DESIGN GALLERY

CHIAROSCURO PLAY POSTER

National Black Theatre

CHIAROSCURO [day] (play poster), Valerie Caesar, 2025.

I was commissioned by National Black Theatre to create a poster for their procution of CHIAROSCURO, a previously unproduced play written by Black Arts Movement artist Aishah Rahman, and directed for NBT by abigail jean-baptiste.

The play intertwines the plots of a group of single Black people looking for love on a cruise ship, with the ill-fated journey of lost Black people, without possession of self-love and pride, due to the effects of colorism borne of white supremacy.

The initial idea for the marketing, represented here, was to lean into the cruise ship conceit. I borrowed from ideas of reality show matchmaking that takes place on far-flung islands, as well as the clean lines and the idyllic, bright blue present in the design of old European cruise ship ads. I was delighted when I discovered how to embed the concepts of duality, light and dark, referenced both by the name of the play, and in the plot) using the ship as a foil for dueling reflective silhouetted face. A European-style cameo brooch is also a motif in the work, and this was also enforced by this image.

CHIAROSCURO [night] (play poster), Valerie Caesar, 2025.

As the main action of the cruise ventures into a night time scene, I created both daytime and nighttime versions. Although the ultimate design for the play went in a different direction, I enjoyed the process of this iteration. Check out a video of my process for the creation of this design below.

(Just for closure, this is the design the client went with in the end. It features a line illustration of a slave ship, along with a gilded playing card of the six of hearts, represented the 6 star-crossed lovers aboard the ship. The play’s tagline “A Light and Dark Skin Comedy” was also added to subsequent versions of the design. I styled it to resemble an old pulp fiction novel from the 80s, and I’m fairly happy with it, but I do prefer the first version. Less on the nose, and just more fun to envision from start to finish.)

A CLOSER LOOK

Watch this short video at the full screen setting to view the process video for CHIAROSCURO in closer detail.