Shakespeare’s Globe Theater Poster

Since the early 1990s, Graphic Thought Facility (GTF), a London-based graphic design studio has been at the forefront of spearheading graphic design solutions centered on the expressive power of image and typography. For this series of posters for the Globe Theatre in London, GTF subverted standard representations of theater performance. Rather than capture performances on stage, for the 2003 and 2004 season, GTF asked photographer Nigel Shafran to capture images of actors backstage, putting on their costumes or resting in the Green Room. The photographs are unexpected and provide a rare glimpse of quiet moments behind the scenes. In 2005 the studio turned the lens to the audience, capturing the vivid expressions of theatergoers and prompting the viewer to imagine what is happening on stage.