Stealing The Pillowman

As far as I know, I have never had a design stolen. Never, that is, except for a poster I did in college for The Pillowman. And it’s been stolen at least three times. (In addition to two other uses, where theaters reached out to ask for permission.)

The Pillowman by Martin McDonagh is a dark play about memory, interrogation, and abuse. The titular character is fictional and… difficult to depict. He’s made of pillows, but if you only have that visual of him, you’d think he was the friendly Michelin man. Whereas in the story of play, he actually kills children; he’s the stuff of nightmares.

My solution was to depict a figure not made out of pillows, but made out of words. The play is about an author, after all, being interrogated about his short stories. I used text from Kafka’s The Trial, because McDonagh was inspired by that work as he wrote The Pillowman.

The undergrad director, a friend of mine, was very happy with how it turned out. And so too, apparently, were three other theaters who then ripped it for their own productions. Ah well. I’ll just take it as a compliment.