Author Archives: Eric Hart

Medieval Theatre and Trade Guilds

How were props made in Medieval theatre? Before Shakespeare’s time, European theatre consisted of festivals and traveling religious pageants. Trade guilds were maturing into full-fledged institutions by the fourteenth century. It would seem that most of the props (and other production values) were provided by these guilds. Gradually, too, the priests lost their hold even on [...]
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Friday’s Link-tacular

It seems like everyone is working on at least one, if not more, shows at the moment. I should have some cooler stuff to write about in a few weeks. Until then, enjoy another list of links! You may be familiar with the Props Timeline I have listed over on the side of this website. Wikipedia [...]
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Stage Sounds

Stage Sounds by Harley Vincent Photographs by George Newnes, Ltd. (originally published in The Strand Magazine, 1904) Suppose some reader of The Strand were to ask, “What is a wind-machine?” how many persons in an intelligent audience would be able correctly to answer the conundrum? Yet how often have they, in some thrilling drama at Drury Lane or one [...]
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It’s Props Month at Stage Directions

This month’s issue of Stage Directions has a special section on props. One of the articles, “Prop Shop Confidential” by Lisa Mulcahy, is about maintaining a props stock. This is a good companion to my own post on which props to keep and which to trash; it features a lot more thoughts on how to [...]
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Props in Movies, 1922

The Property Man Who Is Qualified to Become One? By Ray Chrysler, Matter of Properties, Metro Pictures Corporation, 1922. Picture a curiosity shop and you can visualize clearly the property room of a large studio. In it, one will find everything from a suit of armor to a canary bird’s nest. From it, several well-furnished homes or hotels [...]
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