Here at Broadway Media, we can’t get enough of Anastasia the Musical!  The transportive Broadway projections, by award-winning designer Aaron Rhyne, are exclusively available to license through Broadway Media’s Scenic Projections. We love seeing photos of theatres utilizing our digital scenery, so naturally we were blown away by these photos of the recent production of Anastasia at Hutchinson High School, directed by Jason Olson in Hutchinson, MI! Check out their stunning production photos below!

Aaron Rhyne won a Drama Desk and Outer Critics Circle Award for his work on the Broadway production of Anastasia, and his designs have been seen on stages around the world in hundreds of musicals, plays, operas, and dance performances. His advice for creating an effective projection design? “Focus on the storytelling first. Make sure anything you create is in service to the story that the entire creative team is trying to tell. Anything that is too much, too bold, too confusing, too anything can harm the production. If your design work distracts or confuses or takes the audience out of the story even just for a moment, you are not in service of the play. Before putting anything on stage, make sure that it first passes that test, then you’ll always have a cohesive design.” 

To ensure our script-accurate promise for our Scenic Projections, we perform real-world tests on the materials through our pilot program. Broadway Media’s digital scenery for Anastasia was originally piloted by Madison Fine Arts Academy in a November 2020 production directed by Paul Kelsey. According to Paul, using digital scenery for Anastasia solved a variety of production headaches: “With projections, we can have so many more locations and effects than we could with traditional drops. Projections don't just serve the production quality – they are also so much easier to deal with.”

It’s a common misconception that using digital scenery is difficult to set up and operate, especially in a school setting. However, fellow teachers who have used Broadway Media products are adamant that this couldn’t be further from the truth. According to Albert Carter of Paul Laurence Dunbar Middle School in Virginia, “Broadway Media makes using Scenic Projections easy and painless. They are very supportive – you can call them and they walk you through technical issues step by step.”

The ghostly dance sequence featured in the photo above is one of our favorite parts of the show, and a great example of a theatrical effect that can only be achieved by using digital scenery. 

Anastasia is one of a long line of films that have been adapted for the stage in recent years. Recreating big cinematic moments for a smaller-scale theatrical production can be a challenge, but using projections allows your production to come alive with stunning, movie-worthy animations and special effects.

Thank you to Hutchinson High School for sharing their photos with us! To learn more about Scenic Projections for Anastasia, fill out the form below!