Category Archives: Education

Historical and scholarly views of props

The Property Department of an opera house in 1851

This article first appeared in The Critic, a London literary journal, in 1851. A Peep into the Interior of an Opera House The Property Department The word “property” implies that vast variety of articles which, after the scene is placed and the actors are dressed, are still required to complete the picture. It is easier to name some [...]
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Why the term “prop master”?

Why do we use the term “property master”? In our modern world of “directors”, “managers”, and “heads”, why use the word “master”? Where does it come from? The term “property master” is in reference to the old European guild systems. In a guild, a person would apprentice to a master for several years, learning the trade. [...]
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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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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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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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