The Gordon College Theatre Department produced Peter Shaffer's Amadeus for the 2017 spring semester. Jeff Miller, the director, wanted to create a series of three posters to be put up at different times throughout the semester to build anticipation for the show rather than just hanging one poster two weeks before the show started.
"Enter the 18th-century court of Austrian Emperor Josef in this immersive production of a modern classic by Peter Shaffer, staged by Jeffrey S. Miller. Antonio Salieri has given himself to God so that he might realize his sole ambition to be a great composer. Enter Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, a foul-mouthed, graceless oaf, who has that which is beyond Salieri’s grasp: genius."
Jeff wanted the poster series to communicate the dark, haunting story of Amadeus and Salieri without using the traditional poster design for Amadeus. He also wanted the posters to be relatively mysterious, revealing enough information about the show to get people to show up but not so much that people would necessarily know the time period or plot of the show. Most of the play centers around Salieri's conflicts with God and questions about divine inspiration. I decided to use a series of gradients, getting progressively lighter and more focused, to represent both Salieri's struggles with the divine and the "spotlight" Mozart was always in.
* Design reworked in 2019*
