Key Art for a Bilingual Play: Designing Across Language and Meaning

What: Public Obscenities is a bilingual play written and directed by Shayok Misha Chowdhury, premiering at Soho Rep. Moving between languages and cultures, the play explores what is seen, misunderstood, and revealed in translation.

Goal: key art that could communicate the play’s layered themes to a broad audience, while navigating the complexity of designing across two languages, one of which the team, and many potential audience members, could not read.

Notable: Studio Usher developed key art that embraced the play’s bilingual nature. Designing typography in an unfamiliar language required a shift from literal understanding to visual sensitivity, focusing on rhythm, form, and composition while being guided by the meaning of the text. The production sold out, was named a Pulitzer Prize finalist, and transferred to multiple theaters, demonstrating how concept-driven design can support ambitious new work.

Partner: Adam Hayes