Two Popes

Concept design and art direction

Bringing two titans together in a play about values and wills clashing

Client: Turku City Theatre

Project: Two Popes

Year: 2021

Art direction for the advertising campaign for a Finnish staging of the Two Popes, a play by Anthony McCarten. The play deals with a turning point in the Catholic church, an unprecedented passing of the baton from one pope to another. One is ready to retire – but so is the other. While the two are almost polar opposites with vastly opposing views, they must find common ground and one of them must bend.

The main characters were portrayed by well-known and beloved acting powerhouses, Esko Roine and Asko Sarkola. As they were a draw for the play, the brief was to center the ad campaign around the actors. Because theatre ad campaigns are shot before production of the plays has begun, getting full costumes in time for the campaign shoot proved challenging. I devised a campaign focusing on the torso and faces of the actors, as this reduced the pressure on the costume department. I wanted to utilize the contrast of the pope in white and the cardinal in black, and ended up juxtaposing the characters to underline that they start on opposing ends, challenging each other.

When values clash, something has got to give. We promised to show the audience a battle of wills.

The campaign focused on division, promising a face off of two influential figures: a play about a conversation that changed the world.

The campaign visuals were reminiscent of Caravaggio’s paintings, bringing to mind the adversarial history of the Vatican. The images were treated to look like slightly cracked oil paintings, symbolizing cracks in the facade the two men try to uphold at the start of the play. Green was selected for the background as it represents anticipation and hope in Catholicism, offsetting the confrontational stance of the characters.

The title of the play was set in Pangram Pangram’s Migra Italic, which is a traditional serif with a modern twist. The author’s name could be no less than 75% of the size of the title of the play, which presented some challenges as the name ran the risk of eclipsing the title. Outlining the author’s name allowed space saving overlap, keeping the emphasis on the title of the play.

The actors were photographed and filmed separately due to COVID19 scheduling challenges (one of the actors fell ill prior to the campaign shoot), which meant their dialogue had to be pieced together in the editing room.