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Weirdest Prop Ever

Eric Hart — Mon, 08 Aug 2011 12:50:25 +0000

I’m driving down to North Carolina today for a week-long trip so I’ll have less time to blog this week. So instead, I’ll open the conversation up to my readers. What’s the strangest prop you’ve ever had to build? Leave a comment on my website! Related posts: How do I make a…? “How do I [...] Related posts:

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Leaving Arizona

Eric Hart — Mon, 18 Jul 2011 15:30:52 +0000

I am flying out of Arizona today after a fun and learning adventure at this year’s S*P*A*M conference. I have a lot of notes to go through and photographs to share from this years conference of propmasters, but I have to get to my computer first. Until then, enjoy this piece from PBS NewsHour on the Maker Movement. It’s an hour-long video exploring the DIY and maker movement, including things like Maker Faires and training in public schools.

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This blog is two years old today

Eric Hart — Wed, 19 Jan 2011 10:00:45 +0000

It’s hard to believe this blog has been running for another year already. Last year, I summed up the first 162 posts. I’m doing the same thing again this year. If you are new to this site, or even if you’ve been checking it out for awhile, you may not know how much stuff is here; I’ve written 313 posts (that’s over 139,000 words). You can subscribe to my blog with your favorite blog reader, or sign up to get all articles through email so you don’t miss anything in the future. I add three posts a week, and as a bonus, the RSS feed and email subscriptions remain advertisement-free. I also have a Twitter feed where I share news and links about props. If you’ve been reading this blog for awhile, now would be a great time to leave a comment or drop an email if you haven’t yet; and if you have, feel free to leave another.

I had some things going on outside of this blog this past year. Back in September, I was interviewed at TheatreFace, and you can read the transcript at the site. I also had an article in Stage Directions magazine on the breakable phone from The Book of Grace; another article will be appearing in this February’s issue.

I really hit a nerve with the props community when I asked Why is there no Tony Award for Props? My article On sharing and secret knowledge also proved popular. 25 memorable film props was a big hit with the kids. Other feature length articles I’ve written include Challenges in making props lists for Shakespeare, Which classes should I take, Importance of photographing your work, How much should you charge for your work?, A Common Error in Making Cutlists, Buying the Right Tools, Using soft materials to mimic hard details, Building a Prop from a Photograph, applying for a NYC Theatrical Weapons Permit, and the all-important question: Why Make? I shared Some thoughts on brand-name props, Thoughts on green props, and Thoughts on 3D Printing Technology. I shared two shorter pieces On making things and Getting the shape you want,, and finally gave advice on what to do When Nothing is Happening.

I am interested in the definitions of props and the ideas behind what it means to work in props, and so I opined on what the difference is with a prop master vs prop director, how to tell whether something is a Prop or Not? and what it means when a prop is Cut! I also asked Why the term prop master?, gave my theories on the Confusions in the definition of a prop, and listed some Categories of props.

I showed some process shots from some of the projects I and others in the shop have worked on, such as faux oil paintings, a fake deer butt, a paper-tearing jig, fake french fries, a breakaway telephone, a Medusa head, an LED lighter, a fake dead lamb (part one, part two, and three), a steel headboard for In the Wake, a stuffed kitten from recycled fabric, a chandelier from Romeo and Juliet, as well as an overview of the props from The Book of Grace, and the paper props from Capeman. I also documented the process in making a blood sponge bag, how to gold leaf, faking a beer can, making a switchblade, five quick prop fixes, and ways to make crack and snow.

I took a heavier focus on safety this year, with articles on E-cigarettes, choosing the right disposable glove, all the chemicals in the world, blank-firing guns, and “A Label of Love“.

This past year saw “Props Month” at Stage Directions magazine, as well as the launching of the new S*P*A*M website. I attended the S*P*A*M conference in San Francisco, where I also got to take tours of the San Francisco Opera and the Berkeley Repertory Theatre prop shop. I also attended the Maker Faire 2010, 2010 NYC Props Summit, and the Going Green in Theatrical Design: Set & Props Workshop sponsored by the Broadway Green Alliance.

I began offering reviews of books for props people, and started off with some of the most commonly used texts, including Theatrical Design and Production by Gillette, Careers in Technical Theater by Mike Lawler, The Theater Props Handbook and The Prop Builder’s Molding and Casting Handbook by Thurston James, The Prop Master by Amy Mussman, and Making Stage Props by Andy Wilson.

I made some drawings. This year I drew the parts of a sword hilt, illustrated categories of props, and the parts of a book. I also linked to other helpful illustrations and diagrams across the web, such as an upholstery yardage chart, 36 knots, bends and splices, mechanical sound effects, and Nokia cellphones and Legos.

I also like looking at the history of props and prop-making, and wrote the following pieces: Oldest Surviving Masks; Medieval theatre and trade guilds; Props in Henslowe’s Diary; Props in the time of Moliere; The Gore of Grand Guignol; Pre-war special effects; and A brief history of IATSE.

Finally, I reprint articles and parts of books from other authors which talk about the world of props in all its many forms and incarnations. In chronological order, these are the articles: The Property Department in an opera house in 1851; Behind the scenes at the theatre, 1861; To literally steal the show 1868; The secret regions of the stage, 1874; The End of Making Props 1883; Behind the Scenes of an Opera-House, 1888: Introduction, Constructing a God, Technical Rehearsals, A Singing Dragon, Dangerous Effects; The Influence of Properties upon Dramatic Literature, 1889; A Place to Buy Thunder, 1898; Behind the scenes: The Property Room, 1898; Stage Sounds, 1904; Busy Stage Workers the Public Never Sees, 1910; The Unreality of Stage Realism, 1912; Writing for Vaudeville, 1915; Play production in America, 1916; Props in Movies, 1922; Dressing interior sets for the motion picture camera, 1923; Stage-hands union, 1923.

So keep reading, and keep propping. This next year should be just as exciting!

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Prop Masters Conference Roundup

Eric Hart — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 10:10:21 +0000

This past weekend, I visited the lovely city of San Francisco for the first time. It was the 2010 S*P*A*M conference. For those of you not in the know, the Society of Properties Artisan Managers represents full-time properties directors (and their assistants, like me) in theatre, opera, and education. The currently 98 members work in nearly every part of the country and many of the major cities, as well as one in Canada.

As part of the conference, we toured the facilities at the San Francisco Opera and at Berkeley Rep. Each if those may become a blog post in the upcoming days. We also toured Pixar Studios, but that was all secret and no cameras were allowed.

We also had a hazardous communications training seminar with Monona Rossol. It has reminded me that I’ve posted very little information and links about safety on this site.

Finally, S*P*A*M is working on some exciting new things, which I will keep you all apprised of as they happen. I’d write more, but I’m at the airport waiting for my overnight flight home to NYC, and I have to go straight back to work in the morning. This Hart won’t be left in San Francisco!

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Midsummer Errata

Eric Hart — Fri, 02 Jul 2010 13:01:54 +0000

Tonight and tomorrow night finally see the official openings of our two Shakespeare in the Park shows done in repertory: A Winter’s Tale and Merchant of Venice. I’ve been working on these shows since February, so it’s a bit strange at the moment to think of them as “done”.

Merchant received a particularly glowing review in the New York Times. It spends a bit of time discussing the set, and even goes so far as to point out particular props, something which is exceedingly rare in reviews at this level.

A spotlighted ticker-tape machine sits commandingly center stage as the play begins, right across from a manual exchange board.

That ticker-tape was made by the very talented Natalie Hart. The body was re-purposed from the inside of the gramophone machine which also appears on stage; the plastic dome had to be custom made by a plastics company she found. It seems one company in America used to make acrylic bell jars like the one we needed; I remember buying one for a ticker-tape machine I had to build back in 2002. When Natalie contacted them and told them it was for a theatre show, the owner asked, “Is it for Beauty and the Beast“? It would seem many productions of that show eventually find this same company. Unfortunately, they have ceased manufacturing them, and the only options these days is to have one custom-built like we did, find a used one, or go with the dangerous option of using a glass one on stage.

I’ll be remiss if I don’t thank all the other artisans, shoppers and interns who worked so hard on these two shows and helped create something so wonderful and amazing. I’ll be sure to go into more depth of what I’ve experienced and learned from these once I get some rest and some photographs.

Later this month, I’ll be attending my first S*P*A*M conference in the Bay Area. S*P*A*M (The Society of Properties Artisan Managers) includes the heads of properties departments at most of the countries regional theatres, educational theatre programs, and many other theatres of comparable size. Every year they have a conference to network, share stories and experiences, and take part in some activities. This is my first time going since I’ve joined, and I’m really excited to both meet so many people I’ve heard about and communicated with through email, and to visit San Francisco for my first time.

We will be touring the prop shops of Berkeley Repertory Theatre and American Conservatory Theater, as well as the Pixar Studios. In addition, we will be participating in a workshop by Monona Rossol, the President and founder of Arts, Crafts and Theater Safety, Inc. Those of you who’ve spent a summer at the Santa Fe Opera know her from the annual Safety Day which all artisans and employees are required to attend every two years. I’ve been through her seminar twice as a properties carpenter; it will be interesting to attend as a properties master.

On a final note, if you visit this website regularly, you may notice it undergoing various tweaking and modifying. If you have any comments or suggestions on how to make it more useful in terms of organization, or more pretty in terms of… prettiness, please feel free to share them with me.

A quick update

Eric Hart — Tue, 25 May 2010 11:45:06 +0000

Sorry for missing the last two updates. I’ve been excessively busy getting ready for back-to-back techs for Merchant of Venice and A Winter’s Tale for this year’s Shakespeare in the Park, and this past weekend was also a wedding for two of my good friends in Nebraska.

Rest assured, tomorrow will see a return to regularly scheduled posts!

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Elephant’s Trunk

Eric Hart — Wed, 19 May 2010 12:52:54 +0000

Playground equipment at the entrance of Elephant's Trunk

Faye Armon and I headed up to Elephant’s Trunk this past weekend. It’s one of the largest flea markets in New England, and only about 2 hours north of New York City.

It runs only on Sundays from April until November, 7am-2pm. They claim it takes up 55 acres; maybe that’s true if you count the parking lot. Regardless, it took us all day to walk past every single booth at least once.

I saw Americana, ephemera, steampunk treasures, baubles, furniture from around the world, and more than a few things where I had to stop because I didn’t know such a thing had existed. The prices ranged from thousands of dollars for pristine antique furniture, to tables filled with sundry items for a dollar each.

We brought a van along which we filled with potential props for both Merchant of Venice and Winter’s Tale. Next time I think I’ll bring a rolling cart as well, as the carts that are available for borrowing there are so rusted they’re nearly immovable.

Collection of wares for sale

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Deer Butt

Eric Hart — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 13:39:23 +0000

Last Monday, my wife and I saw A Lie of the Mind by the New Group up at Theatre Row.

Deer Butt

We went because Natalie had her deer butt in the show. She didn’t make it for this production though; she made it at Ohio University over seven years ago. Matt Hodges, the prop master for the current production, found it in his search for a deer butt; it just so happened he was in our shop around when Tom Fiocchi, the prop master at Ohio University, told Natalie that someone had bought her butt. Thus, I was able to score some tickets, and Natalie was able to see a prop from her past.

Remember kids; build a prop well, and it can live for years to come!

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This blog is one-year old today

Eric Hart — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 08:10:19 +0000

Tomorrow will be one year since the First Post of this blog. I now have a link to the archives of my blog, which will show the 162 posts I’ve made so far, as well as this one and all future posts. So if you miss a few days, or are new to the site, you can quickly check out all the contents. If you don’t want to miss any posts from now on, you can subscribe to my blog with your favorite blog reader, or sign up to get all articles through email. I post three times a week, and as a bonus, the RSS feed and email subscriptions are advertisement-free.

During the past year, I attended the 2009 SETC Theatre Symposium, which focused on props. My paper was presented in a panel called “Creating Props, Creating Performances“. I’ve also posted some highlights from Bland Wade’s keynote speech as well as the closing remarks. I also took part in the “first” New York City Props Summit, where I met many other props people from the city. Finally, I was hired full-time as the Assistant Props Master at the Public Theatre.

I described some of the props I made for Why Torture Is Wrong, and the People Who Love Them, including a separate post on the bar. During Shakespeare in the Park, I made a wooden ratchet and a funerary urn trick for Twelfth Night. The big prop for The Bacchae was a dead body, which I described in two posts (part one and part two) as well as a third post showing the evolution of the head of Pentheus. Last fall, my wife and I built a three-foot tall garden gnome. I prop-mastered my first New York show, Slave Shack, and wrote an article on the set props and one on the hand props. I finished the year with a wooden table for Mike Daisey’s The Last Cargo Cult.

I’ve also made some videos for this site. I have one on blood sponges, a breakaway bottle, making a breakable glass, and a video of my father throwing a ceramic pot. One thing I hope to show more of on this blog is diagrams, illustrations, photographs and timelines of specific kinds of objects. Whether I find them online, or create them myself, my wish is to compile a sort of “quick reference guide” for commonly used props. So far, I have information on bar glassware, telephone history, 40 Styles of Chairs, mid-century kitchens, old-fashioned carpentry tools, a brief history of gift wrap, and the parts of a chair.

This blog has a number of articles I’ve written:

I also reprint articles from older books in the public domain:

I investigated when the the word “property” was first used in the theatrical sense, as well as the first time it was shortened to “props”. I’m interested in the history of props and prop-making itself, and have written about Ancient Greek theatre props, Shakespeare’s Props, and gathered a group of photographs of props in the twentieth century.

And finally, I’ve shown off the work of other people and companies, such as the Santa Fe Opera, Actors Theatre of Louisville Props Shop, a tour of the Mythbusters Shop, Ross MacDonald, Milwaukee Rep’s Prop Shop, the Internet Craftsmanship Museum, prop people across the news, interviews at Collectors Weekly, Mad Men Props, and original Stargate SG-1 Props.

There’s still dozens more posts on this site I haven’t mentioned here, so take the time, if you haven’t already, to poke around. I wanted to thank all of you who have written or talked to me over the past year about this blog; I don’t know if I would keep writing this if I didn’t know people were reading it. If you like this site, leave a comment or shoot me an email, and share it with a friend. I’d also love to hear any suggestions for topics to cover in the future (or topics to stop covering). Until next time, prop it like it’s hot!

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The First Post

Eric Hart — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 08:10:39 +0000

I started this blog for several reasons. The first is simply that there are no other real prop blogs. At least, none that I can find. And I’ve looked. I like reading blogs. I wish I could read a blog about props a few times a week. Since I can’t, I figured I’d start my own.

The second reason is that I’m working on a book about props. This blog is a way to gather my thoughts, practice my writing, and discuss things that won’t make it into the book.

Finally, I’m presenting a paper at the next SETC Theatre Symposium on props. I thought that would be a great thing to cover on a blog, and I’d like to have this well underway by that point.

Feel free to send in anything you think is of interest for this blog. Prop stories, pictures, and how-tos… if you have a portfolio you wish to share, or pictures of your prop shop or storage… if there are any books, magazines, or articles you’ve read online that you wish to share… whatever it is, send it on in to eric@props.eric-hart.com.

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