Showcases

A Wall of Posters

Berkeley Rep is currently working on a new musical based on Green Day’s American Idiot album. The set will include massive walls completely plastered with band posters and fliers. On her blog, Lisa Lázár explains where these posters are coming from:

We all met up in front of a punk club in Berkeley (which is credited as being the place where Green Day got its start), and ripped posters off off telephone poles.

A lot of the posters on the set are being printed and photocopied by the scenic artists, but a good percentage is being augmented with found objects. Earlier this month, she actually put a call out for such posters:

Could you go out in the next few days and tear down some show posters, and mail them to me?

We’re covering the gigantic walls of our upcoming show with this sort of thing, and we would like as many real posters as possible.

Propping a show occassionally calls for finding an obscene amount of  one specific item. It always requires getting creative and thinking outside the box to avoid spending your entire budget.

Don’t forget to check out the rest of Lisa’s blog for more great stories and tutorials from the world of scenic art!

How-to

Coating Foam

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My wife and I are currently working on a project for a new show which is essentially a Styrofoam sculpture. It got me thinking about the various ways to treat and coat foam.

You need to coat foam with something. If you tried to paint raw foam, it will eat all the paint up. If you tried to use anything with a solvent, such as spray paint, it will dissolve the foam. Finally, uncoated foam is just too fragile for many uses, especially in theatre.

Coating the foam with Gesso or joint compound will smooth it out and give it a paintable surface. If you mix the joint compound with glue, it will make give it a little more flexibility, as joint compound tends to crack and flake off. Though your Styrofoam will look nice with these kinds of coatings, they will still be fairly fragile.

At the display company I’ve worked at in the past, we made a lot of sculpted pieces out of foam. For the most part, we used Rosco Foamcoat on top of our pieces. Foamcoat goes on a little like joint compound, and creates a hard but flexible coating. It can be sanded and painted, but it doesn’t fall apart like joint compound. It gives a good amount of protection, though it will still dent if you hit it or drop it.

Another product we use at the display company is Aqua Resin. This takes a lot more time, but you are left with a very hard and very smooth surface.

You can use other types of resin on Styrofoam. Polyester resins will eat through the foam, but epoxy resins will give you a very hard, very smooth surface. These are normally used in conjunction with fiberglass or other composite fibers. You can use fiberglass or carbon fiber over foam to give it a lot of strength; this is how some surfboards and skateboards are made. At this point though, are you making a Styrofoam prop, or are you just using it as a form for the fiberglass?

For the project we’re currently working on, we’ve decided on the following compromise; we are going to cover the foam in muslin strips soaked in glue. After this dries, it will create a hard outer shell which can be painted. With a fibrous coating, the piece will resist cracking or crumbling. We will then coat the piece in Foamcoat to smooth it out and hide the texture of the muslin. Finally, we will cover the whole thing in epoxy resin to make it smooth, waterproof, and even stronger. I did a few tests, and this gave the best result for our timeframe and budget.

Finding out this kind of information online can be difficult, so most of what I’ve written here is based on my experience, experimentation, and some research. If anyone else out there ever sculpts in foam, I’d love to hear how you finish it off.

Education

Changes aHead

The Bacchae opens this Monday in Central Park. For those of you who follow this blog, you’ve seen some of the cool work we’ve been doing in the prop shop for this show. Let me say, it wasn’t easy.

I’ve arranged a small series of the various states and stages the head of Pentheus went through.

The first skull prototype
The first skull prototype
The head of King Pentheus
The head of King Pentheus
Head with cast of Anthony Mackie's face
Head with cast of Anthony Mackie's face
After the face was torn off
After the face was torn off
Final head
Final head

Changed are inevitable when making props. It always seems to be the nicest or most interesting prop you’ve been working on; after spending days or even weeks perfecting what will become the highlight of your portfolio, the prop gets cut, or worse, attacked with hot glue and gaff tape.

It’s natural, and preferable, to be proud of what you build. However, we must also remember that the production is the ultimate goal of our work. If a prop needs to be sacrificed for the show, let it happen. You can never be so attached to a prop that you place it ahead of the needs of the production.

Useful Sites

Wednesday Link-O-Rama

Here are some quick links for the day.

  • Lonesome West Prop Tricks – Here are some quick tips for Martin McDonagh’s Loneseome West; most specifically, the stove that gets hit by a shotgun.
  • Costume Properties Construction Handbook – Costume properties has a lot of overlap with props; depending on the show, an object may have equal merit as a costume or a prop depending on the logistics of your production. Regardless, the materials and techniques are very similar for each field.
  • Top Ten Colbert Report Prop Malfunctions – If you watch the Cobert Report, you’ll love these prop malfunctions from the show’s history.
  • Stagehand Primer – Local 470 out of Wisconsin has their primer online. It includes a section on properties.  If you want to join the stagehand union anywhere in the country, this section will give you a good introduction as to what is expected of a props person in the union.
How-to

How to read a script

A prop master develops a prop list by reading the script. The director, designer, and/or stage manager may come up with their own prop list; you still need your own so you can get working right away, and so you can make sure the rest of the production team has considered all the props that may be in the production.

First off, if your script comes with a prop list in the back, don’t use it. These are from the original production. The design and direction of your production will certainly be slightly altered, and can even be totally different.

Read the script twice. The first time is for fun, to get an overall feel of the play. You want to be able to have an intelligent conversation about the play with the rest of the design team. You don’t want to be the one at the meetings going, “Wait, Juliet is a girl?” The second time you read through it is to start noting props. Have your own copy of the script so you can mark it as you read. This script should live in your prop bible. Mark the page number of the prop on the prop list for easy reference later.

You can find props references throughout the script. The scene descriptions will give descriptions of the set furniture and some set dressing. The stage directions will tell you what hand props are being used, and how they are used.  The character descriptions can give more clues about hand props, and can also hint at possible costume props. Even the dialogue can hold additional prop notes.

Look for clues on how a prop is used, and what it needs to do. If a chair is introduced on page 3, and on page 42, a character leaps on top of it, that needs to go on your prop list. A designer will usually decide what a prop must look like, but it is up to you to figure out what the prop needs to do. The director will also determine what a prop needs to do in rehearsal, but it helps to know as soon as possible if anything on your list will take some time or effort to build or acquire.

One final bit of advice comes from Bland Wade, who reminds you to consider all the ramifications of a stage direction, rather than what is merely written down. When a script says a character enters “smoking”, you need to ask what kind of cigarette he has. Where did it come from: a pack, a cigarette case, a friend? Where do the ashes go? Does he light it on stage? With a lighter or matches? What kind of lighter? Where does he extinguish it? In an ashtray or the floor? One simple stage direction can lead to a page’s worth of props.

Making and finding props for theatre, film, and hobbies