The musical Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson recently won two Lucille Lortel Awards for both Best Musical as well as for best set design by Donyale Werle. Just yesterday, the Broadway version was nominated for a Tony award for best set design as well. Since I was the assistant props master on the off-Broadway incarnation (and the Broadway production was almost a direct transfer), I thought I’d write a bit about the props and set dressing of this award-winning scenery.
The props themselves were not too challenging (well, maybe some of them were); really, when you think of the set for Bloody Bloody, you think of the set dressing. It did not just cover the stage, it exploded out into the audience.
It’s interesting how the set dressing evolved during the show’s journey to Broadway. The show had a 2006 workshop at Williamstown Theatre Festival and a 2007 one at New 42nd Street Studios. It premiered in an LA production by CTG in 2008. We first did it at the Public in 2009 (I did some artisan work on that production) before its off-Broadway premiere in 2010. Every step of the way, the set design evolved and grew, and elements of the set dressing traveled from production to production.
So when the show got to us in 2010, we not only built, bought and otherwise acquired a whole theatre’s worth of stuff, we also unpacked several boxes worth of detritus that had accumulated during the previous incarnations. I took a few photographs of the upstage wall and assembled it into a panorama so you can see just a tiny portion of the amount of dressing and detail which went into this show.
Back wall of the Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson set
To place that wall into context, I also have a photograph of the set taken from the back row of the Newman Theatre.
When this production closed, it was time to pack it up for Broadway. Normally when preparing our show documents, we would photograph and list all the set dressing; that would have been a monumental and difficult task in this case (we would have to write sentences like “a piece of duct tape is attached to a rope and stretches down to a horse which has a beer bottle underneath it”). Luckily, Donyale is highly organized and took most of her own reference photos and described them in a way that made sense to her. We just had to inventory, pack and label everything so the Broadway team could unpack it in their theatre.
Tomorrow, the nominees for this year’s Tony Awards will be announced. Once again, there will be no category for Prop Design, or recognition of props people in any capacity. The only time a props person has ever been recognized at the Tony’s was in 1949, when Joe Lynn won for his work as master propertyman on Miss Liberty in the (now defunct) category of “Best Stage Technician”. I first wrote about him in my article asking “Why is there no Tony Award for Props?” and I thought I would write a little more about what I know of him (especially now that I’ve added a “Joe Lynn” page on Wikipedia).
He was born in August of 1887 and died in 1969. His career in props began in 1915, and by his own account, he has worked on hundreds of Broadway shows.
Ethan Frome
In 1936, a dramatic version of the novel Ethan Frome was put on at the National Theatre. It was staged by Guthrie McClintic, with scenic design by Jo Mielziner. The stage was covered in snow, and I wrote about Joe Lynn’s solution to the snow in a previous post:
After much trial and error, they arrived at a mixture of white cornmeal, ground quartz and powdered mica flakes.
The Eve of St. Mark
Joe Lynn was the prop master of the 1942 production of The Eve of St. Mark at the Cort Theatre. It was directed by Lem Ward, with scenic design by Howard Bay. The May 22, 1943, issue of The New Yorker featured a short article on the letters which Lynn created for this production.
The show ran for 307 performances, and Joe wrote a letter for each one; when the show went on tour, the prop man for the road company was ordered to follow in this tradition. The July 5, 1943, issue of The Princeton Bulletin reveals that Lynn had donated three of these letters for their exhibit on Maxwell Anderson, the author of The Eve of St. Mark. You can read the issue online or download a PDF of it.
Death of a Salesman
1949 saw Lynn again working with Jo Mielziner as well as director Elia Kazan for the Broadway premiere of Death of a Salesman at the Morosco Theatre. In his 1965 memoir, Mielziner writes about the difficulty in finding a particular icebox for the show:
[T]hey were hard to find, even in the best junkyards. However, [Lynn] told me not to worry: “We’ll allow ourselves enough time so that if we can’t find one, we can make it.” A good property man like Joe Lynn is incredibly versatile; what he can’t find, he must–and can–make.
You can see the icebox–and other props which Lynn built and acquired–in the photograph below:
(L-R) Director Elia Kazan and playwright Arthur Miller on the Broadway set of “Death of a Salesman”
Miss Liberty
Joe Lynn was the props master on the 1949 production of Miss Liberty at the Imperial Theatre. This show was directed by Moss Hart, choreographed by Jerome Robbins, and the sets and costumes were designed by Oliver Smith. The show itself was not very well received, and the Tony Award which Lynn received for the show was the only nod the show got at the awards; it was the same year South Pacific had come out, which snatched up ten Tony’s.
The Tony Award for Best Stage Technician was received by only 14 people, and ceased to be a category after 1963. Joe Lynn was the only property master to win one.
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
Joe Lynn worked again with Kazan and Mielziner on the 1955 debut of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof at the Morosco. Besides its importance in the history of American theatre, the show is also noteworthy for being Ming Cho Lee’s first paid Broadway gig. In Designing and Painting for the Theatre, by Lynn Pecktal, Lee himself tells us:
Then I did a bar in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof that was very important. A portion of the bar lifted up and it was all catty-cornered on a raked platform. Joe Lynn, the prop man on that show, said we would have to build it because we would never find it. And I drew the bar so accurately that he was able to build it straight from the drawing and it worked, which was a marvelous compliment.
Lee is being a little modest here. In USITT presents the designs of Ming Cho Lee, Delbert Unruh tells us:
Warren Clymer had left the studio and Lee was assisting on all of the shows, but it was his drafting of the complicated bar unit for Cat on a Hot Tin Roof that got him his first paycheck. The bar had to open up at the flip of a switch and it was sitting on a raked stage. Lee prepared the drafting of the bar and it was sent to Joe Lynn, the legendary Broadway prop man. Lynn came to the studio to discuss the props for Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and told Mielziener, “This kid is OK. I can build from this drawing.” He became the second assistant in the studio at $75.00 per week and now felt fully vindicated in the eyes of his father and stepfather.
So in his own small way, Joe Lynn had a part in Ming Cho Lee’s success, a path which would lead to Lee becoming one of the father’s of contemporary American scene design.
Other Broadway productions
Nobody thinks to include props people and other stage technicians in their databases, so searching for other shows which Joe Lynn has worked on involves going through the original Playbills from the time period. A few I’ve found include:
1943
A New Life
Royale Theatre
written and directed by Elmer Rice
Scenic Design by Howard Bay
1960
Send Me No Flowers
Brooks Atkinson Theatre
directed by James Dyas
Scenic Design by Frederick Fox
1961
Under the Yum-Yum Tree
Henry Miller’s Theatre
directed by Joseph Anthony
Scenic Design by Oliver Smith
1963
The Private Ear and The Public Eye
Morosco Theatre
directed by Peter Wood
Production Design by Richard Negri
For Send Me No Flowers, the credit is listed as “special props by Joe Lynn and Dunkel Studio Associates”. Anyone who has access to other Playbills of the time and can search for shows Joe has worked, I’d love to hear about it. For that matter, anyone who has further information or anecdotes about the only Tony Award—winning props master, drop me a line.
Update (July 31, 2014):
The article originally stated Lynn was born on February 2, 1898, and died March 15, 1984, which was totally wrong. I’ve updated the post with the correct information.
I’ve come across these great resources in the last couple of weeks:
Bolt Depot has these handy printable charts for identifying bolts and machine screws. You print out the PDF with page scaling turned “off”, and you can lay your bolt down on the different drawings until you find a match, and it will tell you what the diameter and thread count is. It has already helped me identify a metric bolt on a piece of furniture I needed to replace. Normally, I’ll check the bolt against my nuts to find a match, but I don’t have any metric hardware in the shop. Bolt Depot also has other handy information about nuts and bolts.
First, let us consider why there is no props or props design categories in awards ceremonies. Historically, props have been the realm of the set designer. In addition to walls and floors (and sometimes ceilings), the set designer is responsible for describing and designing all the props. Though the actors may request them, or the director finds he or she wants them, or the stage manager discover a need for one, the set designer has the first and final decision on the “look” of the prop. Of course, the prop master is frequently finding all the possible options, and in the end, the set designer is merely choosing between the two or three options which the props master has presented. Also, many set designers do not go into nearly enough detail that the props master doesn’t find him or herself filling in the gaps. Sometimes the hardest job can be taking a thousand possibilities and turning them into a single reality. Some set designers love to give the props master a stack of research images to serve as design “inspiration”, which forces the prop master to do all the legwork.
In many modern settings, the set designer is far too busy to deal with the minutia of all the various props in a production. It often falls to the first or even second assistant to research, design and draft the furniture and special hand props. Many times, a prop master will deal solely with one of the assistants through the entire process to hone the selection of all the props. Even with the undivided attention of an entire assistant, the prop master is still forced to make many design decisions.
Some productions have begun recognizing the need for a distinct props designer. Otherwise, the props remain lumped within the set design purview, even when their design is undertaken by completely separate people. There remain shows where “set design” encompasses the designing of the props; in other cases, keeping the two together makes as much sense as combining architecture and interior design. Sound design used to be undertaken by the second assistant in the lighting department; it has since broken apart and is now recognized as its own discipline with its own category at most awards ceremonies. Props is far older than sound design. In fact, it predates the idea of a “scenic designer” in most cultures and theatre traditions. You can do Hamlet without scenery, but you can’t do it without a skull.
A year after the Tony’s were founded, they introduced an award for Best Stage Technician. In 1950, Joe Lynn won a Tony for his work as master propertyman on Miss Liberty. The last award for this category was given in 1963. Joe Lynn remains the single props person to have won a Tony in its 63 year history.
Most of the other New York-based theatrical awards are equally deficient in their recognition of props and prop design. The Drama Desk Awards, the Drama League and the Outer Critics Circle all neglect to include props as a category. In 2004, Faye Armon was recognized as part of the design team for Bug, becoming the only person to win an Obie for props. She is, arguably, only the second New York props person to ever be awarded for her work.
Other cities and regions are similar in their non-recognition of props design. The Drammy Awards began in 1979 to recognize Oregon theatre. In 2006, they awarded Andy Berry for Properties in Underneath the Lintel. The Acclaim Awards in Cincinnati began in 2006.  They gave an award for Properties to Shannon Rae Lutz in 2010 for Great American Trailer Park Musical. These are the exceptions to the rule, however.
Neither Chicago’s Jeff Awards, nor Los Angeles’ Drama Critics Circle Awards recognize props or props design. The South Florida Carbonell Awards, San Francisco Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle Awards, Boston’s Elliot Norton Awards, San Diego’s Craig Noel Awards and Washington DC’s Helen Hayes Awards are equally remiss in their recognition of the value of props to a theatrical production.
I can go on – and I will; The Barrymores in Philadelphia, Boston’s IRNE Awards, the Ivey Awards in Minneapolis, the Henrys in Colorado, and St. Louis’ Kevin Kline Awards follow the trend set by the Tony’s by not giving awards to prop designers. This is not unique to the United States;  The Laurence Olivier Awards, London’s equivalent to the Tony’s, does not give awards to props or any theatre technicians either.
So my question to you is this: should there be a Tony Award for Props? Why or why not?
Kathy Fabian has been a fixture in the Broadway props world for a few years now. In the past few years, she’s propped shows such as South Pacific, Spring Awakening, and You’re Welcome America. She is also the resident props master at the Bay Street Theatre in Sag Harbor.
Last year, Tom Isler wrote a great article about her called Why Kathy Fabian always gets her props. It’s a great look at the work of a busy props person, neatly summed up in the beginning:
if it exists in this world, she’ll track it down. If it doesn’t, she’ll build it from scratch.
You need to read the whole article for all the great stories and insights into her work. However, there was one bit toward the beginning of the article that I wanted to point out:
Propping (theater jargon, from the verb “to prop,†meaning to design and/or obtain props for a production) is an underappreciated art, even within the industry. Set, sound, costume and lighting designers all get recognition, but there’s no Tony Award for propping. The Drama Desk Awards even handed out an award this year for Outstanding Projection and Video Design. Nothing for props.
It’s true; props are rarely, if ever recognized. What do you think about this?
Making and finding props for theatre, film, and hobbies
