5/18/14 - Paisley!

Days Three / Four / Five:

We've been quite busy with the Steel Magnolias props hunt for the past couple of days! By we, I mean my assisting intern and myself. On Day Three, we whirled about the adjacent area visiting the hair salons which I'd called up on Day Two in the hope of them giving us free stuff. Here are the souvenirs we brought back from our 6 salon drop-ins:

-> One rolling pedicure station
-> Two detached salon hair dryers with square backing (one black, one clear)
-> Four black hydraulic styling chairs (three of the same make and model, one odd one out)
-> One black hydraulic shampooing chair (it reclines!)
-> One white rolling manicure table
-> One tiny manicure table stool with yellow paisley upholstering
-> One rolling hydraulic stool with a black seat

In addition, the set designer ordered two black salon sinks which will be embedded in the counters built by the set shop. These sinks are the ones that I get to make practical - hooray for running water! This salon's going to be as functional as tobacco's PAC, minus the smell of cancer.

Techmageddon is at hand!

On Day Five, an intern and I pulled the rehearsal props for the show. Rehearsal props are props which approximate the size, shape and function of the actual props for the show; they're to be used by the actors in rehearsals. Pretty self-explanatory name, no?

Thereafter, I attended the Steel Magnolias readthrough (where the script is read aloud by the actors of that production for the first time). From the readthrough I got a better sense of Truvy, the character who owns the hair salon in which the play takes place. It is important for the props master to have an excellent sense of the characters who would have owned and decorated the space portrayed by the set; the items selected by Truvy (a mid-30s-to-40s Dixie woman from Baton Rouge) for her salon in 1987 within the world of Steel Magnolias would be very different from the items selected by a New York salon owner in her mid-20s, for example. One must think of all props coming to a set not just by the props master or set designer's hand but also by the hand of the set location's owner and inhabitants as well as people who might have given them to the set owner, or else left there by the owner's predecessor.

5/14/14 - This Shall Be Our Day of Cold Calling.

Day Two as the TP Props Master began with me calling every beauty parlor whose numbers and owner names I had in a handy spreadsheet compiled by a playhouse volunteer. I first called up those places which had contributed to the 1991 production - a surprisingly fruitful endeavor given the consideration that 23 years had worn away between then and now - and from there branched out to locations in Fayetteville and then Chambersburg.

Past show papers are a tremendous boon to the Props Master who is remaking a production. Luckily the file drawer next to the props shop computer contained a folder for Steel Magnolias 1991 which included the original set plan and notes (pictured above), a few rehearsal notes for the prior props master from the stage manager, check lists of notes from technical rehearsals of props things to fix and add, notes on the 1991 production's salon source interactions, rental forms, and a packet of receipts thick enough to send a good-sized yellow jacket to his untimely end with one reasonably enthusiastic swat.

From the set plans and the designer's notes, I gathered that I should shake down the area's salons for dryer chairs (2), styling chairs (3), practical* sinks (2), and salon mirror-counter units or counter islands. The 1991 production had fortuitously stumbled across a salon which had donated two counter units with sinks installed and

*Practical, when used as a technical theatre term, means that the unit functions as it would in the real world. In this case, the sinks are called "practical water" props because they will be rigged with plumbing that will enable them to dispense water when operated by the actors just as any kitchen sink would.

At 9:00 am began our day of cold calls. I find it's best to call businesses in the morning when you want something from them; they're feeling more industrious and have more time to speak to you when their customers are still in the process of climbing out of bed. All together I called up 14 beauty salons in the area: 4 were disconnected numbers, 4 I left messages at, 1 (the appropriately titled Steel Magnolias Salon) was sympathetic but didn't have any useful large equipment to spare, and 5 had equipment they'd be willing to lend us for the run of the show in exchange for complimentary ("comped") tickets and credit given in the "Thanks" section of the playbill. Huzzah for getting something for nothing! I organized a pick-up schedule for that afternoon and the following day.

Around 12:00 pm, once the Telephone Games had concluded, I busied myself until lunch with putting away the hodgepodge of props coming in to me from the strike of last year's set. I also made a list of rehearsal furniture props to pull from our storage units down the road. Rehearsal props are props which approximate the size, shape, and function of the props we intend to use in the show; they are, as the name suggests, to be given over to the care of the stage manager or assistant stage manager for use by the actors during rehearsals. Rehearsal props exist to spare the real props the fumbling, experimentations, and man-handling of the actors and director; they don't need to be pretty.

At 2:30 pm, I and my handy dandy production intern helper swung ourselves into the company van and headed down the road to A Touch of Paradise, a local beauty salon. The owner, Tessie, was absolutely lovely and had called me back during lunch to volunteer her spare hydraulic styling chairs for the show. After wandering back and forth across Route 30 for a good 40 minutes only to finally locate the salon's whereabouts no more than 2 miles from the theatre, we made away with 3 gorgeous black styling chairs, a rolling white manicure cart, and a little counter-top waxing machine (nobody gets waxed in the show, but it'll make for an authentic piece of salon set dressing).


 
Before returning to the TP, Production Intern and I dropped by the Chickentown storage units and pulled a two-person sofa (or "loveseat"), a coffee table, and an end table of no particular importance for use as rehearsal props. We also dropped off a wooden fake upright piano from the previous show.

So concluded Day Two on the props watch at TP! The quote of the day is from my house mate during our discussion of alcohol preferences:
""I'll get DOWN on some Riesling, son." 

5/12/14 - Steel Toe Flip Flops

Greetings, Internet. This summer, I have donned the mantle of resident Props Master at a summer stock playhouse, which I will refer to as the TP until I'm totally sure that they're okay with this blog coming up in a search of their actual name. I will be making / finding / begging / borrowing and then  making functional and touching up for aesthetics the props items (everything handled by the actors as well as "set dressing", those items which are part of the set but are not built in the set shop).  Here I will document my goings on and daily tidbits as a hopefully useful reference for any aspiring or floundering props masters. 

My Day One at the playhouse began with a production meeting at 9 am; we sat in the front row of the theatre house, introduced ourselves, went over the playhouse and housing standards, and desperately tried to will ourselves awake. Most of us had come from the apartments we share nearby; I will say that the TP provides excellent housing for its summer stock employees.

Our technical director and assistant technical director gave us a quick tour of the scene shop, and we all dove into pulling scrap wood, ladders, staircases, boxes, small woodland creatures, and a host of other objects which had been stored in the shop over the summer. At the end of the day, we were left with the following; please note the luxurious amount of floor space which had not been there previously:

Around lunchtime (1 pm), I moseyed on over to take a look at the Props Shop. I'd already looked in on the three props storage spaces scattered about the playhouse grounds as well as the off-site storage down the road (the notorious Chickentown). The Props Master gets his / her own desk, computer, printer, a file cabinet of props master records from previous shows, and a host of shelves on which to put tools and all of the things. Put ALL OF THE THINGS!

I returned to the scene shop and joined in on the ATD's tool safety tour, or "How To Not Cut Your Fingers Off in the Scene Shop This Summer".



Post-shop-talk, I made a show binder for Steel Magnolias, cleared some of last year's debris off the props shop shelves and desk area, and wrote a list of things to do on Day Two.

And so concluded Day One of the propsiest employee of the TP. Today's quote of the day comes from the ATD's safety lecture:
""If you're wearing flip flops in the shop, they better be steel toe."