Red Summer
I was tasked with collecting, organizing, and meaningfully interpreting relevant archival footage, newspaper clippings, and photographs in order to create supplementary media that aligned with the director's vision. This production of Red Summer commemorated the Carpetbag Theatre's 50th anniversary-- the accompaniment of projections in this production was a first for the theatre.
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Red Summer retells the events of the 1919 summer race riots that spread across the country as a result of social tensions following WWI. It focuses on the wrongful execution of Maurice Mays, a Black man who was wrongfully accused of murdering a White woman, and the subsequent mob action that occurred against black homes and businesses in Knoxville, Tennessee.
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I created the pre-show (seen left) featuring propaganda posters that were used to conscript Black soldiers into the war effort-- soldiers that then returned home to find that they had no more rights nor justice than they had prior to the war.
I was also tasked with creating two montage videos to be played at the end of Acts 1 and 2. These were created using archival footage and photographs, and were a challenge to stitch together given the unusual proportions of the projection screen. Here you can view the end of Act 1 Montage.
Finally, I created a series of projected headlines to accompany those being read aloud on stage-- these were edited together using scans of the real life newspapers that relayed the story in 1919.