat house are much more restrictive than the schools and kids troupes. US rights are also different than those for the Land Down Under.

These were for the full show not junior. At that stage we were mounting full shows for the older cast and jr for the younger ones. The rights thing is frustrating because there is stuff available in the US that we want to do but we cant because it is only available over there.
I guess theses issues are the least of our problems at the moment.

 

[macsound]

Would you be willing to make a shared Google Photos or some other type of free photo storage for high quality versions of these?
I really appreciate your dedication to capturing the past and all too often we lose track of things as unique as this.

 

[jtweigandt]

My plan is to run through and crop/align the high res.. I probably need to ask someone in the organization before I could release them
wholesale.. I've been with them almost 20 years, but there's still always toes to step on.

 

[jtweigandt]

I just like old stuff.. even if I have to make my own. Did a Kitchen renovation a couple years back, and I turned the side entry hall into my "Theater Lobby"
complete with show pictures and some faux artifacts I created.