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Mysteries of the Prop Room part 3, 1902

The following tour of a property room at the Grand Theater in Saint Paul, MN, first appeared in The Saint Paul Globe in 1902. This is the third selection from that article, with the first appearing here, and the second here.

The visitor decided she had acquired the taste for property rooms and dropped in at the Grand. The big stage was dark and deserted. At one end there stood a tall, rickety-looking arrangement with a bell at the top.

“It’s what the lady swings out on,” explained a voice from the gloom.

“In the ‘Heart of Maryland,’ you know,” the voice further vouchsafed.

“Is it what you would call a ‘prop?'” queried the visitor.

“Yes, it’s a ‘prop,'” admitted the voice which happened to belong to the Property Man of the Grand. The visitor asked for the property room, and after she had surveyed it she was willing to admit that there were property rooms and property rooms. The property room at the “Met” is picturesque in its disorder. The property room of the Grand is distractingly neat and beautifully decorated in red. The room is triangular in shape, very, very tiny and distinctly ornate. It is just the sort of room in which one would expect to have pink tea served. But not at all the kind of room in which one would expect to find housed all kinds of odd, dirty, quaint, delightful and smelly things. And, as a matter of fact, none of these things are housed here. For this tiny, scarlet room is only one of the property rooms of the Grand. There are four others, one in the “fly gallery”—the Property Man’s expression—and the others tucked away in unexpected places at either side of the big stage. But in spite of the many articles stored away in them all were spick and span like the first property room.

“We keep things very neat here,” explained the property man with pardonable pride.

The visitor agreed and suppressed a wild desire to destroy the spick and span effect. To punish herself she went back and gazed once more at the room “done in red.”  This room is partly Oriental and partly American. A swinging Oriental lamp burns redly in one corner. A similar lamp throws a faint light from a curtained niche. A cabinet holds dainty bits of china. A long table is doubtless intended to hold the various “props” that are to be used in the play that is on, but at the time of the visitor’s visit it held only an elaborately gilded clock and a very large vase, so variously decorated that it made one wink to look at it. For a fresco about the walls there is a row of photographs of actors and actresses.

“It’s always just like this,” the Property Man assured here convincingly. “Come here any time of the day or night and you’ll find it just the same.”

Originally published in The Saint Paul Globe, February 23, 1902, page 22.

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David Neat starts us off with making smooth shapes from Styrofoam. He’s dealing with the real-deal Styrofoam here, not that white bead foam stuff. And sure, this article is over a year old, but it has some really useful techniques.

Bill Doran has a helpful video on adding rust to your props. Ninety percent of the time when I show a completed prop to a designer, they say, “that’s great… once we age it down a bit.” Knowing how to weather, age, distress or generally tone down props is an essential skill for a props person, and adding rust is one of the ways to do this.

Make Magazine takes a look at some Maker-Friendly hardware stores from around the US. It’s a fascinating look at the vast array of materials a store might choose to stock, as well as a sobering reminder of how awesome hardware stores used to be to those of us whose only local options are Lowes and Home Depot.

I covered some basic stitching for fabric in my Prop Building Guidebook, but if you get into embroidery and ornamental stitching, there is a whole other world of ways to manipulate needle and thread. Tipnut has some great vintage illustrations of ornamental borders and the basic stitches to make them happen.  It’s a relaxing project for when you are bored in tech and the designer wants the napkins to be “fancier”.

Finally, here is an article called “The Most Important Lessons in Woodworking“. Robert Lang uses his experience cutting plugs as a lesson in woodworking in general, and I think this lesson can be expanded out to prop making in general. It’s not just about how to use specific tools or techniques, but how to approach your whole project in the most efficient and easiest manner possible.

 

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Mysteries of the Prop Room part 2, 1902

The following tour of a property room at the Metropolitan Theater in Saint Paul, MN, first appeared in The Saint Paul Globe in 1902. This is the second selection from that article, with the first appearing here.

“There are two more property rooms above this one. Perhaps you would like to see them,” he suggested hospitably.

The second property room was reached by means of a narrow and very straight-up-and-down ladder. If the first looked like an old curiosity shop, the second seemed, in the dim light that came from a solitary incandescent light, a veritable chamber of horrors. From a nail driven in one side of the wall there hung an iron cauldron that suggested the three weird sisters in “Macbeth.” A cotton velvet cloak with a big collar of stringy white fur took on, in that dull light, the shape of one of the witches herself. A skull and cross-bones grinned cheerfully from a niche above a black table. Several masques peered down from a shelf and a big collection of drinks, daggers and swords did not detract in the least from the high tragedy effect of this second property room.

“There is still another property room directly above this one.

“Perhaps,” suggested the Property Man, “you would like to see that also?”

The visitor surveyed the iron ladder that was even narrower and very much straighter-up-and-down than the one she had just mounted and shook her head.

“It’s just full of things like this,” he said. “Tables and chairs and battle axes and churns and band boxes and things!”

The visitor decided she had acquired the taste for property rooms and dropped in at the Grand.

Originally published in The Saint Paul Globe, February 23, 1902, page 22.

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Mysteries of the Property Room, 1902

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The following first appeared in The Saint Paul Globe in 1902. Pay particular attention at the end where he talks about the different “kinds” of props; they’re somewhat different from how we deal with props today:

Sweeney, the property man of the Metropolitan theater—”Old Props,” of course, he is called—entered his dusty little sanctum sanctorum the other afternoon and placed on a wobbly pine table a long, flabby article. The visitor poked it gingerly.

“It’s the seal that they use in ‘The Chaperone,'” explained the Property Man reassuringly. “And this,” he continued obligingly, “is the mummy. You remember the mummy?” The visitor nodded dubiously. This object that resembled nothing so much as a coffin covered tightly with a bit of Oriental cotton did not look a bit like the object she had viewed from the other side of the footlights during one of the performances of “The Chaperone.”

“Things generally do look different when you see them in here,” said the Property Man apologetically. And the visitor, as she surveyed the stuffy little room, agreed. For instance, it was disillusioning to find that the golden goblets from out of which she had seen the noble Romans drink in “Quo Vadis” were simply painted wooden cups. And there was the grandfather’s clock!

As a part of the furnishing of an old farm house kitchen this grandfather’s clock had seemed the very realest bit of realism. Its honest old face, shining in its humble surroundings, had always seemed to say, “Yes, it is all false, this stage atmosphere of paint and tinsel, but I, at least, am real.” As a matter of fact it is not a bit real. On the contrary, indeed! For a long box, properly cut and painted, with a painted dial at one end, is all that that deceitful clock is. The visitor turned from it in disgust.

“There are two kinds of ‘props,'” explained the Property Man, absentmindedly polishing one of the painted wooden goblets with a bit of cotton tapestry which hung from a nail. “There are personal ‘props’ and stage ‘props.’ Now, suppose a man plays the part of a waiter in a play. If he carries a towel over his arm, then it is a stage ‘prop.’ If he wears it tied around his waist, it is a personal ‘prop,’ and he himself looks after it. But we look after the stage ‘props.’ They are all placed here.”

“Here” was the stuffy little room which is just to the right of the big Metropolitan stage.

“Do you see that large trunk over there? It contains the mandolins used by the girls in the first act of the play. Each mandolin is numbered and each girl knows where to find her own instrument.”

Originally published in The Saint Paul Globe, February 23, 1902, pg 22.

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You may have noticed a distinct lack of posts this week. Between tech, a minor flood at the theatre, and personal challenges, I did not have any time to write this week. But have no fear, the Internet is here, with stories about props of all shapes and sizes:

First off, the Chicago theatre community has an annual props, sets and costume give-away amongst all the professional theatre companies. The Sun-Times Media has a nice write-up, including video and photographs of some of the theatre’s storage spaces. It is also a great exploration on how local theatre communities share resources with each other.

Dave Lowe, the props master at Hallmark Channel’s “Home and Family”, makes custom trophies for the winner of a game segment on the show. When Florence Henderson guest-starred, he set out to create a replica of the cursed tiki from when the Brady Bunch went to Hawaii.

When Playmaker Rep’s production of Assassins needed a dead dog on stage, the costume crafts shop stepped in to make one. La Bricoleuse shows us how they did it.

Finally, Bob Knetzger fits a spray booth underneath his stairs for his home workshop. He has drawings and photos explaining how he built it.

Making and finding props for theatre, film, and hobbies