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."
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