by Carolynne Wilcox

I just HAD to toot the horn of our photographer, Stephanie Mallard Couch. I just HAD to. I met her while we were both actors in a reverse-gender production of Hamlet at Ghost Light Theatricals - she was playing Polonius; I played the Ghost. She was not the "official" photographer for the production, but brought her fancy camera in a couple times anyway and got a lot of "just for fun" shots. I loved her work. 

A couple months later, while working on PR for eSe Teatro, we were looking to get a few shots of our staged reading of Don Quixote & Sancho Panza: Homeless in Seattle, but also both publicity and production photos of eSe Oro: Classics from the Golden Age of Spain. I immediately thought of Stephanie, and once again, she delivered. Not only that, but she had lots of fun doing it!

So of course, when we embarked upon getting publicity shots in February for MythFest, Stephanie was the first name that came to mind. She does great work, gets the photos back very quickly, and is really fun to work with during the photo shoot - she's great at incorporating both the ideas we put forward, as well as coming up with many of her own! And the results, of course, are stunning.  Just see for yourself in the gallery below of our most recent shoot! And if you are looking for someone to photograph a show or an event, or even if you need new head shots (she did mine!) - please contact her through her website, SMC Photography, HERE.

     We had our photo shoot this past Thursday, and the weather somewhat cooperated by at least being dry and dropping by a couple degrees, but it was still pretty hot out, and some of us were in a *mood* for various and totally legitimate reasons that had nothing to do with MythFest and everything to do with things like traffic, technology and transportation issues!

     Location photo shoots, especially in public places, are always interesting, though I felt I'd done a pretty good job of finding a place with less foot & auto traffic, than, say, the column park on the corner of Pike and Boren. However, as we were getting ready to start up, a fitness group came by to do a workout in the space! They were really nice and neither group got in each other's way, but it was definitely an interesting element to work with, i.e. trying to artfully angle the shots so we didn't end up with spandex-clad aerobicizers in the background.

     It took us a little over an hour, but we managed to get most of what we were interested in, especially some fun, stylized shots of us with red scarves over our faces...I feel like a bit of a broken record with this image (having used it now, several times) but I can't help it - it's a striking image. Judge for yourself - I've included a couple of Stephanie's shots below, amid a couple of my *far less superior* phone shots.

by Carolynne Wilcox

AH! The inaugural post of what I *hope* becomes many more, especially as we get cooking here in the countdown to Seattle Fringe Festival - we are eagerly awaiting to hear our times and venue, and will post it and probably scream it all over town once we do know, because that's just the kind of excited we are to remount MythFest!

Towards that end, we have a shoot today for publicity photos, up at...I'm not really sure if it's a park, exactly, or a public area connected with the building next to it (which MAY be a church of some kind - will have to investigate further this evening) - but it's at the corner of 15th and Union up on Capitol Hill and - has four lovely, Greek-looking columns as well as some nice archways. And the weather has cooperated by becoming cloudy and much cooler, which bodes well for us delicate Seattle flowers who positively *wilt* when the temperature climbs above 80 (it has been in the mid-80's/90's for the past two weeks)! Especially since we will be wearing black.

I love "art directing" (if that's what you call it...) photo shoots for theatre - publicity photos aren't meant to be actual show photos, so you can have some fun with them. I'll also be designing the poster from what we get at this photo shoot so have to make sure we've got some great, evocative action shots!

Will elaborate more tomorrow on the shoot itself...

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Carolynne Wilcox is a co-founder of Mythodical Ensemble.