Tag Archives: recycling

How-to

Coffee Table

A few weeks ago, I built myself a new coffee table. It’s not a prop, but I thought I’d show some pictures anyway. We had a set of IKEA shelves in last fall’s production of In the Wake; one of the shelves was just the right size for the top of the coffee table. I gathered the rest of the materials from scraps of lumber that had been sitting around the prop shop for a long time. I kept the design simple; it was almost like a modified trestle table, with a single center stretcher, and the legs had a slight angle to them.

Front view of the table
Front view of the table

All the wood I used was pine. While I like the grain pattern of pine, I can’t really stand light-colored wood, so I applied a coat of red mahogany stain to it. One of the things I rarely get to do when making props is put a nice finish to a carpentry project; usually we just slap a coat of polyurethane on and call it done. I decided to go with two coats of shellac. The denatured alcohol means it has some VOCs when you are working with it, but when that is fully evaporated, you are left with just the resin from the lac beetle, giving you a natural finish which is both food-safe and hypoallergenic. You can build up a really nice and hard finish by applying several thin coats with sanding in between. One of the other things that makes it great is that each coat dries in about an hour, as opposed to the 24 hours it takes for a coat of Tung Oil to dry. I applied one coat, sanded it with 220 grit sandpaper, added a second coat, and sanded that with 400 grit paper. The finish protects the stain from coming off the wood and moisture from going into the wood. It leaves the wood slick and smooth without really obscuring its natural appearance (or making it look like a shiny piece of plastic like some horrific finishes you see).

Because I built this in the prop shop, I needed to bring it home when I was all finished. Being in New York City without a car means I had to bring it on the subway.  With that in mind, I had built it so it could be broken down into four pieces which just needed to be screwed together. Basically, I had made my own “flat-pack” furniture. I shrink-wrapped the pieces up and carried it home with ease.

Wrapped up for transport
Wrapped up for transport

I even labeled the joints so I knew which way the pieces went when it came time to reassemble it.

Unpacked
Unpacked

Obviously, my cats were very interested in this new arrival. Biscuit especially seemed to approve of it.

Finished coffee table
Finished coffee table
News

“Going Green in Theatrical Design: Set & Props” Workshop

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Updated 12/14/10 – See Below

Last Wednesday, I attended a “Going Green in Theatrical Design: Set & Props” Workshop, organized by the Broadway Green Alliance. As you may infer, the BGA is an initiative to spread information on more environmentally-friendly and less wasteful theatre practices. The workshop featured presentations by several people at Showman Fabricators, Donyale Werle, as well as representatives from companies making greener products for building sets and props, including theatre-specific ones like Rosco and Rose Brand. I absorbed a lot of material, much of which deserves their own articles, but I thought I would present a basic summary of most of my notes first.

The first half was on “reduce, reuse and recycle”. I missed the “reduce” part because my train broke down on the way there. Donyale led the presentation on “reuse”, talking not only about Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson, but also on Broke-ology. Bloody Bloody is, of course, a cornucopia of reused elements; we gave them our two horses from Kicking a Dead Horse and parts of the body from Bacchae. That’s just a small percentage, as the show also includes a chandelier made of cat food cans, and assemblages of broken umbrellas and jujubees. Our props shop takes advantage of reused materials frequently; I built the furniture in Slave Shack with pieces of the floor from the Brothers/Sister Trilogy, and all of the rehearsal furniture for last summer’s Merchant of Venice was constructed from pieces of the floor from the previous summer’s Bacchae which I had set aside. Finally, of course, a prop stock room itself is a commitment to reuse.

New York City has a number of organizations which collect and redistribute building materials and theatrical sets, such as Build it Green (which I wrote about as well), Materials for the Arts, NYC WasteMatch and Film Biz Recycling. The BGA website has even more links. Like many other theatre professionals, this is the reason I began getting interested in all this; it’s absolutely heart-breaking when you see a show or exhibition close, and all of the set and props head straight to the dumpster, even if the show only lasted a few days. It’s even more heart-breaking if you’ve worked in low-to-no budget theatre where just a tenth of those materials would help you achieve your design.

Showman Fabricators discussed recycling next. I learned the difference between Post-Consumer Recycled content, Post-Industrial (or Pre-Consumer) Recycled content, and Total Recycled content. “Post-Consumer” is when a manufacturer takes items that have been used and reforms them into new material. This is where your bottles, cans and paper goes after you put them in those blue bins. “Post-Industrial” is when a manufacturer takes the scraps and waste from their own processes and turns them into other products. For instance, MDF is made from the sawdust at lumber mills. It’s the “we use all parts of the cow” approach. “Total Recycled” content is the combination of Post-Consumer and Post-Industrial content.

Next, he discussed the embodied energy of materials. Embodied energy is how much energy it took to create a material. Thus lumber has less embodied energy than plywood. To make lumber, you need to cut down a tree, drive it to a sawmill, cut it to size, dry it, and ship it to the store. For plywood, you need to do the same things as lumber, than also cut it into thin strips, glue them up, sandwich them together, cut veneer, and lay that over top. Thus, it takes more energy to create a sheet of plywood than it does to create an equal amount of lumber. We looked at a chart that showed some common theatrical materials and their embodied energy; I didn’t copy it down, but it looked very similar to this one I found online.

The embodied energy is not the only aspect you need to consider. For instance, steel and aluminum are both infinitely recyclable. Wood, on the other hand, is not. Maybe you can turn old wood into particle board, and after that, it might (though rarely) get ground down into some kind of composite material. So while it may have less embodied energy than steel, you have to keep creating more wood and growing more trees, where the same chunk of steel can be used over and over and over again.

The embodied energy chart can also be misleading because it goes by weight. Paint has a high embodied energy, but you only use a thin layer on the outermost portion of your set; a whole set can be painted with just a few cans. You use far more steel and wood by weight to construct your set. You should also remember that different materials have differing strength-to-weight ratios. Aluminum has a higher embodied energy than steel, but a structure constructed out of aluminum would weigh far less than one out of steel while being just as strong. Thus, an aluminum structure could potentially use less embodied energy in its materials. It’s a lot of math on your part though.

They told us of a number of waste management companies in New York City (also found on the BGA website) that will take your set away, recycle and reuse as much as possible, and tell you how much was kept out of a landfill. The idea is that when a show closes, rather than calling for a dumpster, a truck shows up and you load everything in their. In many cases, they can reuse and recycle 80–90% of your garbage, and it can sometimes end up costing less than a dumpster. A green alternative that costs less and doesn’t add additional labor? That’s gold!

The most important lesson is to make it easy. If you place bins for recycling next to all your trash cans, than it’s just as easy for an employee to toss his or her recyclables into the correct receptacle. If, however, you make your employees walk out to the loading dock to throw away their off cuts of steel, then more often than not, they’ll toss them into the regular trash “to save time.”

The second portion of the evening was headed by manufacturers touting their wares. Rose Brand talked about their Repreve yarn polyester fabric, which is made of 100% recycled fabric. Chad Tiller of Rosco (a friend of this blog) talked about their Iddings deep color (soy-based paints) and Roscoleum flooring (made from cork).

The other manufacturers had a whole range of green products typically used in more architectural settings: agri-fiber boards such as Kerei Board, NAUF (no added urea formaldehyde) MDF, Dakota Burl, Wheat Board, Paper Stone (recycled paper thermoset with a phenolic resin) and American Clay, to name a few. These are all interesting products, but for theatrical use, they still remain out of the price-range; a sheet of bamboo plywood costs about $200 as opposed to a comparably-sized sheet of construction ply for around $48. The exception is NAUF MDF, which is becoming more and more commonplace.

Finally, the scenic charge at Showman Fabricators had some closing words of wisdom. She pointed out that it is hard to switch products when time, money, and your reputation are on the line. You need to be able to depend on the materials you use, and you can’t just switch to a new “green” material in the middle of a project. You need to be constantly sourcing, requesting samples and testing new products on a small-scale and in between projects to find the least damaging solutions. One way to do so is to be open and share your solutions and experiments with everyone: your employees, your employees, and other shops. Being green is not proprietary. If you find a great new alternative to some product, tell other shops. It shows you are open to sharing, and if they find an alternative to another product, or a new way of organizing their shop for better “greenliness”, they will share that with you. Read my article “On Sharing and Secret Knowledge” to learn more about this philosophy.

Update – 12/14/10

Bob Usdin of Showman Fabricators, one of the presenters, emailed me and shared what I had missed from the beginning of the workshop:

The only things I would add are from the beginning (which I know you were delayed for):

  • In reality you can never be truly green. Instead, we are making efforts to be greener.
  • The single most useful thing you can do is REDUCE, particularly by optimizing your designs and engineering. If you can do the same scene with less scenery or build the same platform with less structure and still achieve the same effect (and safety), then you are being greener regardless of what materials you are using. I feel that the first “R” is often overlooked.
  • The Natural Resource Defense Council (NRDC) greening advisor is a great resource for getting green tips on a host of subjects. They are also a major supporter of the BGA and its activities and knowledge base.
  • In trying to be greener, it’s important to go beyond just the materials and techniques that go into a show. Looking at the facility and operations and how green those are can be as much of a contributing factor to greening the production. Energy consumption, renewable energy sources, water usage, location and connection to the community, materials, paper consumption, indoor environmental quality, and vehicles can all be a major part in greening the operations.
Resources

Build it Green NYC

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Build it Green! NYC warehouse sign
Build it Green! NYC warehouse sign

Last week, Jay and I finally got to check out Build it Green NYC. It is a non-profit group that collects salvaged and surplus building materials, and sells them to the public for low prices.

Pile of lumber, beams, and flooring
Pile of lumber, beams, and flooring

The location is a bit of a bear (the northwestern corner of Astoria); then again, if you want cheap prices in New York City, you have to expect to get off the beaten path. The great news is that they will store your purchases for seven days. If you have to rent a car or truck (which is what New Yorkers usually have to do), you can do it after you’ve bought your goods. You don’t have to worry about spending money on a car rental only to find there’s nothing at the store you want to buy.

Chairs for sale at Build it Green
Chairs for sale at Build it Green

In addition to construction materials such as lumber, sheet goods, flooring, windows and doors, they also have a selection of furniture items like chairs and tables.

A small sampling of stoves
A small sampling of stoves

A props person would also be interested in their selection of appliances, like stoves, fridges, and other items. They’re a little more expensive than what you might find on Craigslist or other classifieds, as they only sell working items; often, your show doesn’t require an operating fridge, and you can save money hauling away something destined for the landfill. But don’t forget that you may need a fridge for your backstage area to keep prop food and consumables cold.

Porcelain sinks in a row
Porcelain sinks in a row

For those bathroom scenes in your production, they have several aisles dedicated to sinks, toilets, bathtubs, and an assortment of other accouterments from both residential and commercial restrooms.

Books and their prices
Books and their prices

If you go, don’t forget to check out their side room filled with books, records, other media, and paint.

You can find a number of unique and smaller items as well. There’s an area up front filled with the kind of sundries you might find in a thrift store or flea market. It also appears that display companies donate items, as we saw a number of mannequins as well as giant fruit sculptures.

Obviously, they accept donations. So in addition to reusing items that would have ended up in a landfill, you can also make sure the stuff you’re getting rid of stays out of a landfill. There’s a list of accepted donation items, which will also give you a better idea of the kinds of things they normally carry.

Features

Trash or Treasure? Which props are worth saving

We’ve been cleaning out a bit lately at the Public Theatre. One reason is we’re about to undergo major construction and renovation, and need to clear out spaces that haven’t been cleared out in decades. Another reason is we finally have all our shows open for the year and have a bit of a breather at the moment. Finally, storage space is expensive in New York City, and we don’t have that much to begin with, so we continually need to reevaluate what we keep.

my own private idaho by phil h
my own private idaho by phil h

Like most props people, I’m a bit of a pack-rat, so it can be almost physically painful to throw things out. There are of course, alternatives to just trashing things. The easiest solution, depending on the item, is to send out an email to everyone in your theatre and offer it up for free on a first-come first-serve basis. You can also try to sell it on Craigslist or eBay, or through another venue. There are also a number of charities you can donate certain things to, such as Salvation Army or Goodwill. Here in New York City, we also have a place called Materials for the Arts.

So how do you go about determining what to keep and what to toss? Unfortunately, no two theatres can use the same set of guidelines. If you do mainly new works, you’ll have different prop needs then if you do mostly Shakespeare. Likewise, the capabilities of your shop will determine what props can be built in the future. While you may come across your own set of guidelines after maintaining a storage space for a few years, if you’re new to your stock, you can run through a series of questions to determine whether a prop is trash or treasure.

How show-specific is the prop? Is it something common that can be used in a number of shows or as a rehearsal prop? Or is it a painting of a unicorn on a piece of black velvet… in a forced perspective picture frame.

How large is it? If it takes up the space of several smaller props, you may need extra justification to keep it around.

How much does a new one cost? If it’s inexpensive, especially if it’s already showing some wear and tear, you may want to just buy a new one when you need it… that is, if you need it.

How hard would it be to build another one? Some props are constructed so simply, it would almost take more time to walk to the prop storage, dig around until you find it, and carry it back, then it would to build a new one. This is especially true when I come across props whose construction can be improved upon.

Do you already have some of the same thing in stock? Sometimes you need multiples, but sometimes there’s no conceivable reason why you would need a hundred brown paper grocery bags; and if you did, you should demand the budget for it.

Is the item in good condition? You have to figure that anything in your stock will need some tightening and dusting when you pull it out, but if it’s beyond repair, why are you keeping it?

Is there anything useful or valuable that can be taken off and used again? If you can remove large, sections of usable raw materials, do it. Sometimes, you have pieces which you feel can be incorporated into future props, such as knobs or dials. In these cases, I’d rather keep these “found object” building materials with the rest of the building materials; keep knobs with knobs, dials with dials, and the rest in containers such as “brass stuff” or “wood pieces”. It’s a lot easier than filling your prop storage with random vacuum cleaner parts and broken prop pieces.

Is it going to be difficult or dangerous to store? We all have at least one prop like that in our storage; no matter what we need to get, it always seems to be in the way some how, and it weighs more than you can lift. No matter where you put it, you’re doomed to be kicking a dead horse whenever you need to get a chair.

How adaptable is it? Chairs can always be reupholstered, refinished, or painted; they can even be made taller or shorter. Compare that with a carved piece of solid marble.

Will it attract mice and ants in storage? I’m looking at you, shellac-ed piece of real bread.

How well-made is it? This is a little different from whether it’s in good shape or not. A crude and ugly piece is still crude and ugly even when it’s undamaged. An exceptional prop, in addition to serving your limited storage well, can also have instructional value for future prop building endeavors.

Can you make money or develop karma by renting it out to other companies? If you have an iron lung, you can almost make a full-time job out of renting it to theatres who are putting on “City of Angels”.

I’d love to hear what everyone else does to determine what to keep and what to get rid of, as well as more alternatives to simply throwing things away.