Now then, let’s take a look at a bench I made back in 2006 at the Santa Fe Opera. I basically had to build the whole thing from scratch in less than a week, so it’s a bit rough.

Research image

They wanted a cast iron park bench. The only real requirements were the size, so I had to find my own research image. I showed the above photograph to Randy Lutz, the prop master, and he agreed it was a good bench to duplicate.

Basic layout of sides

I drew a full-scale layout of the side on a piece of paper and spray-glued it to a sheet of plywood. You’ll notice the decorative parts do not match the photograph exactly. What I decided to do was pull some decorative resin castings and carved wood pieces from stock—the opera has quite a good collection of these. I then arranged them to match the research as closely as possible. I traced them and cut away the extra plywood. You’ll see in a bit when I start gluing them on, it’ll all make sense.

Adding the back and seat

I cut out and added some support runners on the insides of the two ends and began to attach the slats which would make up the back and the seat. It needed some extra support, so I ran a rod along the bottom; you can see it in the next photograph.

Adding applied details

Now I began attaching the decorative resin bits. I also used some Ethafoam rod cut in half to make some curved half-round molding. I found a strip of upholstery fringe which added more texture.

Closeup of details

Here’s a closeup showing some of the resin bits and Ethafoam, as well as some rosettes and even bits of yarn. If you look really close, you can even make out a bit of hot glue design work; though it’s practically invisible here, once the paint goes on, it will add just that extra little bit of texture that will make the whole thing seem like a single piece of cast iron from the audience.

Paint job

The paint job is what really helped marry all the different materials together and bring the whole thing to life. The painter of this bench worked as one of the other props carpenters for the beginning of the summer, so none of us knew how good he was at scenic art until he did this bench.

Completed bench

So here it is, ready to go on stage. I even added some round bolt heads running down the middle so it looked like the slats were bolted to the legs. Overall, it was a fun piece for the short time frame I had to build it in.

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Mixing the alginate

Life casting a hand is one of the easier parts to do; the only tricky part here was that they were rehearsing uptown at Second Stage Theatre and I only had an hour, so I had to prep everything beforehand so I could be in and out like a ninja hand caster before anyone knew what had happened.

Jay O. Sanders molding his hand

I used alginate because it’s cheap, non-toxic, safe on the skin, and sets up quickly. It’s made from seaweed and used in dentistry to make molds of your teeth and gums. After mixing the powdered alginate with water and filling a hand-sized container, I asked Jay to pose his hand and submerge it. It doesn’t heat up like plaster; it just slowly thickens. In about ten minutes, it had solidified enough to where Jay could remove his hand. It’s stretchy enough that he could pull his hand out without breaking or tearing the mold (if done slowly), and it doesn’t really stick to anything (no mold release is needed). The little bit that does stick can be washed off with water.

Pouring plaster in the alginate mold

The thing with alginate is that it starts shrinking right away as it loses water. You only have about two or three hours to make a cast before it has shrunk noticeably. I mixed up some plaster while still at Second Stage and poured it in. After it had hardened enough, I packed up my stuff and took the subway back down to the Public Theater.

Plaster hand inside the alginate mold

Now I could just tear the alginate away until the plaster hand was free.

Brush-on mold

I decided to do a brush-on mold for this because of the shape of the hand. I had only attempted a brush-on mold once before and it didn’t go so well. This time around was only marginally better. I ended up making it work, but that’s about the only good thing I could say. After the rubber mold set, I built a two-piece plaster shell around it for support. I ended up having to cut open some of the silicone mold to remove the plaster hand inside.

Unpainted silicone rubber hand

I cast the hand itself out of Smooth-On Dragon Skin, which long-time readers may remember being used in both the dead body and head for The Bacchae, as well as the dead lamb for Little Foxes. Dragon Skin itself cures fairly translucent and colorless, so I tinted the whole mix with a flesh color. I also embedded some dowels inside to cut down on the amount of silicone rubber I would need and to act as bones.

Hand of Titus Andronicus

I “painted” more Dragon Skin over top, tinted with different colors. I rubbed some darker colors into the cracks and crevices to give it a bit of depth, and added a bluish tint onto the veins. I was using a fairly thick mix so it wouldn’t run. Silicone rubber is self-leveling unless it is thickened, and it can be pretty glossy if allowed to do that. I didn’t want that on the hand, but I took advantage of that for the fingernails, where I used a pretty thin mix and only a touch of color to get a shiny and translucent effect.

"I kind of feel like that kid who found the severed hand..."

The hand has gone through some changes since I took these pictures; the bones on the back were cut down in length, and a lot more blood was painted on. All told, it only took about three days between them asking me to lend a hand making a cast of a hand to the cast having a hand in hand for rehearsal.

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Developing a full-scale pattern

I began gathering research images and working out a pattern. I worked out the size by looking up average heights and lengths of pheasants, and from photographs where pheasants were next to people and other objects of known sizes. In retrospect, I should have looked at more pictures of dead pheasants; a pheasant has a really long neck. In most photographs of pheasants in action, the neck is contracted so the head appears close to the chest. When the pheasant is dead and hangs limp, the neck is actually a good five to six inches long. You can see I was drawing a bird with a contracted neck which left my dead pheasant looking stiffer than a real one. Ah well, now I know for the next time I have to build a dead pheasant.

Pinning and stitching the seams

Once I had the pattern, I cut pieces out of muslin and began stitching them together. I left one side open so I could fill it with sandbags for weight. Some of the stitching was a little sloppy, which was okay because the whole thing was going to be covered in feathers and small imperfections would be obscured.

Adding "bone" to the wings

The wings were just flat pieces of cloth without stuffing, so I cut some plastic we had leftover from another project (I think it was styrene) to make a bone for the top and give the wings some “flappability”.

The full muslin body

The legs were stuffed with polyester stuffing (like you fill plush toys with) and had a metal rod attached inside. It extended outside to make the bottom half of the legs. I made separate sand bags for the inside of the body for weight; I could have just filled the whole thing with sand, but I was worried that as the birds were manhandled on stage, the seams would eventually pull apart and sand would leak out.

Sculpting and carving the head

I began carving the head out of a chunk of wood. It wasn’t giving me the detail I wanted, so I added some Magic Sculpt (a two part epoxy putty used for sculpting and modelling) over top of it.

Adding feathers and hackle pads

I had a bunch of loose feathers as well as hackle pads to cover the bird. Hackle pads are simply a bunch of feathers glued to a cloth pad. They are typically used for decorating hats and costumes. I also added fur to the legs and underbelly of the pheasant; this would be mostly covered by the real feathers, but I didn’t want any bare muslin peeking out anywhere.

Sewing the head into place

I sewed a rope into the neck to give it a bit of structure. For the head itself, I put it inside the muslin and stitched around it so it was trapped in place. You can see I had to add an extra bit of cloth since the head took up more room than I anticipated. Again, now I know for the next time I need to build a dead pheasant.

Using clothespins as clamps

Clothespins came in handy to hold the feathers and hackle pads in place while the glue dried. I was using Magna-Tac to glue them in place. I also added a few stitches on the larger hackle pads to make sure they were really secure. You can also see how I began adding color; Design Master floral spray paints worked well for this.

Full-length pheasant near completion

The Floral District had pheasant tail feathers; I guess they’re popular for decorators and florists. Adding them helped immensely in making this look like a real pheasant.

Making the feet

For the feet, we had a bit of wire covered in jute which was the perfect thickness for the individual toes. I wrapped that around the metal legs, and secured it further with some floral wire. I then wrapped all of that with some brown floral tape.

A dead pheasant for King Lear

By that point, I had to move onto other projects, so Raphael actually added the feathers and colors to the head. I was pheasantly surprised with how well this prop turned out.

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“As a substitute for tea, wine, whisky or brandy he serves to the actors water colored with a piece of toasted bread to suit the shade of the desired liquid and then strained. This, by the way, is not a device of modern times.

It comes from the days of Shakespeare, according to stage tradition. Sometimes ginger ale or tea is used, but these are not favored generally because they will not suit all tastes.

To one actor the ale is too pungent, to another the cider is too sour, while the third may not be able to take tea without milk, which, of course, could not be used without impairing the color of the drink. So toast-water has been accepted as the regular thing, agreeable to every palate.”

-The Morning Call, San Francisco, December 25, 1890, pg 19.

A toast to drinking! Playwrights love to make their characters drink. More popular than eating on stage, drinking on stage can be found even in plays where it is not directed by the text; a bottle of booze or well-concealed flask is a common comedic bit or a way to add layers to a character. It’s not surprising; nearly every culture through the history of civilization has had some form of fermented drink.

Many of the fake drink recipes I’ve come across over the years deal with alcoholic drinks. Very few plays feature characters drinking fruit juices. Further, drinking real beer, wine or liquor on stage is mostly a bad idea for your actor’s health and for the integrity of the show. You can find anecdotes of great stage thespians who drank real spirits while performing in a play, but these are the rare exception rather than the rule. Other drinks need stage substitutes as well. Sweet or syrupy drinks cause phlegm, which affects an actor’s vocal performance, in what some call “frog throat.” Milk or chocolate–based drinks can do the same. Coffee or tea is sometimes used if it does not need milk added, or if a milk-substitute can be found. De-caffeinated versions are preferred because most shows commence in the evening.

A number of other factors can affect your fake drink recipe. The stage lighting of the scene it plays in can alter the look of it; what looked good in the prop shop may look wrong on stage. It is often helpful to have a bottle of the real stuff on hand for comparison. Other times, the director or designer may want to veer away from complete accuracy and request a whiskey which is darker than real whiskey, or a red wine that is redder than real red wine. The recipe you come up with needs to be economical and consistent. It is no good to come up with a complicated method which either takes too much preparation time or results in every batch looking different. You must also consult with your costume department if the drinks are spilled or splashed, or if they are strongly-colored, as is the case with red wine. Some recipes stain more readily than others. Finally, pay attention to the packaging and accoutrements surrounding your liquid; drinking has a lot of accessories and rituals which, if done properly, can help sell the idea more effectively than endless experimentation with your recipe. I should also mention that if a drink starts in an opaque container and is poured into an opaque cup, you may not even need to use anything other than water.

It should go without saying that gin, vodka or any clear liquor can be imitated with plain water. If you wish to serve a gin and tonic though, a tonic water would be better than plain. A vodka and Red Bull requires just Red Bull (or a non-caffeinated/unsweetened look-alike).

I’ve never run across or used the “burnt toast” method mentioned in the quote above, but another old standby in the prop person’s bag of tricks is using cold brewed tea for various dark liquors and even some wines. I’ve seen it mentioned in texts as early as 1907. The varieties of teas available gives you an endless selection of colors and opacities, and further looks can be achieved by varying the amount of time the tea seeps or by diluting the tea afterwards. Whiskey, scotch, bourbon, sherry and others can all be made. We’ve even found “red zinger” teas which can pass for red wine on stage. Though neutral on the vocal cords, some actors dislike the taste. In some cases, this may be preferable, as it forces the actors to sip their drink in a realistic matter, rather than chugging down enough whiskey to kill a horse in a single scene.

Another old trick for these drinks is using a small amount of burnt sugar solution in water. Caramel coloring is a form of burnt sugar; you can buy it on its own or use diluted caffeine and sugar free colas which have gone flat. Some props masters have even diluted these ingredients enough to make a white wine substitute. You can also find cola concentrates for use in home soda makers, like a Sodastream, though be aware that the plain versions will still contain sugar and caffeine. A small amount is all that is necessary for a convincing whiskey, while a few drops may be all that is needed for a white wine.

Cheap and/or watered-down apple juice has found its way as a substitute for whiskeys and white wines as well. I have also heard of cranberry juice, blackcurrant juice and cherry juices used for red wine, and diluted grape juice or weak lime juice substituted for white wine. Experiment with combinations of ingredients; many a prop master has found success by mixing one of the above fruit juices with a bit of flat cola for the perfect blend of color and translucency.

Food coloring can be an economical solution, particularly when crafting fake beverages in great quantity. A bit of red and a touch of blue can appear to be red wine. One drop of green may be all that is needed for a convincing white wine. Again, success may be found by adding a touch of food coloring to one of the above recipes.

Champagne is a bit tricker, especially when the director wants to see the bubbles, or worse, when they want a bottle to open with a convincing “pop”. The mechanics of pressurizing and corking a champagne bottle are beyond the scope of this article, but in many cases, ginger ale is the closest substitute. I’ve run across some older recipes that call for using either charged water or a bicarbonate of soda with similar coloring as the white wine recipes above, but this may be adding a layer of complexity which is unnecessary.

Beer can be even trickier. Often, the only convincing substitute is a low-or-no alcohol beer if your actors are okay with that. A convincing head can be achieved with cocktail foam, such as Frothee Creamy Head. You can find recipes to make your own using egg whites (or powdered egg whites if you are squeamish about consuming raw eggs) and an acid such as lemon juice, but again, this adds to the complexity of preparation.

Milk can be tricky as well. I mentioned above that milk fat can lead to frog throat, so skim or nonfat milk can be substituted. Some actors are lactose intolerant, so a non-dairy alternative is called for. Some prop masters have used powdered non-dairy creamer in water, others have used baking soda in water, though I imagine that must taste unpleasant. Diluted milk of magnesia has been used in the past, though if too much is consumed, it can have, er, dire side effects. Unsweetened coconut or rice milk may also serve as suitable substitutes. These days, your health food store may have all sorts of convincing, albeit pricey, lactose-free milk-substitute drinks.

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They used to solve this problem in the breakfast scene of “The Duke of Killiekrankie” by having the food made of candy which would melt rapidly in the mouth, and so not interfere with enunciation. The hashed brown potatoes, for example, were nothing but spun sugar, browned, which looked substantial enough to the audience, but melted away almost as soon as they touched the tongue.

- The New York Times, April 1, 1906.

I have previously written about making inedible fake food. A props person may also have to make edible fake food. What is edible fake food? Say a character needs to eat a peanut butter sandwich, but the actress playing that character is allergic to nuts; you need an edible replica of peanut butter that contains no nuts.

Props people make edible replicas for a variety of reasons. Most common is the above-mentioned allergy issue; before planning a meal, you (or your stage manager) needs to find out what the actors are allergic to, and any special dietary needs. An actor may be vegetarian or keeps kosher. Besides allergies and diet, actors avoid other types of food while on stage; milk and cheese, or sugary drinks, tend to affect the vocal chords in ways which many actors dislike. A prop master’s greatest challenge is when he or she needs to serve a massive edible banquet, and an actor is vegetarian, allergic to gluten, and lactose-intolerant.

Another reason to make edible fake food is cost. Characters on stage may chow down on what appears to be hundreds of dollars of caviar in a single scene. You need a more cost-effective solution if you want to keep your budget under control. In a similar vein, certain foods may be time-consuming or complicated to prepare. Remember, your running crew needs to prepare the food before each show in addition to their other pre-show duties, and if your production has matinées, they may have an even tighter schedule between the two shows. It’s usually better to microwave a turkey substitute for thirty seconds than to roast a real turkey for four hours.

Third, the food on stage may require special properties which the real deal does not possess. A common example is when a director wants the characters to eat ice cream, but does not want to see the ice cream melt during the scene. It’s a tricky feat to pull off under those hot stage lights.

Finally, an actor may need to eat something which is normally not edible. Edible flowers are commonly called for, as well as paper notes. Be prepared for anything.

It is important to keep the food preparation area clean, which means separate from any work areas. If you keep a stock of preparation dishes and utensils, these should be kept separate from your regular stock of kitchen props; you don’t want to prepare your food in a dish that was painted with a toxic paint for the previous show. Likewise, the food needs to be stored properly in between shows, especially if you buy a whole bunch at once for multiple performances. It should also go without saying that you should not attempt to reuse uneaten food from one performance for the next one.

Creating edible food is a little bit sculpture, a little bit painting, and a whole lot of creativity. It’s good to develop a sort of “base” of materials which are readily available, easy to work with, and can mimic a great deal of foods. Bananas, breads, and food coloring have been some of the more popular bases for props artisans for well over a century.

Bananas can be mashed to imitate a great number of foods, such as cream or ice cream. With the right coloring and toppings, it can even substitute for meat or fish. When sliced lengthwise, you have a decent white meat substitute for chicken. Yogurt and cottage cheese work in a similar vein, but because of the milk content, they are less-commonly used.

Bread can take on a variety of shapes. Brown bread with the crusts removed and cut to the proper shape can simulate chops and roast meat. I saw the head of properties at the Walnut Street Theatre create a very convincing Salisbury steak each night with just a slice of pumpernickel covered in cold canned gravy. Switch the gravy with fruit glaze or some other red jelly and you have a slab of raw meat. A whole loaf with the crusts removed can be shaped into a number of different forms. If you use a loaf that is at least a day old, you can even carve it somewhat.

Tofu is another kind of base which can be built on for any number of fake edibles. It has the advantage of being vegan, and in some cases, gluten-free, so it’s a great choice for tricky eaters.

Food coloring adds greatly to your repertoire of faux food creation tools. It can be tricky to match the color and opacity of your intended goal; luckily, everything is edible, so you can eat your tests and samples. Specialty baking shops will stock a greater range of colors and sizes, so you don’t have to try to create every single color with those tiny bottles of red, yellow, blue and green. You can also find culinary colors in spray cans, which are a boon for the more artistically inclined.

Fruits are a friendly substitute for many foods, and can be tastier for the actors than old bread covered in cold gravy. I used a fresh grape and a dried apricot for my appetizers in Timon of Athens. I’ve also heard of shows which used half an apricot for an egg yolk and a pared apple for a raw turnip. Watermelon with some brown food coloring makes a convincingly juicy slab of raw meat. Dried fruits such as prunes and apricots can be cut up, shaped and squished to resemble a variety of things, and are especially handy when you have that large banquet scene that requires a variety of edible colors and textures to appear sumptuous.

Sausages and other imperishable meats serve a similar purpose as dried fruits. With the skin removed, they can be sliced and carved to mimic all sorts of appetizers and side dishes.

Fake edible food is a great exercise for students and interns because it forces them to distill an item (the real food) to its most recognizable characteristics, and then come up with a simple and economical replication of those characteristics. It makes them think about the constraints of a show, such as preparation time, cost per show, shopping time, etc. Finally, most people do not create fake food in their spare time, so they can’t fall back on familiar materials and methods, such as carpentry or foam carving.

A knowledge of cooking, baking, and food preparation is helpful, as it can help you learn how to thicken or thin various sauces and liquids, or give you clues how to cut and shape different foods. A trip to a culinary or baking store is great as well, as you can find all sorts of icing bags, cookie cutters and food-safe molds to help you out. I read about a production in 1906 which used a mold of a chicken to bake a sponge cake that could be carved and consumed on stage. Now that’s a tasty trick!

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Newspaper cover from All's Well That Ends Well

Since they wanted tabloid-size papers (11″ by 17″), printing was no problem; I used 18″ by 24″ newsprint from those giant pads you can get and fed them through the manual feed tray of our large-format printer. It’s a pretty crappy printer for most things, but it’ll print newsprint with no problem. Anyway, once folded over, you just need to trim a little bit off each side to get it to the proper size.

The other tricky part of fake newspapers is getting all the content inside. Now, I’m not going to touch on the complexities of copyright here—if this were television or film, you would need to get clearances on all the material you put into your newspaper. In this case, the period of the newspaper I was creating meant I could use a lot of public domain text and imagery.

Interior of the newspaper

The first thing to do is research (obviously). You want to find out how big the text was, what kinds of fonts they used, what the covers looked like, how many columns were on a page, and all those sorts of things. You probably won’t find a single image of a newspaper that will solve all your demands that you can just print out, but you can probably find one that will serve as a guide for proportion and layout.

I’ve discovered a few sources that I like to use for locating old-timey newspaper articles. The first is the New York Times Archive. You can set an advanced search to just look through their papers from 1851-1980. The great part is that for the earliest papers (I think it’s anything before 1920-something) you can access a scanned image of the actual newspaper page. This means you can search for specific subjects or keywords and certain dates to populate your newspaper; if you look at the larger version of the picture above, you’ll see all the articles are about World War I. The difficult part is that you cannot browse the newspapers, so it can be a pretty rigorous process to click through each article to see whether it is the right size or “look” for your needs.

Another great source I’ve just recently come across is The Library of Congress’ “Chronicling America” archive of historic American newspapers. This site lets you browse and search a large number of newspapers from all across the country. The papers from 1836-1922 are fully digitized as well. Unlike the Times’ archive, you can view full pages, complete with the ads and artwork.

Fake Variety for "Compulsion"

I like to do all my layout in Photoshop and keep the file until the show opens. That way, if the director or designer have a note, like enlarging a headline, I can just go back to the file, make the change, nudge everything else around to make it all fit, and print a fresh copy. In the above picture of “Variety” which I made for Compulsion, I had actor notes as well. Mandy Patinkin had to read and reference a real news article on the inside of the paper, so I had to make several variations on its size and placement before a final version was agreed to.

Inside of "Variety"

It can get pretty laborious to fill several pages with actual newspaper text, so I also searched for vintage ads to fill space. I also like to copy blocks of text and paste them onto other parts of the page; there’s no need for every word to be unique! In some cases where I couldn’t clean up smudges or distorted words, I actually retyped portions of the text with a closely-matching font.

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Yoruban sword from "The Gods are Not to Blame"

The show was called “The Gods are Not to Blame”, and it is a Yoruban retelling of the Oedipus Rex tale from Ancient Greece (the Yoruba people are one of the largest ethnic groups in Western Africa, with a cultural history of hundreds, if not thousands, of years). My future wife was the set designer on this show, and nearly all the props had to be constructed to be completely authentic; her design involved extensive research into Yoruban artifacts, furniture, and design.

This sword, while appearing like a tradition sword, was built using very modern methods. It’s actually a fairly simple construction, although it has a few hidden tricks. I carved the handle from a piece of poplar, while the blade is taken from a sheet of steel plate. I traced the shape onto the steel and used a plasma cutter to cut it out. I also cut the cross shape out with the plasma.

Pieces of the sword

Now for the hidden fun part. I took a steel rod and sharpened one end to a point. On the end of the tang of the blade, I notched a “V” shape. This is where the sharpened end of the rod went, and I welded the two pieces together; the reason for the sharpening and the notching was to give me a lot of surface area to attach my welds to.

I then had to drill a hole all the way through my carved figurine for the rod to slide into. I needed an extra-long drill bit for this part. I also notched the bottom for the tang to slide into. It was like cutting a mortise for a metal tenon. This step was necessary to keep the handle from spinning around the rod.

I threaded the end of the rod which was sticking out of the top of the figurines head, and tightened a nut down; this is how the handle remained attached to the blade. For one final little touch, I drilled out the top of the head so the nut could fit down inside, and then filled the whole thing over with some Bondo auto-body filler. The nut was now hidden within the top of the handle–with the unfortunate side effect that the handle was now permanently attached. Since this was a decorative sword and not a stage combat weapon (the blade was mild steel, and not to0l-hardened like a weapon’s blade), it would hopefully not need routine maintenance and tightening.

A collection of Yoruban swords

I traced the designs onto the blade from my full-scale drawing and engraved them with a Dremel tool. For my final step, I stained and sealed the handle.

It was a very hefty sword and a lot of fun to swing around. One day, I wasn’t paying attention while swinging it around, and I accidentally cut all my facial hair off. And that, my friends, is the secret origin of “Clean-Shaven Eric”.

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"ucks" letters

Luckily, there is a Starbucks only a block away from the props shop. There is also one three blocks away. Unfortunately, the one that was two blocks away closed down last year. I blame all these independent coffee shops moving in the neighborhood for putting a number of Starbucks out of business. The point of all of this is that I was close to reference images for this prop.

Back of a letter

I had the letters blown up to full scale in the computer and printed them out, using this as a template on lauan. As you can see in the photograph above, I added little wooden blocks on the back to give the sides something to attach to. As I write this, I wonder why I didn’t just cut the letters out of a thicker material, like three-quarter plywood. I guess it goes to show that you can always find a better way to build a prop in hindsight. Nonetheless, this method must have made sense for some reason at the time.

I cut the straight sides out of quarter-inch lauan (which is actually 3/16″ thick), while the curved sides were what we call “wiggle-wood”. I should mention that some of the work was divided up with the other artisans in the shop at the time, such as Michael Krikorian.

Front of the "S"

This project had one final hurdle. The interior loops of the “S” were too tight of a curve for the wiggle-wood to bend. I ended up laminating several sheets of cardboard together to match the thickness of the other sides.  Lots of glue and lots of clamps kept all of this together.

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A papercraft Uzi printed from the internet

Papercraft first began appearing in magazines as printing became ubiquitous. It really boomed during World War II when paper remained one of the few materials to not be rationed in the US. When I was younger, I received a book called Make Your Own Working Paper Clock, in which you cut the book apart, assemble according to the instructions, and you are left with a working clock made completely out of paper (and a few paper clips). It took me awhile to work the courage up to actually start building it; I was in my late twenties when I began. Unfortunately, our apartment building burned down, including most of that book, and all I was left with was the center wheel.

Besides being a fun hobby unto itself, the ideas behind papercraft can find their way into props. Paper, card stock and cardboard are inexpensive materials which are easy to manipulate, so they lend themselves to quick mock-ups. You can whip together a quick papercraft model to help you figure out the scale and proportions of a complicated prop, or to help you determine complex angles and measurements. They can even be used for quick rehearsal props. Last year–no kidding–we made a Victrola with a giant cardboard horn coming out of the top for Merchant of Venice rehearsals. It allowed the director and actors to see whether that large of a prop would work with their intended staging before we committed to purchasing an expensive antique.

The finished papercraft Uzi

In addition to making your own models, you can search for papercraft models all over the internet; most come in common PDF or graphics files which you simply print out and start building. They can also feature colors and graphics to spice up your model. I recently finished the scale model Uzi pictured above in such a manner. It even features a removable magazine clip:

Uzi and a magazine

The term “pepakura” became more popular in the West with the introduction of a computer program from Japan called Pepakura Designer. The software takes a 3-dimensional object and turns it into a papercraft model; it arranges the individual pieces on pages you can print out, draws lines showing where to cut and fold, and even adds tabs for glue. Everything is labeled as well, so assembly is straightforward.

One of the more common sources of 3D objects for pepakura are video games. With the software, a hobbyist can print out the armor of his favorite video game character and wear it around. They began developing it into a construction method all its own, yielding strong and light-weight pieces. The basic method involves stiffening the outside with resin, then filling the inside with layers of fiberglass or some other stiffener; water-based materials are less popular because they warp the paper. Rather than tread the same steps already trod, I’ll point you to lists of resources which are far more comprehensive than I could hope to provide. The Replica Prop Forum has collected a huge thread of pepakura links, tutorials and tips. As I write this, it contains eleven pages of great information. The second great repository of pepakura information is at the 405th, an online community for people who build guns and armor from the HALO video games.

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drafting of a prop chair

If you study the drawing, you’d notice a few things. First, it’s rather small. Normally, a chair is eighteen inches off the ground; this is only twelve. Second, the back stiles for the circular back are offset from the back legs (if you don’t know what a stile is, check out my “parts of a chair” diagram).  Wooden chairs usually have a single piece of wood running from top to bottom in the back for strength. Where the back meets the seat is the point where a lot of stress is placed on the chair, so relying on the strength of a joint rather than a solid length of wood is inviting trouble. Finally, you may notice that the back has pieces floating in the air. That’s always an engineering challenge.

attaching the back stiles

The seat of the chair was two and a quarter inches thick. I decided to skin the top with a piece of quarter-inch plywood and the bottom with eighth-inch lauan, so the interior frame had to be one and seven-eighths inches thick. That gave me a nice big chunk in the back to attach my back stiles to. I also added some bolts through the joint for extra reinforcement.

Bottom of the chair

The rest of the joints were glued and doweled.

Next came the fun part: the back. We (the props master, master carpenter, and I) needed to figure out a way to make the back pieces appear to be floating. As I mentioned above, I was making nine of these chairs, so the process had to be repeatable as well. The master carpenter was also making a throne with this same cut-out design in it, so he began developing a jig so we could rout the design out of a solid piece of wood. We had discussed using plexiglass in the middle so the pieces would actually look like they were floating, but that would not be strong enough. Instead, we would hide a steel frame inside and have small pieces of steel connecting the pieces. Between the distance of the audience, the sightlines, and the smallness of the gaps, a few pieces of quarter-inch rod steel painted black would be as close to invisible as we could make it.

Dave making a routing jig

The photograph above shows David Levine, the master carpenter, working out the jig. Note that he’s not actually cutting yet, which is why his dust mask and goggles are off. It was a complicated, multi-piece jig with several steps involved, but the results were beautiful and consistent.

For the back ring, I sandwiched poplar boards on either side of a piece of quarter-inch plywood, with the grain of each side running perpendicularly to the other. In other words, I made a giant Oreo cookie out of poplar, with a creamy plywood center. The interior back pieces were cut out of a solid piece of poplar,  made by gluing several boards together. I put this in the jig and cut my design out.

steel reinforcement in the back

Before I had cut out the back pieces, I had routed the channels in where I would hide the steel rod. The channels were as deep as the diameter of the rod, so once they were in, the whole back could get a coat of Bondo and be sanded smooth, and no one would be the wiser. The steel rod continued sown into the stiles and up into the “horn” at the top so the whole back could be tied together with the same steel structure.

I cut the top horn piece out of a solid chunk of poplar, which I made by laminating two boards with their grains running in different directions.

finished chair for Tea

Looking back, even as I write this article, I see a number of things I would do differently, or at least experiment with to see the results. As with any complicated prop, you learn a lot just by building it, but because you will never build the exact same prop again, it can be hard to assimilate that learning into your overall experience. As it turned out with this prop, I had only finished three of the nine chairs by the time they were cut from the show. It seems the stage was getting too cluttered, and the chairs were one of the more extraneous elements, so away they went.

That meant I got to keep two of the chairs, which let me test just how long my construction would actually hold up. The back on one of them did eventually break away from the seat, though not where I thought it would. I contemplated building more of a steel structure, but worried that the extra weight would either make it too heavy to carry, or even make it more likely to break; picture using a crowbar versus a stick of wood. The crowbar is extremely good at separating two pieces of wood from each other, where a stick of wood is just as likely to break itself before pulling the wood apart. Now look at a chair. The point where the back meets the seat is the focal point of a lever formed by somebody leaning back in the chair. If the stiles were metal (like a crowbar), it might tear the seat apart if you leaned back too hard.

But I digress and ruminate too much. Enjoy the pictures of the chair.

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