Tag Archives: SETC

Education

Bland Wade at SETC Theatre Symposium

Bland Wade gave the first keynote speech at the 2009 Theatre Symposium. He spoke about what it means to be a properties director. I thought I’d share a few highlights.

Bland is the props director at the North Carolina School of the Arts. NCSA does about twenty shows per year. He began working as a props director in 1976. Part of NCSA’s philosophy is that the teachers keep tabs on the industry, so in addition to teaching, Bland also works in a professional capacity throughout the year. For instance, he did the set decoration for The Color Purple. The general store is almost entirely his work.

Bland is a member of the Society of Properties Artisan Managers, or SPAM. SPAM began about fifteen or sixteen years ago. In the old days, the props master worked under the technical director. These days, a props director has his or her own shop. SPAM is pushing for the “prop director” terminology, rather than prop master. In my own experience, it seems a lot of theatres are using the prop director term (or prop supervisor, prop head, etc) for the head of the department, while using “prop master” for specific shows.

Bland asked what a prop is, and used his definition in terms of the practical usage of the word. He refers to his “house” analogy. Scenery is the walls and floor. The scenic designer is the architect and interior designer. The technical director is the contractor. The props director is the interior director.

A props director needs to read between the lines of a script. If a play has the line, “Bob walks in with a cigarette,” what does that entail? First, where does the cigarette come from? Is it in a pack? A case? Is he already smoking it? If so, where does he dispose of it? In an ashtray? On the floor? And of course, there is the actual cigarette itself. What brand is it? What color? One stage direction can turn into a whole page of notes.

Bland mentioned a number of skills and responsibilities of a properties director.

  • A prop director must always look at safety. This is true not only of your artisans at work, but also of the actors. This is true in food preparation and keeping the dishes clean. This is also true of weapon safety.
  • A prop director is an historian, a researcher, and inventor. Heron of Alexandria is one of Bland’s favorite inventors. One of Heron’s secrets was the simplicity of his mechanisms. A props director should always keep things simple.
  • A prop director is a problem solver.
  • You need to help the actor create a character.
  • There are many other random skills a prop director needs, such as plumbing and sewing.

“If it looks like crap, the actor’s going to treat it like a piece of crap,” Bland said. This is something I’ve been mulling over for awhile; I’m going to go into this in more depth in a later post.

Bland mentioned the Prop Directors Handbook, which I’ve posted about previously (Properties Directors Handbook), and link to in my sidebar. This book, written by Sandra J. Strawn, could not find a publisher, so she put it online for free. She is also a member of SPAM.

Stay tuned for many more highlights from this year’s Symposium. I also have some photographs once I dig out my USB cable.

Education

SETC Theatre Symposium Day 1

You’ll notice I didn’t have a post yesterday. I flew down to Winston-Salem to attend the 2009 SETC Theatre Symposium. This year, the topic is props, which is very apropos for this blog.

It was a long but fruitful day. I presented my paper. Bland Wade, the props director at North Carolina School of the Arts (NCSA) gave a tour of their props shop and a speech on what a properties director does.

I forgot my USB cable, so I cannot get the pictures off my camera at the moment. I’ll have a more in-depth summary of this weekend when I get back to New York. Today, in addition to more papers, we have a speech by Andrew Sofer, author of The Stage Life of Props.

It’s all very fascinating stuff, and I can’t wait to write it all up for this blog.

Education

SETC Theatre Symposium

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Next Friday, I’m flying to North Carolina to take place in the SETC Theatre Symposium. This year’s theme is “The Prop’s the Thing: Stage Properties Reconsidered”; how can I not participate? I’m hoping to bring back all sorts of interesting and useful information for this blog. Also, since I’ll be busy getting ready for this, my postings for next week will probably be shorter than usual.

My paper is called, “Devising a Mental Process for Approaching a Prop.” It’s part of a larger goal of writing a book about props dealing with the choices we need to make before building a prop. Essentially, rather than dealing with specific techniques like carpentry or upholstery, my book will be about how you decide whether you will use carpentry or not on a specific prop.

If you’re interested, here is the abstract for my paper:  Continue reading SETC Theatre Symposium →

Jobs

Finding a job in Props

I wanted to share some of the websites I use or have used to find jobs as a props artisan in theatre.

ArtSearch – ArtSearch has the most jobs listings for educational, regional, and non-profit theatres across the United States. You need a subscription to access it. If you attend school, they might have a subscription you can use. Otherwise, it’s well worth it to buy your own.

BackstageJobs – BackstageJobs has similar postings as ArtSearch, but also more commercial, temporary, and overhire gigs. They have sections for Chicago, LA, and NYC, but their job postings are from all over the country.

Playbill – Playbill’s listings can be more show-specific, meaning short-term employment for a single show, but they also list internships and full-time positions. It’s also fairly NYC-centric, but a small percentage of their listings are from elsewhere.

Craigslist – The helpfulness of using Craigslist to find work depends on where you live. While searching for prop jobs in Guam may be fairly fruitless, the New York City Craigslist is so active you can spend your entire year finding short-term gigs from it. Note that almost all the job listings are for immediate or near-immediate positions, and a large percentage are freelance or temporary work. Still, it can do a good job helping you pay the bills in between larger gigs, and you may even find other industries where your skills come in handy.

USITT – Their job listings can be annoyingly meager at times. For the most part, they advertise positions in educational theatre. More helpful is actually attending the annual USITT conference, which just ended this last weekend. They also have local chapters throughout the country, which may have more frequent events and networking opportunities.

SETC – The South Eastern Theatre Conference’s job listings are also focused primarily on positions in educational theatre and internships. Like USITT, their yearly conference, which has also passed for this year, is a great place to find jobs. They hold a job fair, which is a major recruiting ground for summer work in many theatres, large and small.

I’ve found work from most of these sites, as both a young beginner, and as a more experienced artisan. I should also mention that job listings are only a portion of the job search experience. I wouldn’t be surprised if over half of my jobs and gigs were from word-of-mouth, or through someone I know.

There are a number of more local sites as well. When I was living in Philadelphia, I checked the Theatre Alliance of Greater Philadelphia for job listings. Your town, city, or region may have something similar.

If anyone knows of any other sites for finding prop job listings, feel free to share.

Education

Shakespeare’s Movables

Over at the Popular Woodworking blog, Megan Fitzpatrick has an interesting post about joint stools in Shakespeare.

I’ve been reading a bit of Shakespeare lately (everyone should have a hobby, no?), and in several of his plays, the term “joint stool” appears, often in the service of a taunt. That’s piqued my interest in “moveables,” that is, early modern stuff such as furniture that shows up in the plays of Shakespeare and his contemporaries. (I’m hoping there’s a dissertation somewhere therein.)

I’m sure there’s a dissertation there; maybe there already is one. We seldom think of props in a scholarly manner; most of us work in props because we like building and/or searching for things. We know props are more than objects; they describe the characters, and add detail to the world on stage.

Perhaps the most popular book which delves more into the “why” of props, rather than the “how”, is The Stage Life of Props, by Andrew Sofer. I’ll admit it; I’ve only read small parts of it. I’ll have to find time for it before this year’s SETC Theater Symposium in April. The symposium is focusing entirely on props, and Mr. Sofer is one of the keynote speakers.

I’ll be presenting a paper called, “Devising a Mental Process for Approaching a Prop”. It should be interesting to hear the other papers. Be sure to check back here in April for my coverage of the Symposium.