Art & Illustration
The Last Frontier Theatre Conference
June 2017
Once a year, creative people from all over the world gather together in the small town of Valdez, Alaska, to celebrate and create new theatrical creations. It's primarily a play lab, where selected plays are read aloud in front of an audience and a panel of judges, and are then discussed and taken apart in order to aid the writer in the next step of their creative process. In addition to the play lab, there are workshops on a variety of subjects, fully produced shows every evening, and a fringe festival late at night. But the main attraction is the people. It's not just about networking, but creating lasting friendships with like-minded, generous, creative people all over the world. Each year is a chance to reunite with friends, work on new projects, and enjoy all the conference has to offer in one of the most beautiful natural settings on earth.
My husband and I have attended the Conference for many years, but it's been a 3-year gap since our last visit and it was SO good to be back. We both read as actors in several play readings this year, but I was also happy to sit back and listen to a large number of plays as an audience member. Of course I had my sketchbook with me, and there were a lot of actors staying in relatively static positions as they read from their music stands, SO... yup. The following drawings were the inevitable result.
I worked primarily with a fine-tipped Sharpie, followed by Prismacolor Premier Art Markers for the grey tones. By working solely in ink, I forced myself to work quickly, be economical with my strokes, and not worry about getting everything absolutely right. I had to work with whatever mistakes I made and continue through to the end. More often than not, I was happily surprised with the result.
So, without any further ado, here they are:
This was the first reading I attended, and seeing as I know the author and his work I knew it was going to be great fun. This was my first sketch, so I only had my sharpie with me, so no shading except for ink strokes this time around.
I finished the first drawing at the close of Act 1, so I realized I had a whole other act in which to draw the rest of the characters. The girl on the left was the "Feral Child" in question: a young woman who was raised by cats, so she was on all fours for the first half of the play.
I remembered to bring my markers with me for this one, so this started the trend of fully rendering my sketches in ink and tone. This play was about two sisters and their strange relationship... ending with a very dark twist.
This play had a large cast of characters and ended up being much shorter than anticipated, so I only got these two girls done. The characters were also only onstage for short spaces of time, so one of the girls was standing up when I started drawing her, but then she ended up sitting down for much of the rest of the play.