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.