The unsung heroics from production of The Lieutenent of Inishmore | Daily Loaf.
This is a fun little article about the behind-the-scenes portion of a production of Martin McDonagh’s The Lieutenent of Inishmore, at the Jobsite Theater in Tampa Bay, Florida. It’s quite the bloody show. An earlier post talked about all the blood effects and other special effects that need to occur during the performance. This kind of show is either a prop director’s dream, or nightmare.
Here is an interesting article: Students make ‘trashy’ props for Cats. It talks about a production of Cats at Austin Peay State University in Tennessee where students in the art department made many of the props. The show required large pieces of trash, such as a fish skeleton or can of Campbell’s Tomato Soup.
Brad Reagan, the assistant professor of art, had his students build most of the props out of cardboard, which challenged them to make cardboard props sturdy enough for the stage, and to turn flat sheets of cardboard into three-dimensional shapes.
This brings up two important points.
First, if you are part of educational theatre, you can bring in other departments to help with aspects of certain productions. For example, my undergrad theatre department was often aided by students of the film department if a performance needed projections or live-video integration. The other department will often have equipment and facilities which the theatre department does not or cannot obtain on its own, and the students can receive class credit for their contributions.
Second, building props out of cardboard is an intriguing idea. I found a great Instructable on how to design your own cardboard furniture. It’s a wonderful introduction on working with cardboard and making it structurally sound. Apartment Therapy has a post on carboard furniture made by the Cartonnistes, and another post showing additional cardboard furniture creations. Another website called Foldschool gives you free patterns to download and print to make foldable cardboard furniture.
“Why Torture Is Wrong, and the People Who Love Them,” the world premiere of the new play by Christopher Durang, opened this past Monday at the Public Theatre in New York City. I’ve been a fan of Chris’s plays for years now, and had a great time when I saw it, even though I was solo for the night.
The reviews are in. You can see a round-up at Critic-O-Meter. Eric Reynolds, the assistant properties director at the Public Theatre, showed me that site. It collects all the reviews for shows currently running in New York City, and averages the critics’ responses into a single grade. The run has already been extended another 2 weeks.
Here are photographs of some of the larger props I built for this show and some notes on their construction. Continue reading Why Torture Is Wrong, and the People Who Love Them
By the end of the 2009 SETC Theatre Symposium, which focused on theatre props, I felt like my brain was full. We heard so many good papers on all aspects of props, from their use by playwrights, their practical application and construction, their historical iterations, and their perception by the audience.
Andrew Sofer began his closing remarks by pointing to a statement Bland Wade had made earlier in the conference: “It has to be a believable item or the audience won’t buy it.” Sofer was struck by Wade’s use of the word “believable” rather than “realistic.” A prop director can find research for an obscure but completely historically accurate object, but if it is out of the realm of what the audience is expecting, they will not believe it. Likewise, we often have to work in more constructed worlds on stage, where time periods are mixed or elements are completely fabricated from imagination, but we still have to provide props which the audience will accept. A prop director’s role is constrained by the audience’s need for mimetic realism.
In regards to the paper I presented, Sofer pointed out the joy of labor and the audience’s appreciation of it. Often, the academic world will focus so much on the meaning of signs and symbols in props that they overlook the audience’s simple joy at seeing well-produced theatre. When props (or any other design element) are well-constructed, meticulously-crafted, and, for lack of a better word, “cool”, the audience has a deeper reaction to the play.
Continue reading Closing Remarks at 2009 SETC Theatre Symposium
On the end of the first day of the 2009 SETC Theatre Symposium, I sat on my first panel, entitled “Creating Props, Creating Performances”.
The first paper, by Teemu Paavolainen, was titled “From Props to Affordances: An Ecological Approach to Theatrical Objects”. An “affordance” is the ability of an object to perform a function. For example, a chair affords sitting. A spoon affords eating soup.
The study of affordances has been around in other fields, such as music and painting, for awhile, but not so in theatre. Theatre, particularly the study of props, has long been dominated by JiÅ™i Veltruský. In 1940, he wrote the famous, “All that is on stage is a sign.” He and the rest of the Prague School believed
The very fact of their appearance on stage suppresses the practical function of phenomena in favour of a symbolic or signifying role.
(The semiotics of theatre and drama By Keir Elam, p. 6)
Andrew Sofer, one of the keynote speakers at this conference, originally took exception to this when dealing with props in his oft-mentioned book, The Stage Life of Props. Continue reading Creating Props, Creating Performances
