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Shakespeare for Community Players: Lanterns

This is the fourth excerpt from a chapter concerning prop-making in “Shakespeare for Community Players”, 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: 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
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: 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.

Reprinted from Shakespeare for Community Players, by Roy Mitchell, J.M. Dent & Sons ltd., 1919 (pp 64-66)

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Shakespeare for Community Players: Tableware

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This is the second excerpt from a chapter concerning prop-making in “Shakespeare for Community Players”, by Roy Mitchell. Be sure to check out the first part, concerning furniture.

Tableware

Figure 14: Candleabra
Figure 14: Candleabra

Tableware, such as trenchers, bowls, flagons, goblets, jars, mugs and vases, may be made out of heavy crockery stoneware, and glass utensils painted or gilded. A jaunt through a crockery store will reveal a host of fine decorative pieces at a very low price which can be treated by the maker of accessories to give fine results. If it is desired to use liquid in a glass vessel, any gilding, silvering or painting should be put on the outside. If the glass is not intended for use with liquid, paint on the inside is best, because the glass gives a burnished surface. For gilding, do not buy the prepared leaf. It is too expensive. Buy the metallic powder, mix it with banana oil and apply with a soft brush. These metal powders may be had in several tones of gold, silver, copper, rose and green. With so ample a palette of colours the propertymaker need not stop at solid tones, but may secure bold inlaid and modelled effects in his metal table-ware.

Under the heading of table utensils should come foods. The best material for soup is sawdust or birdseed, which should be served with a ladle. Chops, steaks and roast meat may be made of brown bread cut to the desired shape. A fowl may be sculptured from a stale loaf of brown bread with a sharp knife, and made to steam by pouring boiling water over it. An appetizing looking dish is made by heaping a trencher high with white bread and brown crusts, and drenching it with boiling water just before it is carried on. Cold tea in various degrees of dilution will serve for most liquors, but if red wine is required, water may be safely coloured with the red colouring matter used by confectioners. Soda waters are not advisable for wines. They cause “frog in the throat.”

Cheap wooden kitchen-ware, bread-boxes, salt-boxes, knife and fork trays, hinged together and so on, may be painted or gilded, or both, to make caskets, table-boxes, despatch-boxes, and jewel-cases.

Reprinted from Shakespeare for Community Players, by Roy Mitchell, J.M. Dent & Sons ltd., 1919 (pp 62-63)

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Shakespeare for Community Players: Furniture

The following is taken from a chapter concerning prop-making in “Shakespeare for Community Players”, by Roy Mitchell. It was originally published in 1919. The information suffers from being both 90 years old, as well as being written for amateurs. Still, it is useful for some tips and tricks, as well as its historical value. I will be presenting sections of the chapter intermittently over the next several weeks.

Furniture

The making of properties is the most fascinating of all the crafts connected with the art of the theatre. Seeing that the intent is primarily to suggest a given object, there is no attempt at imitation in detail. Only the salient facts regarding the object are to be seized and translated into a suitable medium. The finding of the particular medium in each case, and the discovery of common, inexpensive objects which can easily be converted to use, gives unfailing interest to property-making. Every play, with its wide variety of accessories, is in itself a great adventure.

Under the heading of “properties” comes everything movable on stage except scenery, rostra and clothes. Even clothes, if they are not worn but merely carried on and passed from one person to another, are ” props,” although they are made by the costumier.

Figure 11: Decorative chairs and settle
Figure 11: Decorative chairs and settle

Furniture is the most considerable item among stage accessories. This should be made on the simplest and most massive lines. Whenever possible, it is best to make up furniture on the unit system, where a few pieces used in combination can be made to serve many purposes. Figure 11 shows a variety of chairs and a settle. Figure 12 shows a standardised set of chairs which will be universally useful. In this set there are three plain chairs and two corner chairs which make up into a throne, a settle, or a garden seat.

Figure 12: Standardized chairs
Figure 12: Standardized chairs

Figure 13 shows two tables and a judge’s bench. The first (a) is most generally useful. It is quite narrow (two feet wide), and, placed across the stage in any desired position, will occupy a minimum of space, on even the shallowest of stages. The table shown in (b) is shorter, and may be used up and down the stage. The judge’s bench should be high and quite shallow; sixteen inches is enough. Any of these tables may be converted into a desk by placing on the centre of it a simple inclined bookrest.

Figure 13: Tables and Judge's bench
Figure 13: Tables and Judge's bench

Buffets, cupboards, wardrobes and chests should be of the most elementary design, made up out of pine and stained or painted.

Very satisfactory stains may be made of dye in powder form, dissolved in boiling water and applied with a dish-washing mop. Black, green, brown, red or orange may be used singly or mixed in desired combinations to give all the natural and artificial tones of wood with sufficient fidelity for stage purposes.

Reprinted from Shakespeare for Community Players, by Roy Mitchell, J.M. Dent & Sons ltd., 1919 (pp 60-62)

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Amateur Theatricals

From Amateur Theatricals, by C. Lang Neil, 1904 (pp 140-141)

Arrangement of Scenery

The two things to be aimed at are to have what is actually wanted, and to make the scene look natural and effective, always remembering that a very great point is gained if your stage looks attractive. To this end bring everything to bear upon the stage setting that will please the eye, and make a good picture. The aid of the ladies may often be relied upon to arrange such a scene as this with the best results.

Everything used in the scene should be set at rehearsal, and the actual furniture and properties wanted at night should be used, not substitutes. Thus the actors will be able to regulate their movements on the stage; the table will be of the proper shape, the chairs will be well placed, not too high nor too low, nor too heavy to move easily. If the couch is used it must be placed in the exact spot, and not in the way, and a few books, writing materials, a lamp, handbell, etc., can be distributed in any way that seems desirable either for use or ornament.

For a drawing-room the draperies should be of a lighter shade than for a dining or other room, in fact, everything should be appropriate to the place and occasion.

For a cottage scene there should be plainer draperies, the floor covered with a drugget or plain carpet, a plain wooden table, two or three windsor chairs, and, where possible, a few kitchen utensils displayed to give the scene an air of reality.

Much taste and ingenuity may be exercised in the arrangement of the stage should a garden scene be required.

The screens should be covered with a trellis work, with branches of evergreen arranged upon it, or a piece of green baize may be hung over them, with a quantity of ivy fastened on it, and perhaps a few artificial flowers fixed here and there. Pots of shrubs and flowers may be placed at the back and sides of the scene, and green baize should be used in place of a carpet.

In short, whether the scene represents an interior or exterior, amateurs will do well to utilise anything and everything that will not only be suggestive of the real thing, but that will approach reality as nearly as possible.

From Amateur Theatricals, by C. Lang Neil, 1904 (pp 140-141)

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Costumes and Scenery for Amateurs

From Costumes and Scenery for Amateurs, by Constance D’Arcy Mackay, 1915 (pp 93-95)

Properties and How to Make Them

Use care in the selection of your properties. Study your text. Avoid anachronisms. Do not use muskets and pipes in a scene that is laid before muskets were invented and tobacco discovered. Do not use modern lamps to light a mediaeval scene. Do not use modern musical instruments in a scene that is laid in Grecian or mediaeval times. These are some of the average mistakes. Remember that penholders and pens are a modern invention. Use quill pens and sand for plays whose scenes are laid before the early nineteenth century. Do not use clocks in Greek or early Saxon scenes. If your characters are writing or sending letters in the time when parchment was used, have the paper yellowed to look like parchment. Do not have a modem fireplace in a peasant’s home where the hearth would naturally be built of stone. Do not use modern dishes in mediaeval scenes. Buy paper plates and cover them with colored tissue paper, or paint them till they resemble the kind of platters you need. Brown will represent earthenware. Gold and silver for fairy palaces can be made by gilding them over or covering them with gold paper. Remember that forks and spoons were not in popular use in the days of Robin Hood. Fingers and knives did the required work. The hearth was used for cooking. Beware of modern cooking utensils in fairy, Puritan or Colonial scenes. “Gad- zooks” and modern coffee pots do not go together. Beware of modern frying pans for hearthstone scenes. Use iron skillets instead. A kettle for these scenes is always permissible, but if it is a peasant scene, see that it is not the too shining brass of the tea kettle of the afternoon tea table. Remember that coal fires are modern. If you are having a fairy peasant scene use wood instead. Use braziers where the scenes require it. They are always effective; and can be made by blacking a tripod washbowl, and lighting a little red fire powder in it, or some joss sticks which will give a thin blue smoke. Or a red electric bulb can be used in it if there is no spot light.

Be careful of your lighting. The Greeks had torches when they wanted a bright light, and small, bowl-shaped lamps with a wick and oil for smaller illuminations. Gold cardboard torches from which stream slashed strips of flame-colored tissue paper are safe substitutes. The Saxons and early English had rushlights and bowl lamps. A bowl that looks like earthenware, with the stub of a candle in it, will do. In mediaeval times swinging lamps and candles were for the rich; while the humble were content with tallow dips only.

Don’t use the spinning wheel before the spinning wheel was invented, just because it is decorative. Don’t use a modern glass “tumbler” for your doublet and hose hero to drink from. A cheap glass goblet covered with gold paper will look like a gold goblet.

If possible have your youthful players make their own properties. Take, for instance, a fallen tree trunk, or a log for a forest scene. It can be made by fastening together two small vinegar barrels, and covering them with green and brown burlap to represent bark and moss. Or it can be covered with brown burlap and gray lichen—real lichen fastened to it with strong glue. Such a stage property as this can be used again and again. And the boy who went to the outlying fields or suburbs to get the moss—may he not know something of nature’s secrets that he had not known before? And may not the eager quest bring him hours of entire happiness? A seventeenth-century broom can be made by tying an armful of hazel or willow switches to an old broom handle. The browner and sturdier these twigs are the better. This broom material can be gathered at the same time as the moss.

From Costumes and Scenery for Amateurs, by Constance D’Arcy Mackay, 1915 (pp 93-95)