Propping For Plays

Continuing my blog posts on my time working in stage management. One of the jobs we were often assigned to would be propping (or, in other words, responsible for props, any item used within a play  by the actors, from a pair of glasses, a tea set or an umbrella.) If you were assigned to this particular job you would be first and foremost sitting in all the early stages of rehearsals, from the initial read -through and then the blocking, that is, when the director is giving the actors their moves in the rehearsal room, on a chalked out or duct taped floor, an actual scaled version of the set. You would have to take notes of any props that come up during the course of the rehearsal, although you would have a fairly good idea of what props would be required as you would have had a copy of the script before rehearsals started and you would make a list of props mentioned in the script as they appear as you read. But directors and sometimes actors can come up with a additional props as rehearsals progress, or at least have their own unique idea what sort of item them want as a prop. For example, if they have to have a wallet, the sort of wallet they would want, it's colour, whether it had a zip in it, the sort of material it was made of, cloth instead of leather and so on. You would need to make a note of exactly where the props were to be set, either on stage or off. An absolutely vital part of the job, knowing where the props are set, as this will be how you set them during the eventual performance of the play. As the rehearsals continue, you have to keep a list of all the positions of these props and amend this list as things develop, as they always have a habit of doing.

During rehearsals the actors would expect to have props to use. But we sometimes had to provide them with stand-ins before we could find the actual props. We would then go out and look for appropriate items, sometimes begging and borrowing from local shops and other businesses. Most shows were produced on extremely limited budgets, so this was probably the only way we could possibly provide appropriate items for props. If the play was set in a particular period, it would be necessary to find items which were from that period, so antique shops would be asked if they would mind lending items, usually furniture and in most cases we were pleased that they did. For more expensive items we would have to go to specialist prop hire companies. Usually things like firearms, swords and other military items would come from these prop hire companies.

Some shows required food which could present us with one or two problems, particularly if a meal was required to be eaten by the actors involved. Most theatres I worked in had not particularly good facilities off-stage for the provision of cooking, as you would imagine. We had to improvise in order to make a meal look convincing, without using 'real' food. For example, there is no way you could provide a complete roast dinner. We'd have to find a way to make a synthetic and thoroughly convincing roast beef joint, complete with gravy, roast potatoes and vegetables, but without in any way making it look fake. Because in most cases the audience wasn't close enough to the stage to get a good enough view you could get away with using artificial meat joints we constructed out of paper mâché or other material.

For a production of 'The Three Sisters' I once was involved in we had to mock up caviar, as we obviously couldn't use real caviar. We used blackcurrant jam, and then the actors had French toast to eat it off. Fortunately the meal this was part of was far enough up-stage on the set so that the audience couldn't see closely enough to see the caviar wasn't real. Well, to be honest, they should really be concentrating on the acting and not on the props!

On a production of Alan Ayckbourn's 'How The Other Half Loves' at Century Theatre in Keswick, we had to provide avocados for the central meal. We bought real avocados and then moulded them in paper mâché , or at least, pasted newspaper and brown paper. When dried, the outside was painted the colour to represent avocado and then lined with foil, and then filled with mashed banana to represent the edible part of the fruit. Certainly cheaper than using real avocado, which our budget would never run to, particularly if you consider you'd need several fruit for each performance of the play.

Drinks on stage were a similar problem. Mixing water and food colouring, usually gravy browning and water to represent whiskey or in some cases, apple juice. I don't envy the actors having to drink some of these concoctions as it must have tasted really horrible. Attempting to carry on a conversation and drinking these mocked-up drinks must have been quite difficult. If a play required bottles of a particular brand of drink, such as Martini, we'd have to find empty bottle and then make up water with food colourings to match the real drink. Sometimes, if we did a period play, it could be difficult to find bottles of a particular brand to fit that period. All this meant we would have to go round bars and pubs and ask the barmen or landlords to keep empty bottles if they had them in stock for our use. Usually people could be helpful in this regard. But American brands, not available in the United Kingdom could sometimes cause problems, but then we could source them via American airbases or other places.

Working In Theatre- Stage Management Duties- Part 13

Once the play has been rehearsed for the given period, the show will then move into the theatre, particularly if it has been rehearsed elsewhere, although some shows are rehearsed using the stage, and the set mark-out will fit into the standing set of the show which is running currently. It is at this stage that a technical rehearsal will be done, which enables all the technical elements to be tried and tested. Stage management will have worked over the previous weekend, having 'struck' the previous play's set, and constructed the incoming show's set on the stage. All the rigging, flying, lighting etc will have been put in place before the set in built. This used to be done on a Sunday, and we would have worked until around 2 a.m. on Sunday morning removing the set of the outgoing show, sorting out props which have to be returned and doing general housekeeping to allow the new show to be set up.

The technical rehearsal is so that  every cue, for lighting, sound, scene change, costume change can be tried out. At this point neither the actors or stage management will have been able to work with the set. The actors will also have all the props they need, rather than the 'stand in' ones that they would have had in the rehearsal room. A technical can last all day, into the early hours of the next day, and in some cases they can drag on into the next day with a break in between, but this is rare. It depends on the complexity of the play. Obviously the more cues, of whatever type, the more stopping and starting there will be. At the end the director will give notes to all concerned, in particular stage management will have to deal with such things as doors sticking, wobbly flats, and a whole host of things, before the first dress rehearsal. Sometimes the first dress rehearsal can follow on almost immediately after the technical, and then one final dress rehearsal the afternoon the play opens. This can be incredibly trying and when stage management have been working since the final performance of the previous play on, say, a Saturday (which was how we worked when I was in rep.) and the next show opens on the following Tuesday evening, that's a good four days solid work with very little sleep.

As with any show, the prompt corner is the operation centre who the whole show. Whoever has been 'on the book' during rehearsals will now be in control here. The 'Book' will, by now,  be made up with  all the cues market in. If a line spoken by an actor is the cue for, say, a lighting or sound effect, then the 'book' with have it market in clearly. In most theatres there is a cueing system using lights, rather like traffic lights in the street, but obviously a good deal smaller. You give a warning that a cue is coming up for the operator, usually a red lights, and when the cue comes, you give a green light. At Ipswich theatre there was a three-light system, which had an additional blue light. The idea being that the operator of sound, lighting or whatever, would flash the blue light to indicated to the prompt corner that they were standing by. It was quite a good idea as it allowed you to be sure the operator was ready. On one occasion at Ipswich I was doing the book for one show, I forget which now, and I hadn't got the blue light from he lighting operator. I had given him the standby, but he hadn't indicated that he was actually standing by. It got closer and closer to the actual lighting change, fade or whatever and I began to panic. It just happened that the lighting board was above the prompt corner, and was accessible by a metal ladder. I had to climb up and see where the operator was, and found him asleep! I had to operate the lighting board as he wasn't awake in time to give the cue! A bit of a seat-of-the-pants situation!

If you were put on props for a show you would be expected to go out and find the relevant items listed for the play in rehearsal. I can recall trudging the streets of Cheltenham as a very green student A.S.M. I became a good deal more savvy at going into shops and asking if we could borrow such-and-such item or items, the owner of a particular shop would be very trusting that we weren't going to damage whatever the item was or even sell it. They would be given free tickets for the play, or the next one in the season, and have a credit in the play's programme. At Ipswich Theatre I remember borrowing a white linen tablecloth for a play. Unfortunately it got badly stained with something which would not wash out. We had kept the wrapping in which it would have been carefully folded for display in the store, but when it was returned it was re-folded, so that the stain wouldn't show! Goodness knows what Debenhams would have done when they discovered that the tablecloth was stained when it was opened up. I just imagine that it would have been sold in a sale or probably not put out for sale at all.

Working In Theatre- Stage Management Duties- Part 2

We had to find all manner of strange things for use as props in shows I worked on. Not only did me have to find, from whatever source, but sometimes we would have to make props. Particularly shows such as pantomimes, where you could let your imagination run riot and make things larger than life. Huge great clubs for hitting giants over the head with. Larger than life lollipops. Shopping trollies which had mocked-up petrol engines on them so that when the Dame appears on-stage it seems her shopping trolley is propelled by a lawnmower engine, complete with some  smoke coming out of the exhaust. You name it, we had to produce it.  I worked on a production of 'Macbeth' at Greenwich, and it was necessary to make a head of the actor who played Macbeth. If you know the play you must know that at the end he is killed by being beheaded and his head has to be brought on stage. We had to get the actor playing Macbeth, Alan Dobie, to agree to having his head cast in plaster. Not an easy thing, and not something that I would want as the thought of having my head covered in plaster of paris and straws put up my nose to allow me to breath wouldn't be pleasant. He did agree, and then, once the two halves of the mould were separated, the inside of the mould was filled with latex so a cast could be made. When it was finished the finished 'prop' head was very realistic, and it had stage blood applied, along with hair and it was extremely life-like.

In an earlier post on here I describe how, when I was working on a production of a play at the Century Theatre, Keswick, we had to create a dead chicken, which had to match exactly a live one which was on-stage and then is supposed to go off stage and be killed, and how we had to take some of the live chicken's tail feathers and put them into the 'prop' chicken (which, incidentally, has had its head chopped off, which made making the prop one easier!) Also, I mentioned in another post the production of a show called "Loot" by Joe Orton which I did at Colchester Rep where we had to build a set of coffins and caskets, one of which has to be built so that it can return to the stage burnt out and with a trap on the side which hinges down to reveal piles of burnt £5-notes inside, as well as the piles of Fivers as well as a convincing 'corpse' which is covered in a shroud and has to be articulated so when it is carried it appears as convincing as a del corpse, with articulated joints, limbs etc.

Food always caused a bit of a headache. Particularly when we were working with very little money. In a play we did at Liverpool Playhouse called "June Evening" (and which I did the book for, incidentally.) we had to produce an ox's heart. The play was by Bill Naughton, who wrote the plays "Alfie" which became the film starring Michael Caine as well as "Spring and Port Wine (which I was involved in at the Everyman at Cheltenham.) We did manage to find a butcher who could provide us with the real ox's heart, which we then had to cook before-hand and then put on stage. The set was a street, with two houses opposite one another, one being a home with kitchen and living room, and on a revolve, which turned round to show the interior at the correct time during the action of the play. The opposite house was a shop, rather like a corner shop, and probably a bit like one of the shops that are portrayed on "Coronation Street." As it was set during the 1930's we had to stock the shop with appropriate items and so had to contact various manufacturers who provided us with cans and packets, appropriate to the period of the play, in order to make the shop convincing. When this shop was fully stocked up and dressed, (again, on a revolved), it was quite heavy and to get it to revolve was quite an effort.

Alan Ayckbourne's plays nearly always have food in them somewhere. In "What The Other Half Love" at Keswick there was a meal at the end of one of the acts, we were supposed to produce avocados for the starter for one of the couples who are giving a dinner party. We couldn't afford to have avocados for every performance we did so we bought a real one and then cast it in a sort of papier mach material and then lined these halves with aluminium foil and then used mashed banana to fill these half 'shells' or 'skins' and it did simulate real avocado quite convincingly. In the same production the main part of that meal was supposed to be a casserole, but, again we were on a tight budget and had to use bread soaked in gravy to simulate the real thing. I don't think the actor's got to eat it, thankfully!

At Ipswich Theatre, the first show I worked on was 'Roots" (the second of the Wesker Trilogy of plays.) The whole play revolves around a character who doesn't actually appear. He is supposed to appear at the the end, and the mother produces an elaborate meal, which includes a trifle. As is wasn't eaten, we managed to construct it out out bread, cake and shaving foam. It was incredible to see how the glade cherries got bleached by the shaving foam, and made me wonder what on earth it was in shaving foam that could have that effect on glade cherries and what would it do to your skins if you used it to shave. We also had a large Victoria sponge on the stage, also never eaten, and it got so stale that it was like a piece of wood by the end of the play's run and it could almost have rolled across the floor like a wheel!