Bring in 'Da Noise, Bring in 'Da Funk

Paula Scher · 1995 · Offset lithograph, season poster

Scher's identity for The Public Theater, begun in 1994, is the work most designers point to when they talk about her: wood-type-inspired condensed and compressed faces packed edge to edge, black and red on that unmistakable acid yellow, type stretched and stacked until the poster reads like a shout down Lafayette Street. This sheet announces the 1995-96 season, with the theater's breakout hit "Bring in 'Da Noise, Bring in 'Da Funk" by Savion Glover, Reg E. Gaines, and George C. Wolfe leading a lineup that also included Wasp and Other Plays, Two Women, The Chang Fragments, King Lear, Venus, Dancing on Her Knees, and The Skriker. Glover appears knocked out in high-contrast black and white, suspended mid-step inside the typography rather than framed by it. The system deliberately broke with the polished, quiet theater posters of the era and gave a downtown institution a street voice.

It's through mistakes that you actually can grow. You have to get bad in order to get good.Paula Scher

View this poster in The 29 Collection