As part of their residency at the Indianapolis Museum of Art, performing art collective Know No Stranger wrote and staged an original musical, set on a space-cruise ship. I helped develop the marketing campaign for the show, which included a flagship image of a captain, given to me as a line drawing which I turned into a digital painting. This image was intended as a red herring for the plot — the captain dies in the first scene of the show, leaving the audience with no idea who the main characters are going to be.
We also developed a series of small flyers intended to look like postcards written by cruise-ship guests. This kind of world-building beforehand was important to ensure that most members of the audience would arrive with an understanding of the story’s far-fetched setting. These promotional postcard images were reproduced as large posters in the lobby of the theater, and the letters from cruise guests were also enlarged and distressed to look as they had been recovered from the wreckage of a ship.
Finally, we created a microsite that simulated an actual website for the imaginary company behind this space-cruise — Stars Afar Adventure Cruises. Audience members purchasing their show tickets would appear to be purchasing tickets to the cruise itself. The microsite also included an easter egg decoder key for one of the postcards that appeared to be written in an alien language.
