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Reprints

Shakespeare for Community Players: Weapons

This is the third excerpt from a chapter concerning prop-making in “Shakespeare for Community Players”, by Roy Mitchell. Be sure to check out the previous part on tableware, as well as the first part, concerning furniture.

Weapons

Weapons form another delightful field for the maker of accessories. Where a sword fight is required it is best to use the modern buttoned foils, and contrive some means whereby they need not be drawn from their scabbards on stage. The use of anything more real than a foil is not advisable. If it is imperative that swords be drawn on stage, a scabbard for a foil may be made from tin piping, built out and covered with leather. Swords used for personal adornment need only be a scabbard with a handle. These may best be made of wood, following some fine model, and the hilt and decorations made in metal. The armourer of the company will do well, however, to consult a book or an encyclopaedia article upon these and all weapons before setting to work.

Spears or lances may be made out of wood. It is a mistake to put on hollow tin points. It is better to shape a point out of wood and silver it. Tin tops are continually working loose and clattering down on somebody’s head. Make lances at least ten feet long, especially where several are carried together. Nothing looks meaner than a feeble lance or spear, and nothing finer than a tall one. Halberds need not be so long, especially if they carry ornate heads. Figure 15 shows typical spear, pikes, maces and halberd.

Figure 15: Typical spear, pikes, maces, and halberd
Figure 15: Typical spear, pikes, maces, and halberd

Bows should be tall and decorative, and are carried unstrung. Figure 16 shows a typical long-bow, crossbow, and arquebus. These may all be of soft pine or cedar cut with a jack-knife.

Figure 16: Typical long-bow, crossbow, and arquebus
Figure 16: Typical long-bow, crossbow, and arquebus

Reprinted from Shakespeare for Community Players, by Roy Mitchell, J.M. Dent & Sons ltd., 1919 (pp 63-64)

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Shakespeare for Community Players: Tableware

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This is the second excerpt from a chapter concerning prop-making in “Shakespeare for Community Players”, by Roy Mitchell. Be sure to check out the first part, concerning furniture.

Tableware

Figure 14: Candleabra
Figure 14: Candleabra

Tableware, such as trenchers, bowls, flagons, goblets, jars, mugs and vases, may be made out of heavy crockery stoneware, and glass utensils painted or gilded. A jaunt through a crockery store will reveal a host of fine decorative pieces at a very low price which can be treated by the maker of accessories to give fine results. If it is desired to use liquid in a glass vessel, any gilding, silvering or painting should be put on the outside. If the glass is not intended for use with liquid, paint on the inside is best, because the glass gives a burnished surface. For gilding, do not buy the prepared leaf. It is too expensive. Buy the metallic powder, mix it with banana oil and apply with a soft brush. These metal powders may be had in several tones of gold, silver, copper, rose and green. With so ample a palette of colours the propertymaker need not stop at solid tones, but may secure bold inlaid and modelled effects in his metal table-ware.

Under the heading of table utensils should come foods. The best material for soup is sawdust or birdseed, which should be served with a ladle. Chops, steaks and roast meat may be made of brown bread cut to the desired shape. A fowl may be sculptured from a stale loaf of brown bread with a sharp knife, and made to steam by pouring boiling water over it. An appetizing looking dish is made by heaping a trencher high with white bread and brown crusts, and drenching it with boiling water just before it is carried on. Cold tea in various degrees of dilution will serve for most liquors, but if red wine is required, water may be safely coloured with the red colouring matter used by confectioners. Soda waters are not advisable for wines. They cause “frog in the throat.”

Cheap wooden kitchen-ware, bread-boxes, salt-boxes, knife and fork trays, hinged together and so on, may be painted or gilded, or both, to make caskets, table-boxes, despatch-boxes, and jewel-cases.

Reprinted from Shakespeare for Community Players, by Roy Mitchell, J.M. Dent & Sons ltd., 1919 (pp 62-63)

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Shakespeare for Community Players: Furniture

The following is taken from a chapter concerning prop-making in “Shakespeare for Community Players”, by Roy Mitchell. It was originally published in 1919. The information suffers from being both 90 years old, as well as being written for amateurs. Still, it is useful for some tips and tricks, as well as its historical value. I will be presenting sections of the chapter intermittently over the next several weeks.

Furniture

The making of properties is the most fascinating of all the crafts connected with the art of the theatre. Seeing that the intent is primarily to suggest a given object, there is no attempt at imitation in detail. Only the salient facts regarding the object are to be seized and translated into a suitable medium. The finding of the particular medium in each case, and the discovery of common, inexpensive objects which can easily be converted to use, gives unfailing interest to property-making. Every play, with its wide variety of accessories, is in itself a great adventure.

Under the heading of “properties” comes everything movable on stage except scenery, rostra and clothes. Even clothes, if they are not worn but merely carried on and passed from one person to another, are ” props,” although they are made by the costumier.

Figure 11: Decorative chairs and settle
Figure 11: Decorative chairs and settle

Furniture is the most considerable item among stage accessories. This should be made on the simplest and most massive lines. Whenever possible, it is best to make up furniture on the unit system, where a few pieces used in combination can be made to serve many purposes. Figure 11 shows a variety of chairs and a settle. Figure 12 shows a standardised set of chairs which will be universally useful. In this set there are three plain chairs and two corner chairs which make up into a throne, a settle, or a garden seat.

Figure 12: Standardized chairs
Figure 12: Standardized chairs

Figure 13 shows two tables and a judge’s bench. The first (a) is most generally useful. It is quite narrow (two feet wide), and, placed across the stage in any desired position, will occupy a minimum of space, on even the shallowest of stages. The table shown in (b) is shorter, and may be used up and down the stage. The judge’s bench should be high and quite shallow; sixteen inches is enough. Any of these tables may be converted into a desk by placing on the centre of it a simple inclined bookrest.

Figure 13: Tables and Judge's bench
Figure 13: Tables and Judge's bench

Buffets, cupboards, wardrobes and chests should be of the most elementary design, made up out of pine and stained or painted.

Very satisfactory stains may be made of dye in powder form, dissolved in boiling water and applied with a dish-washing mop. Black, green, brown, red or orange may be used singly or mixed in desired combinations to give all the natural and artificial tones of wood with sufficient fidelity for stage purposes.

Reprinted from Shakespeare for Community Players, by Roy Mitchell, J.M. Dent & Sons ltd., 1919 (pp 60-62)

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Historic Description of a Props Master

(originally from The Young Woman’s Journal, 1921)

The Property Man

“Props”— provides, cares for, and places in proper position on the stage all furniture, draperies, lugs, carpets, lamps, telephone, letters, documents, etc. — in fact, all articles needed in the play except the personal properties of the actor. Things only used by a single actor — such as a fan, a cane, an eyeglass, a parasol, a handkerchief, a letter, if it remains with the one person and not given to another or is not left on the stage —  these are personal “props.” A small table should be provided on either side of the stage for offstage “props,” such articles as are needed to be carried on stage, or for properties brought off stage. The property man should see that actors do not carry such “props” to their dressing rooms, but that they are left on the table provided. Stage drinks — which are made of grape juice, ginger-ale, or root beer, according to the color needed, are cared for and bought by “props” on order of the director countersigned by the business manager.

The property man should take an artistic pride in his stage picture and spend a good deal of time to secure, by renting or borrowing or making, the exact style of furniture and things needed for the play. A period play with modern furniture which one sees in stock performance is ludicrous. Charlie Millard, the veteran property man of the Salt Lake Theatre made all his properties and furnished the actors in Brigham Young’s time with even personal “props.” The stage manager furnishes “props” with a property plot containing a list of properties needed for each scene in the play.

– The Young Woman’s Journal, vol 32, pp. 561-2, 1921

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Amateur Theatricals

From Amateur Theatricals, by C. Lang Neil, 1904 (pp 140-141)

Arrangement of Scenery

The two things to be aimed at are to have what is actually wanted, and to make the scene look natural and effective, always remembering that a very great point is gained if your stage looks attractive. To this end bring everything to bear upon the stage setting that will please the eye, and make a good picture. The aid of the ladies may often be relied upon to arrange such a scene as this with the best results.

Everything used in the scene should be set at rehearsal, and the actual furniture and properties wanted at night should be used, not substitutes. Thus the actors will be able to regulate their movements on the stage; the table will be of the proper shape, the chairs will be well placed, not too high nor too low, nor too heavy to move easily. If the couch is used it must be placed in the exact spot, and not in the way, and a few books, writing materials, a lamp, handbell, etc., can be distributed in any way that seems desirable either for use or ornament.

For a drawing-room the draperies should be of a lighter shade than for a dining or other room, in fact, everything should be appropriate to the place and occasion.

For a cottage scene there should be plainer draperies, the floor covered with a drugget or plain carpet, a plain wooden table, two or three windsor chairs, and, where possible, a few kitchen utensils displayed to give the scene an air of reality.

Much taste and ingenuity may be exercised in the arrangement of the stage should a garden scene be required.

The screens should be covered with a trellis work, with branches of evergreen arranged upon it, or a piece of green baize may be hung over them, with a quantity of ivy fastened on it, and perhaps a few artificial flowers fixed here and there. Pots of shrubs and flowers may be placed at the back and sides of the scene, and green baize should be used in place of a carpet.

In short, whether the scene represents an interior or exterior, amateurs will do well to utilise anything and everything that will not only be suggestive of the real thing, but that will approach reality as nearly as possible.

From Amateur Theatricals, by C. Lang Neil, 1904 (pp 140-141)