By Robert Simonson
03 Jun 2009

Signage on Next to Normal marquee
photo by Matthew Blank

Attend almost any show on Broadway, and you'll see the work of Wayne Sapper at least four or five times before you experience that of any playwright, actor, director or designer.

Sapper is the man without whom few people's names would ever go up in lights. He is the owner of King Displays, a family business founded by his grandfather Louis that has served the signage needs of Broadway theatres for 71 years. That sign in the marquee shouting the name of the show? That's the work of King Displays. The window cards? King Displays. The hanging plastic placards festooned with critics' quotes? You guessed it. There's hardly a sign in front of a Broadway theatre that Sapper and his employees didn't have a hand in — even the familiar cast boards inside the lobby that list the names of the players performing that night.

Wayne Sapper likes to think of King Displays as a kind of one-stop-shopping destination for Broadway signs. "Everything from the marquees to the little name sliders," he said. "That's exactly what we try to be."

Sixty percent of Sapper's business comes from the theatre. Consequently, King Displays is conveniently located on W. 52nd Street, near the Theatre District. It's a smallish industrial building, but big enough to hold a few of the huge, 15-foot-wide printing machines that the company needs to make the signs that it is known for. A recent printer cost no less than $350,000. Because King prints on many different kinds of material, from paper to plastic to fabric, Hewlitt-Packard uses the company as a "beta site" to test out new types of machinery.

Sapper will admit that theatrical sign-making is more challenging that it used to be. In the old days, everything was hand-painted. "We used to do everything by hand. I think we did our first computer image in 1989." Painted marquees took from seven to ten days to create. They were done in oil-based paints, and time was needed for each separate color to dry.

That time table would not do today. "A show closes on Sunday, say," said Sapper. "We'll get the work for the new show coming in on the Wednesday before and they'll want it up Monday. The quicker we get the new show up, that's more advertising they get."

The call for a new job usually comes from one of the theatrical advertising outfits, like Serino Coyne or SpotCo. (In decades past, the contact would be one of the bigger press agents.) Sapper needs every one of his fancy printers to realize their design concepts. "With the advantages of the computer, what they're looking for is different," he said. "The people in the agencies are very creative. So they always want to come up with new and different things, not the 'plain-old plain-old.' And with the different technologies out there, there are new ways to produce it." Continued...

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