New York City retail stores are known for the grand and highly imaginative window displays they unveil every Christmas season. I spent my first two autumns in New York City working on some of them. I did not work on them this year, though some colleagues of mine did. One of my former coworkers shot the following videos. You can find more videos searching on YouTube, but what makes these great is that they start off in the workshop showing the constructing phase, and moves to the inside of the windows showing the assembly before showing the final result.
First up is perhaps the lynchpin of NYC Christmas windows: Macy’s.
Macy’s is certainly the most well-known of the annual Christmas windows in New York City, but Saks Fifth Avenue does a good show as well.
Here’s a behind-the-scenes look at the props in the 2010 version of True Grit. Property Master Keith Walters gives us a much more in-depth look at the research and process which goes on in developing the props than is normally found in these kinds of videos.
Here are some videos from some folks I’ve worked with.
First up is Seán McArdle. Former prop master at the Public Theater, he has since moved to Minneapolis. Here, he is showing off a blood rig which he has used in, among other things, Broadway Baby in the Tiger Zoo. Sorry, I got that title wrong; it’s Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo, on Broadway.
Next is Faye Armon, whom I worked with on both The Intelligent Homosexual’s Guide… and Merchant of Venice/Winters Tale. She walks us around the set of 4000 miles at the Duke on 42nd Street this past summer.
Tech rehearsals for the Public Theater’s production of King Lear start this Thursday, and we are busy as ever in the props shop. My life is busy as ever between writing my book, preparing for Lear, tech rehearsals for Mike Daisey’s The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs, and some minor revolution in New York City. So I don’t have much to write, but I do have a sampling of photographs of some of the props we are constructing for King Lear.
Jay Duckworth working on the map table
The “map” in our production is a tabletop topographical model of Lear’s kingdom. King Lear, played by Sam Waterston , actually kicks the whole table over, and pieces of the map break off. At least, that’s our goal. Besides Jay, a lot of the work has been undertaken by Fran Maxwell, with some help by Sara Swanberg and Raphael Mishler.
Partially finished dead pheasant
We need a variety of dead game for Lear’s men when they return from hunting. After last spring’s Timon of Athens, I already knew we had nothing decent in stock nor anything worth renting in the city, so we had to make some. Pictured above is my first attempt at building one from scratch and covering it in hackle pads and feathers. We then found complete pheasant hides, so we started using those as coverings, which freed us from having to glue individual feathers all over the bodies.
A sheep in wolf's clothing
In addition to the pheasants and some rabbits, they wanted a larger dead animal as well. We gave them my fake dead lamb for rehearsals, which longtime readers may remember from last year. We then located the hide of a jackal which turned out to be nearly the same size as the lamb, so rather than construct a new dead animal, Sara Swanberg just set off covering the lamb with the jackal hide.
We have more cool stuff coming up, such as Michael McKean’s eyes which get torn out of his head. That should be quite a sight!
The Walking Dead is a pretty cool zombie show on AMC, and it is starting its second season soon. In this video, John Sanders, the props master, brings us inside his prop trailer to show us around. He also does a show-and-tell of the various weapons they use, such as rubber knives and electric guns.
Making and finding props for theatre, film, and hobbies
