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The prop shop BY MIKE LAWLER From omelets to armoires, they’re responsible for the stuff that makes up the world of the play IN ONE SENSE props is a shortened version of the slang noun propers—which means, basically, respect. For a classic example of its use, just have a listen to Aretha Franklin’s seminal soul rendition of “Respect,” in which she advises her man he had better be ready to give her her propers when she gets home. In the theatre, though, props is an abbreviation of the word properties, as in stage properties. It is a fitting if generally overlooked coincidence, because those toiling in the land of stage props certainly deserve their share of, well, props. Stage properties include hand props, set dressing, costume accessories, furniture—actually just about everything that appears on the stage that’s not an actor, costume, dog, or element of the set. A theatre’s props department consists of a department head (known as the master or mistress, manager, director, or designer) and any number of props artisans with diverse skills. The number of artisans working in a shop and their properties specialties will depend largely on the size and budget of the theatre, the length of the season, and the skills and needs of the props master. Jim Guy, properties director of Milwaukee Repertory Theatre, has a fulltime prop staff that includes a carpenter, a shopper, a soft props specialist, a crafts specialist, a graphics specialist, and one person who works in many different areas, including electronics. This enables Guy to concentrate on DRAMATICS • OCTOBER 2006 the bigger picture, dealing directly with designers, directors, budgets and—his favorite part of the job—set decoration. “Set decoration can and should be really rich and detail-oriented. It can be a major contributor to the effect that the play has,” he says. Other props departments throughout the country have shops that are variations on Guy’s setup at Milwaukee Rep, but not all have the budgets to retain such diverse staff. In smaller shops the props master has a very hands-on job. All props departments, regardless of the theatre, are responsible for a wide range of tasks. “I need to be a master of every trade,” says Michelle Moody, properties manager of PlayMakers Repertory Company in Chapel Hill, North Carolina from 2003 to 2006, and now a freelance prop artisan who is working for the Tulsa Opera this fall. “The ultimate properties manager is comfortable painting, building, welding, sewing, shopping, carving, electrifying, and going to meetings.” Aside from the actors themselves, every physical item that appears on stage is covered by three departments: scenery, costumes, and props. Any prop that is carried by an actor (known as a hand prop) is the responsibility of the prop shop; any piece of set dressing, including furniture, that is not built by the scene shop is built, found, or refurbished by the prop shop; any costume accessory not built by the costume shop (such as a walking cane), is provided by the prop shop. Members of the prop shop are also responsible for food that appears on stage, even overseeing its preparation. Each and every prop must also be researched JAY WESTHAUSER thoroughly to ensure its authenticity in terms of the era and specifications in the text. A typical properties department will have a storage room full of stock props, including furniture, weapons, soft goods, and most everything else you can imagine. Ideally, they will also have a shop equipped with tools to build items that may range in size from large furniture to the smallest bag or coin. Works well with others The work of a props department is perhaps the most diverse area of a theatre’s production team. Properties personnel are faced with making decisions on how to handle sometimes very elaborate and difficult tasks. “Props is the area of theatre that I believe—more than any other—crosses over, or is affected by, the other areas of theatre,” says Guy, who has run the prop shop at Milwaukee Rep since 1998. Props people have to be nimble and able to think quickly on their feet, because the obstacles they must overcome to prop a show will crop up in many different areas. Much of the furniture was airborne in Todd Rosenthal’s design for Milwaukee Rep’s production of A Month in the Country last spring. “We spent three straight days rigging furniture and dressing it in the air,” props manager Jim Guy said. “This is my adult life.” OCTOBER 2006 • DRAMATICS JEFFREY PHELPS / MILWAUKEE JOURNAL-SENTINEL standards that will allow their use in virtually any situation. “Our assumption is that everything is going to be played as if the audience is going to breathe on it.” Like the costume shop, the props department works closely with performers in order to meet their needs—at times altering designs in order to increase comfort, accommodate disabilities, and more precisely fit the demands of the production. Guy recognizes that the props department’s work can enhance an actor’s performance and thus the power of the production itself. “It helps them get into and stay in character and feel supported by the stuff that’s around them,” he says. Guy on the set of Milwaukee Rep’s production of A Skull in Connemara, by Martin McDonagh, in 2002. “Two graves were dug up nightly, and the skeletal remains of three people were removed and then smashed to bits with wooden mallets,” Guy says. The prop shop made more than 1,200 fake, smashable bones for the run of the show. “The dirt in the graves was actually a mix of four colors of granulated rubber, dyed bark chips, and hemp fiber. It’s lighter than real dirt, it’s virtually dust free, and it sounds great when you sink a spade into it.” Props may affect costumes, scenery, lighting, and stage management, so the work of the prop shop requires effective communication with designers, directors, stage managers, technical directors, production managers, and costume directors. Off the top of his head, Guy cites a few typical questions that have roots in other departments. “Will the armoire fit through this door for the scene shift? Is the top of this coffee table too reflective? Does this have to be a battery-operated lamp on the desk? Does the sword goof up the hang of the coat? Is the gun too big or too heavy to put into a pocket? We go everyplace.” What this means, in short, is that superb communication skills are a must for the properties director. “I find that sharing information with evDRAMATICS • OCTOBER 2006 Technology and props eryone is usually the best approach,” says Moody. Jennifer Stearns-Gleeson, props manager for Centerstage in Baltimore, agrees that communication throughout the process is essential. “You have to stay on top of this, or you will be wasting a lot of time working in a bubble that will burst once all the parts come together in tech,” she says. Not unlike technical theatre in general, props is all about being prepared. “There’s no guarantee when they ask for something in rehearsal, and then say, ‘Oh, but it’s going to be all the way upstage, and nobody’s ever going to stand on this chair,’” says Guy. “You get to third tech, and all of a sudden, [somebody says] ‘wouldn’t it be cool if...’ ” Thus he makes certain the props that come out of his shop are built to exacting “Low tech,” says Guy, “is best tech.” Guy is for the most part immune to the charms of computer-controlled prop gadgetry. “We do use a fair amount of radio control and pneumatics, and a little bit of hydraulics,” he admits, “but we’re not doing anything with computer-controlled devices. When we start to introduce computerized stuff for use on stage, that adds a level of complication that I think we can generally do without.” Which is not to say that Guy’s prop staff doesn’t use computers. They do, a lot, especially for graphics work. They create custom newspapers and magazines, and even reproduce famous paintings—sometimes altering the images to fit the design concept. “We just morphed our leading lady’s face into a pre-Raphaelite painting,” he tells me. Guy believes that technology such as this is best used in the service of the performer, who can hold a realistic newspaper or periodical and feel more in the world of a period piece. “A few years ago we did Last Night at Ballyhoo, and that opens in Atlanta, Georgia in 1939 on the weekend that Gone With The Wind premiered,” he says. “We were able to exactly reproduce the December 22, 1939 Atlanta Journal-Constitution. So the actor actually had in his hand the D SA ND Y UN DE RW OO A job description “PROPS ARE THERE every step of the way,” says Jennifer StearnsGleeson, props manager for Centerstage in Baltimore. The first step a props master will take is to read the play at hand, marking any part of the text that will affect his or her department, and making lists of props that may be needed. This will include items that are not explicit in the text, but which have been alluded to—such as food for characters at the table in a dinner scene. The director and designer may also contribute to the list of necessary props, based on their concepts. Once the final list has been compiled, the props manager must determine whether any props will be the responsibility of another department, such as the scene or costume shops. Such decisions are based on many factors, such as the size and capabilities of the various departments and a particular theatre’s structure of responsibility. Then, the building and gathering process begins. By this time the props manager has determined what props will be built, purchased, pulled from stock, or rented. During the build process the props master will provide any necessary rehearsal props to the stage manager. These stand-in props are nearly as important as the real ones, because actors will use this time to discover the physicality of the props during their performance. Therefore, the closer the rehearsal prop is to the final product, the better. Once the build process is over, the props master will turn the actual props over to the stage manager or the assistant stage manager (the person who is usually in charge of props during the performance run). The props master will go over the use and maintenance of the props, and will train the stage managers in the safe use of any weapons that may be included in the show’s props. –M.L. newspaper the character would have read that day.” And Guy’s shop will use gadgetry on stage when it serves the show. For a 2004 production of Richard III, the director wanted a prop corpse to ooze blood during a scene. Guy’s shop rigged the body, which was fitted with a cast face of an actor in the show, with a blood reservoir and a small, almost silent twelve-volt pump activated by radio control. The fabric of the corpse’s costume was specially treated to help the stage blood spread rapidly.“That body bled on cue,” Guy says. “My goal is to hire people who are better at what they do than I am at what they do,” Guy explains. Having the right staff enables leaders like Guy to give accurate cost and time estimates. It also gives the shop a reputation for quality and craftsmanship that lends itself to trust on the part of other production personnel such as the production manager and technical director. “My job is to know enough about what the people in my shop do, to be able ask them realistically to do things, and know what their process is,” says Guy. He also believes that fostering the proper creative atmosphere is essential to getting the most out of his prop team. “We respect these individuals as artists. They feel invested in what goes on stage.” Guy is fortunate to work at a wellestablished LORT theatre that has an annual operating budget of over $9 The shop An ideal props department may not exist, but good props masters know what they need in order to supplement their own skills as well as free up their time so they can deal with the logistics of running the shop. Props were a vital storytelling element of Ensemble Theatre of Cincinnati’s production of Ron Hutchinson’s Moonlight and Magnolias last spring. The comedy recounts the story of the marathon writing sessions to adapt Gone With the Wind as a screenplay. According to legend, producer David O. Selznick locked writer Ben Hecht and director Victor Fleming in his office, forcing them to subsist on peanuts and bananas, until the script was completed. Director Drew Fracher and properties master Shannon Rae Lutz used the increasingly dense accumulations of peanut shells, banana peels, and crumpled typescript to show the passage of time and the mounting frustration in the room. David Arden Engel, in the foreground, plays Hecht; William McNulty is Fleming. million. But not all theatres can afford seven full-time staff members in the prop shop, as Milwaukee Rep has. At Playmakers Rep, things are different. The theatre, which is part of the University of North Carolina’s Department of Dramatic Art, operates on a budget of just over $1 million, and so is able to employ only a properties manager and one prop carpenter and welder full time. A student assistant and work-study part-timers help fill in the gaps. “Props departments are often forgotten when planning a theatre, I’ve decided,” says Moody. Guy, for his part, seems to agree. “There is only so much money to go around,” he says. Props training “A good props person can always get work,” Guy believes. What type of formal training, if any, a props artisan OCTOBER 2006 • DRAMATICS should seek, on the other hand, is a more difficult subject. Guy, who began the M.F.A. props program at the University of Illinois at UrbanaChampaign in 1991 and headed it until 1998, points out the advantages of graduate study. “If you go into the right program, you can benefit from the experience of someone who was or is a professional in the field,” he says. “And you have the safety net of the academic world. That is, you are allowed to fail.” He explains that the diversity of training in a typical three-year graduate program can provide the student with a much broader base of experience than could possibly be gained in the same amount of time in the professional world. Graduate training is not the norm among prop artisans, though. “Most prop people I have found probably have undergrad degrees from theatre departments, and then they earn while they learn,” Guy tells me. “They learn the job on the job.” “There are very few students who have more than a passing interest in props once they learn how much work goes into it,” says Moody, who graduated from West Virginia University with an M.F.A. in scenic and properties design—a common discipline coupling. “Those that do want to continue usually have a props temperament.” No matter how much training you have before you take your first prop shop job, Moody has some final advice: “Make sure you get paid for it once you’re out of school,” she warns. “There are too many people who will take advantage of your desire to learn—and the truth is, there are very few people who know how to do props.” ▼ DRAMATICS • OCTOBER 2006 Originally published in Dramatics magazine. More info: Schooltheatre.org