News, Useful Sites

Props Summit Tonight, and Fun Links for the Weekend

Piles of swag for the gift bags
Piles of swag for the gift bags

Still not sure whether you should come to the 3rd Annual Props Summit in New York City tonight? Even though we will have a guest speaker? What if I told you that you’ll get a gift bag filled with goodies? Jay Duckworth has been making some phone calls and sending some emails to get all sorts of cool prop stuff for everyone who shows up, from companies such as Rosco and Rose Brand.

As for those who can’t make it, here are some links to brighten your day:

Dave Lowe has a well done video showing a quick paint treatment to simulate rust. He uses just three paint colors and an old paintbrush.

Mr. Jalopy has a quick welding primer over at Make: Projects. It’s short and sweet, but has some nice photos.

Collector’s Weekly brings us this tour through a fake vomit factory. Not only do you see how this gag (get it?) is made, but you get the whole back story on its history (via Mark Frauenfelder).

Finally, here’s a brief anecdote about Michelangelo carving the David statue, illustrating one of the many ways to deal with a picky designer.

Tools

Celastic

 

What is Celastic?

Celastic advertisement
originally uploaded by Trimper's Haunted House Online

Celastic was first trademarked in 1926. It was being used by the theatrical industry as early as the 1930s, and saw its most widespread use in theatres of all sizes by the 1950s. It appears to be one of the most popular prop-making materials of the ’70s and ’80s, and why not? It was used to make everything from masks to armor, statues to helmets. It reinforced other props, or simply gave them a smooth, flowing surface.

Celastic is a plastic-impregnated fabric which is softened with a solvent such as acetone or MEK. When it is soft, it can be manipulated into nearly any shape; it can be wrapped around forms, pushed into molds, or draped over statutes. You can cut it into strips or small pieces; Celastic adheres to itself. When it dries, it becomes hard again, thus retaining whatever shape you can manipulate it into. If necessary, it can be resoftened and further manipulated.

Here is an example of what passed for safety knowledge back when the use of Celastic was prevalent: “Rubber gloves should be used to keep the Softener off the hands. The liquid is not injurious under normal working conditions… Common-sense precautions will make the medium acceptable for any school use” (Here’s How by Herbert V. Hake, 1958). Of course, “not injurious” is not the same as “harmless”.

Acetone and MEK of course can be absorbed through the skin, and the fumes can cause neurological damage. As prop makers became more health-conscious and aware of the effects that cumulative exposure to solvents, especially strong ones like MEK, could have on their bodies, they began seeking out alternatives and scaling back the use of Celastic. Today, you’d be hard-pressed to find even a single practitioner using this material. You find one occasionally; their argument is that no other material can be draped as finely as Celastic, and if you take the proper precautions, you can protect yourself. There is some point to that; all chemicals can harm your body to some extent, and you need to be aware of how that chemical can enter your body, how much is entering it, and how to properly limit your exposure to it. If you wear the proper gloves and sleeves, respirator, goggles and face shield, and work with the solvents in a well-ventilated area (preferably some kind of spray booth or hood), working with Celastic would be no more dangerous than working with wood.

Of course, we rarely work alone in theatre; if one person is working with Celastic, than everyone is breathing the fumes. Prop shops are rarely the best ventilated areas, so the vapors can hang around long after everyone has removed their respirators. And of course with all the deadlines and time pressures, the temptation to take shortcuts in safety are always present; “I’ll just dip this one piece in Celastic really quickly; I don’t need to go all the way to my locker to get my respirator.”

Most prop shops these days seek to use the “least toxic alternative.” Whatever perceived benefits Celastic may have is far outweighed by the existence of less toxic materials that will accomplish the same goals.

Some of these alternatives are thermoform plastics which are softened by mild heat; they can be dipped in boiling water or blown with a hot air gun. One of the first to be introduced was known as Hexcelite; it was developed as an alternative to plaster for setting broken bones in a cast. Today, it is sold under the trade name of Varaform. Two other popular brands are Wonderflex and Fosshape. Wonderflex is a hard plastic sheet, while Fosshape is more of a plastic-impregnated fabric.

Reprints

Ancient Roman Weapons

In the same vein as my previous posts on Ancient Egyptian weapons and Ancient Greek helmets and weapons, here is an illustration of common weapons used in Ancient Rome.

A collection of typical weapons used in Ancient Rome

Left column, from top to bottom:

  • Iron head of Roman pilum.
  • Bronze sheath for sword below.
  • Sword worn with belt called a parazonium, 10 inches long, iron.
  • Short sword called a poniard, bronze.
  • Sword, 22 inches long, iron.
  • Sword, 25 inches, long, iron. This particular example has an armorer’s mark of Sabini.
  • Sword, 23 inches long, iron.
  • Sword, 26 inches long, iron. Hilt is ornamented with bronze
  • Dacian sword. From Trajan’s Column erected in 113 CE.

Center: Signum, or badge, or Roman cohort, bronze. Found in Asia Minor.

Right column, from top to bottom:

  • War-hatchet, iron.
  • Head of javelin, 6 inches long, iron.
  • Bill, bronze. This particular example was found in Ireland.
  • Plain war-hatchet, bronze.
  • Plain war-hatchet, bronze. It’s shape shows it is a weapon, not a tool.
  • Bill, iron. From the ruins of Pæstum.
  • Head of javelin, 11 inches long, iron.

The illustrations and descriptions have been taken from An Illustrated History of Arms and Armour: From the Earliest Period to the Present Time, by Auguste Demmin, and translated by Charles Christopher Black. Published in 1894 by George Bell.

Reprints

A Property Man’s Confession, 1903

The following article comes from The New York Times, February 15, 1903:

A property man who has seen many years of service in New York theatres, and who has just lost his position on account of an oversight that almost ruined a first-night production, talked to a New York Times reporter about the difficulties that beset property men in general.

“If an actor takes any pride in his part,” he said, “he usually looks after his personal properties himself. He never takes any chances on making a bull on his part through the forgetfulness of a property man. If it is necessary for him to find a coin, a roll of bills, or a letter in his pocket, he goes to the property room for it before he goes on the stage. But if, on the other hand, he is expected to find a dagger on a table or a note hidden in a desk, he never worries about it. He takes it as a matter of course that the property man has put it there before the curtain goes up. If the property man has a reputation for forgetfulness, (and he soon loses his job if he has,) the actor or actress manages to take a look over the scene before the curtain rises to see that all is right.

“The general impression with an audience when an actor reads a letter on the stage is that he is merely glancing at blank paper and that the lines of the letter have been committed to memory with the rest of the part. As a matter of fact, this is seldom the case, especially with women. Many of them copy the letter themselves. I have even known them to copy the letter in Lady Macbeth.

“Some very amusing stage bulls have happened over the blank letter business for which stage managers have exacted a good many dollars in fines. I remember on one occasion a playwright who is known in the profession for having the lines emphasized exactly as he wants them, and who has some very peculiar ideas as to ‘business,’ decided to change an important letter within three hours of the first performance. He went to his club to write it. When the curtain went up he had not returned. The stage manager had mislaid the original letter, so the villain in the play went on with a blank letter and did the best he could from the text of the original, which he had not taken the trouble to memorize. After the first act we received word that the playwright, in his hurry to get across Broadway, had been run over by a newspaper wagon and was in a bad way at the Roosevelt Hospital. The play failed, and was taken off before he got a chance to see it. But he always blamed the failure on the letter that never came.

“My finish was over a letter to be read in a play we were producing for the first time in Brooklyn. There was a very long communication in that referring to complications over an estate, and expressed in very technical terms. The leading lady had expressly told me that she could not commit such a thing to memory, and asked me to copy it. I promised to do so, and forgot all about it. The letter was delivered by messenger to the actress on the stage, while she was talking to the man who wanted to get control of her property. She tore open the envelope, saw the blank sheet, and paused for a moment. I wondered what she was going to do. She had nerve, I tell you.

“‘Oh, these business letters,’ she exclaimed, petulantly, ‘what a nuisance they are. Here, you read it,’ handing it over to the man.

“He grasped the situation, and the blood rushed to his face. ‘Bless me,’ he exclaimed, ‘there must be something wrong about this. I must find the messenger who delivered it.’ Then he made a rapid exit.

“It took five minutes for him to get around to the prompter, and secure the manuscript of the play. Meanwhile the actress moved about the stage arranging some flowers, and toying with some things on the mantelpiece. When the actor returned he had a bunch of manuscript four inches thick, from which he read one page of typewritten letter that told what was coming in the next three acts. Some one in the audience took the story to the newspapers, and the next morning the incident got everything that was coming, and I received a note from the management with two weeks salary in lieu of notice.”

Originally published in The New York Times, February 15, 1903.

Features

Do the soldiers have swords or guns?

3 Comments

A design concept which pops up here and there is the “timeless” time period. Especially popular with Shakespeare and Greek classics, the designer and director wish to stage the play so that the scenery, costumes and props do not convey any specific time period. The goal is usually to allow the production to focus on the language, rather than worrying about all the historical minutia which comes from picking a specific time period and the inevitable anachronisms which will be introduced.

The problem which tends to creep up is that while “timeless” means everything comes from a vague time period, the props one uses have to be specific. All objects used by humans are inevitably colored by history and geography. While a designer may have an ever-morphing Platonic ideal of a piece of furniture swimming around in her or his head, the prop master must ultimately choose this furniture from a finite number of pieces.

My boss, Jay Duckworth, and I were talking about the questions which arise between a prop master and a set designer when such a situation occurs. Presented below is an imaginary conversation to further illustrate what might happen:

Prop Master: So I want to pick out some chairs. What period is this show set in?

Set Designer: It’s timeless. It is unrecognizable as any specific time period.

Prop Master: Great. But what period should the chairs be from?

Set Designer: They should not convey any period. They should be timeless.

PM: Okay. Wood timeless, or metal timeless?

SD: What?

PM: Should they be made out of wood or metal? Which is more “timeless”?

SD: Show me some options.

PM: Are they upholstered? Do they have arms?

SD: Whatever looks the least like any specific time period. They should be completely generic.

PM: Like, curvy generic? Or straight generic?

SD: No, they should look like the most representative example of a generic chair you can think of.

PM: So you want a contemporary chair.

SD: No, a timeless one.

PM: Great, we’ll come back to this. Now, there are soldiers in this play. Which country are they from, and which war did they fight in?

SD: They should not look like they come from any specific place or time. They are archetypes of a soldier throughout history.

PM: That’s cool. So… should they be carrying guns or swords? Are they from gun times? Or sword times?

SD: Whatever looks the most archetypal.

PM: It’s a pretty big investment to outfit fourteen soldiers with swords, sheaths, and sword belts only to decide later you want to switch to guns. Maybe they could have clubs?

SD: I want something that could kind of be “all weapons”. Something the audience might think is a sword at one point, but makes them think of a gun at another point. Nothing specific.

PM: Clubs it is. Now onto this letter. I just wanted your thoughts because it features so heavily in the action. Do you have any feelings about what the letter should look like?

SD: Like everything else. It should be timeless. An archetype of a letter.

PM: A paper archetype or a parchment archetype?

Making and finding props for theatre, film, and hobbies