Since 2015, I’ve been the person pushing pixels around to create the official posters for the Georgian Bay Musical Theatre Company.
It started over a decade ago with Legally Blonde and has somehow snowballed all the way to this year’s absolutely massive, sold-out run of Frozen. (Yes, that pun is terrible, but we’re just going to power through it.)
Looking back at this archive, it serves as a strange, beautiful visual timeline of what this company has built. It’s easy to focus on the giant, flashy mainstage musicals, but the spectrum of these designs covers so much more than that. It includes the scrappy, high-energy talent show fundraisers, as well as the deeply intimate, emotive projects—like the deeply personal play Clance wrote about her mother’s life.
Making a theatre poster is rarely just about slapping show dates onto a graphic. It’s about distilling months of rehearsals, sweat, and absolute backstage chaos into a single atmospheric image. The goal is always to prioritize the emotional impact—to build a visual that actually makes people feel something before they even set foot in the auditorium.
It involves massive project files, tweaking the visual mood until it feels exactly right, and relying on a solid amount of “fix it in post” magic to pull the final look together.
Here is a look back through the archives at the art that (hopefully) made you want to buy a ticket and sit in a dark room with strangers.
