This is the fourth excerpt from a chapter concerning prop-making in “Shakespeare for Community Playersâ€, by Roy Mitchell. Be sure to check out the previous parts on weapons, tableware, and furniture.
Lanterns
Lanterns should be made of soft tin and riveted into shape. It is possible to buy lanterns, but it is more fun to make them.
Figure 17: Lanterns and torch sticks
Figure 17 shows some types of lanterns as well as torch-sticks. Floor candlesticks, which are universally useful for all types of interiors, may be made up of curtain-pole set on a foot or held erect with a tripod. A small tin pan makes an excellent drip-cup. A method of simulating massive candles is given in the chapter on lighting. Smaller candelabra may be of wooden lattice-work in a variety of forms, or of round wood held together with cross-bars (see Figures 14 and 18).
Figure 18: Small candelabra
Another method is to make a grill out of wall-board reinforced with wooden battens. The best single candlestick is part of a baluster nailed to a square base. The candle goes in a hole bored in the top. A nail-point sticking up in the bottom of the orifice will give stability to the candle. If you have occasion to make or use Greek lamps, do not trouble with oil. Use tapers adjusted to last for the scene, or a bit of candle inset.
Figure 19: Lantern and pole
Figure 19 shows a lantern and a pole to be carried in lieu of torches. It is made of draughtsman’s linen stretched Chinese-lantern fashion on a wooden frame. The frame may be made of heavy iron wire if desired, and many beautiful forms achieved. The design may be applied in coloured ink such as draughtsmen use.
The Early Office Museum has an amazing amount of information concerning all the props and accoutrements of offices going all the way back to the sixteenth century.
What the World Eats is a project by photographer Peter Menzel which documents what families throughout the world eat in an average week. It’s helpful if you ever need to set dress a kitchen in say, Japan. It is also a book: Hungry Planet: What the World Eats
A week and a half ago, I wrote about the set props for Slave Shack, a show I prop-mastered at the Algonquin Theatre. Now that the show has closed, I can talk about the hand props (the hand props give away several key plot points, which is why I held off until the show closed). There were several interesting challenges with the hand props for Slave Shack
Slave Shack, end of Act One
Handcuffs
Leg Cuffs
The “handcuffs” actually needed to be leg-cuffs, as you can see in the first photograph. They also needed to be trick cuffs, with the ability to come apart without a key at any time. We couldn’t find any leg cuffs with that ability, so we had to invent them. The first thing we tried was grinding down the teeth; this would allow Candice LaGia Lenoir, the actress who played Janice, to pull the handcuffs apart as easily as they could be pushed together.
During the play, however, Janice jumps out of her seat a couple of times. When she did this, the handcuffs would pop open. My first idea was to rig some sort of latch on the handcuffs, which could hold the handcuff jaws together. This created more problems than it solved, as Candice needed to undo the handcuffs in the dark and get off stage at the end of Act One. It introduced a whole lot of fumbling whenever the handcuffs needed to come on or off.
I got another set of cuffs which still had un-ground teeth. I put the key in the hole and covered the slot so the key remained inside permanently. I then cut the end of the key off and replaced it with a less visible lever to operate it. Basically, I turned the leg-cuffs into a set of trick cuffs. This seemed to work for the most part.
Chair
Swivel chair on pedestal
The play called for a large sofa in the middle of the office. Jack handcuffs Janice’s leg to one of the sofa’s legs. There is a line about the sofa being so heavy “it took five guys to carry it up here.” The implication is that Janice cannot simply lift the sofa and slide the cuff out from underneath to free herself.
Unfortunately, the stage at the Algonquin is 12′ by 15′, and a sofa of any significant size would fill the entire set. Natalie (the set designer, and my wife) designed a swivel chair with a heavy pedestal as pictured above. Unfortunately, such a thing does not exist; the only chairs close are designer mid-century pieces which cost thousands of dollars.
We found the top part of the chair on Craigslist, and was able to get it delivered. It originally had a rolling base. I removed that and replaced it with the base you see above, which was taken from an outdoor pedestal table. It was extremely heavy, which was good, since we needed to sell the idea that Janice could not simply sneak off with the entire chair, and also so the chair would not tip over during the violent scufflings which occurred throughout the performance.
Monkey
One of the major plot points of Slave Shack involves a racist monkey cartoon which appeared on a company brochure to depict Africa. Jack Blake, the main character was held responsible for it and forced to retire. During the play, Warren, his underling, gives Jack a going-away present – a stuffed toy which resembles the racist monkey cartoon described earlier. Debra Whitfield, the director, wanted something creepy-looking, like the cymbal monkey toys from the 1950s.
original monkey toy from eBay
I found a significantly creepy version of this toy on eBay; it was fairly cheap, as the moving parts were broken. I removed the clothes and added a grass skirt, feather headdress, a bone in its nose, and some decor around his neck.
monkey toy used in Slave Shack
I had to add some additional fur as removing the clothes revealed the metal skeleton underneath.
Breakable Statue
You may recall my earlier post on how to make a breakable glass. When we tested it in the space, it was still too dangerous. The space is so small that any breakable item had the potential of throwing shards into the audience. The space was also completely enclosed, so no matter how you blocked the action, the pieces would eventually ricochet off a wall and head toward the audience.
A breakable wooden statue
The only safe alternative on our budget (short of cutting the moment) was a wooden statue which could be pre-broken and reassembled with hot glue every night. Once again, Natalie decided to carve one herself rather than buy one. Though more labor-intensive, this gave us one distinct advantage. We cut the block of wood into five pieces and reassembled it with hot glue before carving it. This gave us nearly invisible break lines. If we cut a statue that had already been carved, the kerf, or thickness of the cutting blade, would have kept the seams from lining up completely.
This is the third excerpt from a chapter concerning prop-making in “Shakespeare for Community Playersâ€, by Roy Mitchell. Be sure to check out the previous part on tableware, as well as the first part, concerning furniture.
Weapons
Weapons form another delightful field for the maker of accessories. Where a sword fight is required it is best to use the modern buttoned foils, and contrive some means whereby they need not be drawn from their scabbards on stage. The use of anything more real than a foil is not advisable. If it is imperative that swords be drawn on stage, a scabbard for a foil may be made from tin piping, built out and covered with leather. Swords used for personal adornment need only be a scabbard with a handle. These may best be made of wood, following some fine model, and the hilt and decorations made in metal. The armourer of the company will do well, however, to consult a book or an encyclopaedia article upon these and all weapons before setting to work.
Spears or lances may be made out of wood. It is a mistake to put on hollow tin points. It is better to shape a point out of wood and silver it. Tin tops are continually working loose and clattering down on somebody’s head. Make lances at least ten feet long, especially where several are carried together. Nothing looks meaner than a feeble lance or spear, and nothing finer than a tall one. Halberds need not be so long, especially if they carry ornate heads. Figure 15 shows typical spear, pikes, maces and halberd.
Figure 15: Typical spear, pikes, maces, and halberd
Bows should be tall and decorative, and are carried unstrung. Figure 16 shows a typical long-bow, crossbow, and arquebus. These may all be of soft pine or cedar cut with a jack-knife.
Figure 16: Typical long-bow, crossbow, and arquebus
The folks over at Collectors Weekly have some interviews of props people up on their site, and there are two that they sent my way that I wanted to share with you.
Scott Buckwald gives a very in-depth discussion about the trials and tribulations of propping such an accurately detailed show as Mad Men. He gives a lot of examples about specific problems he’s had to solve, but one of my favorites concerns a Sara Lee frozen cheesecake box:
Getting the Sara Lee logo from 1960 was easy, but finding an actual cheesecake box was hard. Again, that’s not very collectible. Pretty much the second after the cake was taken out, the box would have been thrown away, so I looked through pictures of kitchen scenes, hoping to find a cherry cheesecake box sitting there. After looking through 3,000 pictures, I was able to capture every angle of the box and I was able to redraw it on Illustrator and tweak it on Photoshop and then print it out and rebuild the box.
He also discusses some of his sources for finding and creating props (in Hollywood), as well as research resources for the 1960s.
The second interview is with Jim Elyea, one of the proprietors of History for Hire, a Hollywood prop rental house that has been around since 1985. He has a lot of great tidbits on making a production historically accurate:
Our motto with our clients is, “We’ll tell you what’s right, and then we’ll rent you anything you want,†because a lot of times, even though we know better and they know better, their boss wants something different. The director wants it different or the actor wants it different, and ultimately, they’re the ones calling the shots and paying the bill.
He also discusses their large research library, and how they use it:
We also have a series of Montgomery Ward catalogs from virtually every year of the 20th century up until they stopped producing them. We use those all the time.
Say you’re doing a 1928 movie. We’ll look in the 1928 Montgomery Ward catalog to see the most up-to-date stuff that an average person would have. Say you want a picnic cooler. You can see what picnic coolers looked like in 1928. Or you might go back to 1921 because you’re story is about people who weren’t necessarily as cutting edge, so they bought their cooler eight years before.
The complete interview covers a lot more ground, and I highly recommend you check them both out when you have the time.
Making and finding props for theatre, film, and hobbies
