Category Archives: Showcases

Showing off the prop portfolios of people, prop shop spaces, and props for shows.

Showcases

Prop People across the news

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A few weeks ago, at the SETC Theatre Symposium, I met Ron DeMarco, the props director at Emerson University.  He gave me a ton of material he’s collected over the years to use in his class on props. Today, I’m going to point to some of the many news articles he’s found on various props people across the country. I always like reading these because they offer different perspectives on how props people work and think about their craft.

Tom Fiocchi

Tom is the props director at Ohio University, where I spent a brief stint doing graduate work. I worked in his shop a few semesters, and took a class where I built a sword. This article, “Theater props specialist has a thing about Athens“, delves a bit into how he got started as a props artisan. His website has more information about his custom stage combat weapons.

Liza Kindl

Liza also attended Ohio University at the same time as me, and we also worked at the Santa Fe Opera together a few times. “Top of the Props” talks about the beginning of her career as a props artisan.

Sandra Strawn

Strawn teaches props at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. You may recognize her name from the Properties Director Handbook. “UWM Theater Students Learn Their Way Around the Prop Shop” provides a look at her class on properties construction.

Amy Reiner

Reiner has been the props director at Omaha Community Playhouse for the past 8 years. “Theater props master finds something old, something odd” is a look at the endless scavenger hunt that a props person lives in. It also has an interesting sidebar asking other prop masters what the most difficult item they’ve ever had to find was. The first one mentions the iron lung from “City of Angels,” which is one of the props Ron mentioned as a perennially difficult item to acquire.

Showcases

Prop Makers – Priscilla Queen of the Desert

The blog for Priscilla Queen of the Desert has a posting about making the props for the show. It’s terribly short, but it does spend some time talking to Damian Edwards, one of the prop makers.  He has an interesting quote:

Making a prop for theatre is a very different proposition to making one for film. In films props are only usually used for that day and are thrown together quite quickly. In theatre the props have to be a lot sturdier as they will be used in hundreds of performances.

Showcases

The unsung heroics from production of The Lieutenent of Inishmore | Daily Loaf

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The unsung heroics from production of The Lieutenent of Inishmore | Daily Loaf.

This is a fun little article about the behind-the-scenes portion of a production of Martin McDonagh’s The Lieutenent of Inishmore, at the Jobsite Theater in Tampa Bay, Florida. It’s quite the bloody show. An earlier post talked about all the blood effects and other special effects that need to occur during the performance. This kind of show is either a prop director’s dream, or nightmare.

Showcases

Why Torture Is Wrong, and the People Who Love Them

“Why Torture Is Wrong, and the People Who Love Them,” the world premiere of the new play by Christopher Durang, opened this past Monday at the Public Theatre in New York City. I’ve been a fan of Chris’s plays for years now, and had a great time when I saw it, even though I was solo for the night.

The reviews are in. You can see a round-up at Critic-O-Meter. Eric Reynolds, the assistant properties director at the Public Theatre, showed me that site. It collects all the reviews for shows currently running in New York City, and averages the critics’ responses into a single grade. The run has already been extended another 2 weeks.

Here are photographs of some of the larger props I built for this show and some notes on their construction. Continue reading Why Torture Is Wrong, and the People Who Love Them →

Showcases

Seattle Children’s Theatre Props Shop

The Seattle Children’s Theatre blog has a good post up about the props for A Tale of Two Cities. Edie Whitsett, the properties shop manager, describes the amount of historical research they did for the show. More interesting is how they used the research. Sometimes they went with the most historically accurate objects, but other times, they adapted it to better suit the needs of the production. Edie puts it best in the article:

You have to maintain a balance between historical accuracy, the desired visuals and the technical demands of the play.

There is also an earlier post which has great process shots as they build a fake corpse for Ophelia.

Seattle Children's Theatre builds a fake corpse for Ophelia
Seattle Children's Theatre builds a fake corpse for Ophelia