Props on Paper

John sent me a link to his Props on Paper site. John is the head of props at the Grand Theatre in London, Ontario. He has a large number of paper props he has produced from over a dozen shows.

There are a number of other sites which have collections of downloadable paper props. You don’t necessarily need to search for theatre props; there are large communities of replica prop makers and role-playing game prop makers with all manner of documents available online.

The H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society has a number of replica paper props from the early twentieth century, such as telegrams, drivers licenses, and library cards. They also have a nice section on making paper props.

P.I. Vintage has a lot of photographs from their Spy and Private-Eye Museum. Some are too small to be useful, but clicking through will find you many gems.

The Propnomicon blog has a number of posts on paper props.

A great source for researching vintage ephemera is eBay. Though it can be hit or miss, it’s one of the few sites where hundreds of people are uploading photographs of actual historic relics. You can search for your specific prop need, or search for “vintage ephemera“, or browse the Collectibles category.

You can also find a large number of actual historical documents online, which you can adapt for your use. For example, say you’re dressing a New York City apartment building, and want some realistic documents hanging in the lobby.

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Shakespeare’s Movables

Over at the Popular Woodworking blog, Megan Fitzpatrick has an interesting post about joint stools in Shakespeare.

I’ve been reading a bit of Shakespeare lately (everyone should have a hobby, no?), and in several of his plays, the term “joint stool” appears, often in the service of a taunt. That’s piqued my interest in “moveables,” that is, early modern stuff such as furniture that shows up in the plays of Shakespeare and his contemporaries. (I’m hoping there’s a dissertation somewhere therein.)

I’m sure there’s a dissertation there; maybe there already is one. We seldom think of props in a scholarly manner; most of us work in props because we like building and/or searching for things. We know props are more than objects; they describe the characters, and add detail to the world on stage.

Perhaps the most popular book which delves more into the “why” of props, rather than the “how”, is The Stage Life of Props, by Andrew Sofer. I’ll admit it; I’ve only read small parts of it. I’ll have to find time for it before this year’s SETC Theater Symposium in April. The symposium is focusing entirely on props, and Mr. Sofer is one of the keynote speakers.

I’ll be presenting a paper called, “Devising a Mental Process for Approaching a Prop”. It should be interesting to hear the other papers. Be sure to check back here in April for my coverage of the Symposium.

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Jay Duckworth

Jay makes a flat foam figure.

Jay makes a flat foam figure.

I’ve been working in the props shop at the Public Theatre for the past week and a half. Jay Duckworth is the props master there, and a fantastic guy to work for. You can see his work on his website.

Jay runs a podcast on props. You can listen to “Prop Dept” on iTunes. I’ve never really dealt with podcasts before, so I don’t know how you would get it if you don’t have iTunes installed. I have it, so I was able to download the latest five episodes. He presents tips and tricks such as making a barb-wire crown that oozes blood, turning a switchblade comb into a switchblade knife, and making slime.

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Actors Theatre of Louisville Props Shop

A view of the furniture aisles from the hand prop aisle

A view of the furniture aisles from the hand prop aisle

Mark Walston, the props master at Actors Theatre of Louisville, has a comprehensive and continually updated Flickr stream of photos from the props and scene shop at the Actors Theatre of Louisville.

I had the pleasure of working with Mark and the others there for a few months. It’s a great shop, and an amazing storage space. The giant train seat in the center of the photograph above is one of the pieces I built.

I have some more pictures after the break:

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Happy Friday 13th!

I wanted to talk about Halloween today. It’s a long ways off, but since Friday the 13th is kind of like mini-Halloween, I figured I can get away with it. What does Halloween have to do with props? It’s the most DIY holiday; every year, millions of people make their own costumes and decorations. It’s probably the biggest season for amateur prop-building. With the internet, there is all sorts of pages filled with photographs, tutorials, guides, inspiration, and discussions.

This is not just useful to the props artisan who needs advice on how to build a skeleton for a show; with enough creativity, you can adapt many of these props for non-Halloween challenges. A how-to guide for building a vampire who rises out of a coffin can be altered to make flowers rise out of the ground; a tutorial for a homemade fog machine can be used for any number of effects onstage.

So here are some links to keep you busy for awhile:

The Monster Page of Halloween Links – This is a huge list of links, some of them good, some of them, not so much. It’s divided into sections, so be sure to scroll past the long list of individual projects at the beginning. The last section links to some more general tutorials.

Instructables – They do a good job of promoting Halloween-related material, so there’s quite a good deal of tutorials here. The DIY Halloween 2008 and DIY Halloween 2007 contest pages are some good jumping-off points for delving into what’s available here, or you can just search for everything tagged with “Halloween“.

Halloween Prop Building For The DIY Home Handyman and Beginners Alike – A much smaller and more selective list of links to tutorials and resources around the internet. The descriptions of the sites are a great help too.

Books – I haven’t read any books on Halloween prop building, so I can’t really recommend any. However, you can head over to Amazon, and do your own research; their recommendation engine is pretty top-notch, and checking out a user-made list, such as So you’d like to… Have Great Halloween Festivities, will give you a quick introduction to some of the more popular books on this subject.

I know this list seems short, but these links are merely gateways to much larger lists of tutorials and resources throughout the web. I hope these prove useful; at the very least, I hope it has gotten you thinking about alternative sources for information about building props.

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  • About

    Eric Hart

    I am Eric Hart, former assistant props master at the Public Theater in New York City, and a longtime prop maker.

    This site is a way to share my work and the things I've learned over the years. It's also a way to connect with other prop makers, props masters, and artisans, as well as a collection of all things of interest to props people from around the internet.

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