Theatre Projects

This is my job...accepting morbid situations

2012-01-29T11:33:00.000-06:00

Lesson from tonight-

It doesn't matter if they are actors in the show (or the writer for that matter) and know exactly what you are doing and why you are doing it; when you are sitting on the floor in the lobby of the theatre, sewing dummies up in sheets, everyone will look at you funny.

To my high school physics teacher

2012-01-25T12:00:00.000-06:00

A couple of nights ago I was called into a theatre, where I regularly work, to help last minute, with a special effect that the designer was having trouble with. Almost immediately I saw the problem. The spring he was using to power the mechanism was in the wrong place, and even better, it could be easily moved. "The spring is too close to your pivot point," I told him, "If you put it here instead, the spring has to do far less work to achieve the same result." Hearing an explanation like that come out of my mouth solidified my need to write this post.

In high school I disliked science. To be perfectly honest, all the way through school science was my least favorite subject. That probably had something to do with the fact that I was an over-acheiver and a perfectionist, and my lowest grades were always in my science classes. But also I think it had quite a bit to do with my confidence that science would have nothing to do with my life after graduation. I was going into theatre after all, why did I care about DNA pairing or the periodic table? Junior year of high school though, I took a physics class with Mr Wojak. He was fun, he cracked jokes, he broke information down with clever analogies and sometimes songs.

Having so much fun in Mr Wojak's class gave me the confidence to try physics again in college when the chance came up. I worked harder to understand that class than almost any other I took in all four years. I found a homework buddy, and together we worked through the assigned problems once a week, then, almost without fail, the two of us would parade over to the professor's office to ask him to explain that one problem (or two or three) neither of us could figure out.

And the point of all of this is that it worked. Though I had no idea at the time that I would use these things (I was just doing it because I had to take a science course and physics had been the only science I had ever previously enjoyed), it turns out I use my physics knowledge more on a daily basis than almost anything else I learned in the course of my schooling. I rarely use the specific formulas, and when I do I have to look them up, but I use the knowledge, the understanding of forces and how they relate to one another, every day.

I use my physics knowledge to understand how to re-enforce a piece of furniture so that it will withstand the abuse of actors using it every day through the run of a show. I use my physics knowledge when I am constructing a puppet, to understand how to use the potential energy of a spring to make a head nod or a mouth talk. I use physics to construct all sorts of rigging, knowing how to use pulleys and angles to direct force so that a magic trick can be triggered by someone across the room. I use my knowledge of friction and forces to analyze and understand gears and levers, allowing me to take apart, fix and reassemble broken antiques (a lighter, a clock, a hand powered drill, etc). I could go on for pages with specific examples of projects that have asked me to use my knowledge of physics, and I'm saying this now because no one ever told me. Even once I decided I was going to go into technical theatre, I don't remember anyone recommending I take a physics course.

For several years after college, as I started to do more and more of this type of work, I thought that these things I was working with were common knowledge, logical reasoning, a basic understanding of the world. Recently though I have realized that this knowledge is not as obvious as I had believed. Not all of my colleagues have these skills. My strong base of physics understanding sets me apart; it is a specific specialty I have and an advantage in the job market. So thank you to Mr Wojak, and to my college physics professor (whose name I am ashamed to say I have forgotten), though I am sure I did not show you enough appreciation at the time, the lessons I learned from you have turned out to be incredibly valuable. And to any current technical theatre students, look into your university's physics offerings, you'll be glad you did.

Independently controlled clock hands

2012-01-20T12:00:00.000-06:00

Another post where the pictures are not as awesome as I would like (the next three or four might be like this) but the project was cool so I'm posting it anyway.

This clock needed to have two independently controlled hands so that the time could be reset by the actor every few minutes (when he would pop through the face as a Cuckoo clock bird.

For the actor, we marked each time on the back and gave him an exact landing point for the wire he was moving (since he had no visual of the front of the clock).

The minute hand was attached to a 2" copper tube. On the front side this simply required a bit of glue, and a bit of gaff tape, to hold the foam-core clock hand to the tube. On the back side, to affix the wire the the actor manipulated to the tube, I needed to use JB weld (if you haven't used it before, JB weld is a two part adhesive designed specifically for attaching metals, it is available at most hardware stores and is amazing).

Once the hour hand was set, the minute hand was easy. I attached the hand on the front directly to my wire, fed the wire through the copper tube, and bent it over in the back to make it easy to turn.

While the back of the clock looks pretty silly when the hands started moving on the front of the clock it looked pretty magical.

Just because I'm impressed ...

2012-01-15T12:00:00.000-06:00

Every year at christmas I am excited to see what sort of new lights come out. In the past few years, as LED technology has progressed rapidly, there seem to be newer and cooler versions of small battery operated LED lights every season.

In this show (a twist on a pretty typical cabaret show) we decided it would be cool for the music binder to glow when the magic arrived and the music began.

This year martha stewart came out with a line of LED lights that were about the size of a grain of rice, and ran in series along two thin, uncoated wires (those little white flecks in the image above are the lights).

When one string of lights, shining out from behind the pages wasn't enough, I decided to fold the lights into a piece of reflective tape, to try to multiply the points of light.

The tape worked reasonable well, and the light got more and more impressive (to me) as I added a second and a third strand.

The whole rig was almost invisible when the lights were off, and I hid the battery pack inside a hollow stack of foam core, that blended perfectly into the stack of sheet music.

In this image, and the one below you can see (sort of) the lights lit inside their rig. (it was considerable more effective in a dark theatre.

I wired a switch into the circuit, and placed it on the side of the book where it was very easy for the actor to slyly flip it on.

It worked like I wanted it to, I was very proud of it, and then during tech it was cut. What it came down to was that, as impressed as I was with my new toy (these awesome new lights), the director wasn't. This in no way should be taken as a bitter statement. The director wasn't impressed because, while there were over 90 points of light around the edge of the book, they were still visible as individual points of light. For a show where all of the other magic was smooth and crisp, this book still looked like a "trick."

When I looked at the book, my thought was, "that looks like magic, because before now I never could have put so much light in such a small space." The audience doesn't know how hard that is, and would probably just think, "look they hid a light inside that book."

This was still a really great project, a great experiment with some new technology, and something I might copy again on a different show, with a different feel, where the audience is a bit further away. For this specific show though I had to be willing to let go of something I liked, because it wasn't working in the moment with the rest of what we were doing.

The Dish and the Spoon Puppets

2012-01-10T12:00:00.000-06:00

I wish I had many more process shots of these puppets, but decided that it was worth sharing them anyway.
The dish and the spoon were mostly 2D puppets for Goodnight Moon. Part of the challenge was that they each needed to be easily operated with one hand, because the same actress was operating both puppets at the same time (in addition to playing a third character herself, quite a feat). To start I created a base shape for each puppet on a piece of 1/4" ply.

The mouth operated similar to the mouth of the parrot and the curious child that I built previously. The mechanism requires a plate on a pivot to function as the jaw, a string to pull the jaw down on the pivot, and a spring to pull it back up.

On the two previous projects, where I was creating mouths in heads that had dimension, I was able to attach the pivot point of the jaw somewhere inside the head. In this case, since my 2D puppet did not have a place like that, I used heavy gauge wire to create the fixed pivot. To attach the plywood of the jaw to the wire pivot I drilled a series of holes in the plywood and used another wire to create a series of loops (like a spiral notebook)

Once it was completed, the actor could easily operate the mouth with her thumb, while holding the spoon with one hand.

To create the look of the front of the spoon, I first added a layer of foam board on the handle and around the face. In addition to giving the spoon some basic dimension, it also served to reinforce the plywood without adding almost any weight. I sculpted the rest of the dimension of her face with Crayola model magic. After the model magic was set, I took a large piece of stretchy lycra fabric and used it to skin the entire puppet. To attach the skin I used spray adhesive, spraying on bit at a time working from the most detailed portions of the face outward to the smooth edges. At the opening of the mouth I cut several slits in the fabric so that I could pull and attach the fabric to fit smoothly around the opening. Add some paint for red lips, pink cheeks and blue eyeshadow, some large googly eyes, and some pipe cleaner eyelashes, and she was ready to go.

The mechanism of the spoon started off in a very similar way, but the operation of the mechanism ended up being very different.

Since there was no way for the actor to hold the dish below the mouth, and be able to pull directly down, I had to use a series of eye hooks to move the strings to a place the actor would be able to access it. As you can see, my initial design had the actor holding the spoon by a handle, where her thumb would have been able to pull in on the string closest to the top.

In the end, she found it worked much better for her hand to be placed directly against the back of the spoon, and to pull up on the string by using a ring attached to her thumb.

To create the face, again I used foam core to create the basic dimension along the lip of the plate, then model magic to sculpt the face. I used a cream colored lycra to skin the plate, and then added a bit of paint, and of course the awesome felt mustache and uni-brow.

My day job

2011-12-05T12:00:00.000-06:00

I've never written about it on here before, but I was talking to another props master recently, and we were talking about money troubles and being freelance. I figured I should be honest. I have a day job.

I had a mild panic freak out about three months after I moved to the city. Money was tight, but things were starting to pick up a bit. I was hopeful. Then I found out that a costume designer I was working with had a day job cutting fabric and teaching classes at Joanns. This was a successful designer that I knew was working in multiple larger theatres around the city. She had been around for years. If she couldn't make a living doing it, could anyone? Is it absolutely impossible to make a living being a totally freelance designer in Chicago.

I am stubborn and hardworking, I thought, I can do it. I did some math and decided that I was going to be able to make it. For almost two years, each time money got really tight or I got worried, a big show seemed to show up and I had enough to continue on (not living well, mind you, this was always paycheck-to-paycheck stuff). I had just enough to hush that voice in the back of my head telling me that I would never make a living.

Finally, last November everything broke down. For a couple of weeks I was dead broke, eating cans of soup from the back of the cabinet, can't take a toll road today because I don't have the $0.80 broke. The worst part was that on paper I should have been fine. Between reimbursements I was owed and pay checks, I had three theatres that owed me, collectively, more than $4,000. Then my car broke down.
My parents were able to help me out with the car, my boyfriend was able to help me with some cash, some of the checks I was waiting for finally showed up, and I got through it. That was a bit of a turning point for me though. I was ready to look for a day job.

My problem was that I needed a day job that was consistent. I had tried working at Joanns, but shift work was too unpredictable. My schedule changed every week and I was never able do do things like plan meetings. The same applied to temp work. They wanted to know when I would be busy, but I never knew far enough ahead of time. I couldn't take a full day job without completely giving up propping. I needed 20 hours a week, roughly the same 20 every week (with a little flexibility). I needed to be able to plan production meetings and work calls around something and I needed time every week when I would be free so I could go shopping when the thrift and antique stores were open. I started asking around at the start of the year to see if anyone had any leads.

Around March I interviewed to become a nanny for a baby that was due to be born in April. I was offered the job in late April with a start date of June 1st. About the same time as the nanny job came up I started getting offers for summer gigs. I had enough offers to financially get me through the summer, and things were starting to materialize for fall gig offers. I could keep going, freelancing, watching things getting slowly incrementally better, or I could turn down half of the summer jobs I had been offered (all with good theatres I wanted to work with) in exchange for a bit of stability. I had to make a decision. I took the nanny job.

I watch a sweet baby girl two days a week now, and (though it sometimes requires more night and weekend hours than I used to work) I get all of my props work done during the rest of the week.
It might be technically possible to make a living doing props freelance, but I am no longer interested in proving it. My game plan now is to be a little more selective in the shows I take, make sure that I rock every show that I do (which should be easier when I'm not overwhelmed with too many shows at once), and build a solid reputation that I can use to earn that awesome full-time job doing props, when one of the few that exists opens up. In the mean time I have the comfort that comes with knowing where a little bit of money is coming from every single week.

The Red Balloon

2011-11-30T12:00:00.000-06:00

The red balloon was one of the trickiest pieces to figure out in Goodnight Moon. We wanted it to be able to move around the room, tip side to side, and move up and down. After some crazy ideas involving fishing poles rigged with right angles, tracks and pulleys running around over the set, etc. we realized the easiest solution was yo make the balloon a marionette operated from the catwalk.

(Big shout out here to the run crew person who climbs the ladders, makes the balloon dance and then climbs back down a dozen times per show).

The balloon itself is just thick paper mache formed around a large rubber playground ball. It has four screw eyes around the sides where the strings attach and are run to the grid.

At the top of the strings is this this cross piece. Each arm corresponding to one side of the balloon. Instead of tying off at each point, I put an eye hook at each point and continued running each string through screw eyes, over the top of the crosspiece, and down to the handle where the operator will be holding the piece.

At the end of the handle all of the strings are run back to this fishing reel. The reel allows the puppeteer a wide range of up and down motion. Also, by counting turns she is able to hit designated heights consistently.

Hanging off the end of the crosspiece is this clip. The clip allows the puppeteer to clip into the grid where ever she is over the stage. The balloon clips into the grid, balances on the bar nearby and the puppeteer can leave it whenever she needs to to run downstairs to operate any of the other puppets.

The cow jumps over the moon

2011-11-25T12:00:00.000-06:00

By now it should be pretty clear that everything in Goodnight Moon moves or comes to life. The paintings are no different. For the cow jumping over the moon, we needed to cow to jump out of the frame three times and return again each time.

this is the, terribly uninteresting view from the back side of the wall. Here you can see that the dowel attached to the cow is leaned against a piece of angled 1x2 and attached to the wall with a bolt.

Jumping the cow out of the frame was just a matter of pivoting the dowel around the bolt.

We didn't want the cow to back up into the frame though, so once we got to this point we kept going until the dowel was pointing straight down. (it's hard to see in these pictures, but the 1x2 was attached to the back flat, and there was a gap between the 1x2 and the front flat the allowed the dowel to swing through).

To get the cow back into the frame, the run crew uses the 1x2 as a guide to slide the cow smoothly into place. Once it is at the right height, they simply slip the pivot bolt back into its hole and the cow is ready to jump again.

The final time that the cow reappears in the frame, she has just successfully jumped over the moon and has been given a gold medal to celebrate her bravery. During previews several kids asked the director after the show why the cow didn't have her medal when she returned to the frame. Answer: because it hadn't even occurred to us. So after the show I whipped up this quick medal.

I folded a piece of plumbers strap to fit over the cutout, covered it in white Gaff tape, with red and blue spike tape for stripes, and added a felt furniture glide painted gold.

The piece slides easily over the cow's neck while the cow is out of the frame between scenes.

Dancing bookcase dolls

2011-11-20T12:00:00.000-06:00

One of the more challenging and magical moments in Goodnight Moon, involved these dolls.

Early in the show the dolls are taken off the bookcase and given to Little Bunny in his bed. About halfway through the show he places the dolls back on the shelf. Moments later the dolls magically start to move.

To achieve the magic, both dolls were built with hooks coming out the bottom, that slipped into holes in the bookcase.

As soon as they were placed on the bookcase, the run crew member backstage quickly attached hooks to the loops.

To allow the space needed under the dolls, the majority of the books on this section of the bookcase were just bindings glued onto a piece of foam to hold them in place.

The mechanisms within the dolls were difficult to photograph (pretty much impossible with all the fabric and stuffing surrounding the hardware). I figured a drawing might be an easier way to explain the way the dolls moved.

The boy doll had wires in each arm The arm wires were attached to the wire going down through the bookcase, and a spring attached to the top of the dolls head. When the wire was pulled down it forced the arms up. When the wire was released the spring pulled the ends of the arm wires back and the arms went back down.

What is not shown in the drawing is that the wire coming out the bottom is run though a piece of PVC to prevent it from getting snagged on anything. There are also too large dowel rods run from the seat of the doll all the way to the top of his head so that pulling the wire actually stretched the spring instead of just squishing the doll.

The giraffe was rigged with a nodding head. A large trampoline spring was installed in his neck and heavy duty thread was sewn in from the font of his chin, though his body and down through his foot. when the wire was pulled from below, the spring was forced to bend and the giraffe nodded. When the wire released, the spring sprung back and the giraffe returned to it's initial position

I did have to insert some heavy bolts into the back legs of the giraffe to counter weight him. We were having problems with him tipping over when the string was pulled even slightly too hard.

Mantle Pieces

2011-11-15T12:00:00.000-06:00

These mantle pieces were a quick project for Goodnight Moon.

To make them I used circles cut from 3/4" insulation foam and these glass bottles I found at American Science and Surplus (originally lava lamp bottles).

I carved the foam to shape, attached everything together with Liquid Nails.

Side note: make use when gluing foam that you use the Liquid Nails with the blue label. That is the one that is safe on foam. Other will eat through your foam, ruin you project, and produce some pretty toxic chemicals in the process

Finally I painted over all the foam with Elmer's glue to allow it to take paint, and spray painted them blue to match the clock on the fireplace.

Magic Phone

2011-11-10T15:10:00.001-06:00

For the phone in Goodnight Moon, I started with this lampshade from IKEA.

I cut out spaces at the top to provide a resting place for the receiver, cut out a space for the dial (which will later reveal a surprise face), and used a couple layers of duct tape to seal the top.

And a view from inside.

To solidify the receiver cradle I used epoxy putty to fill in along each of the remaining prongs.

For the phone's first magic trick I wanted the receiver to jiggle when the phone rang. I used three L-irons and a small machine screw to make this tiny lever.

I installed the mini-lever on a small piece of plywood and screwed it into the phone.

From the top the lever sits below the surface of the tape.

Then when a string is pulled the L-iron pops up just enough to make the receiver jump a bit.

From below you can see that when you pull the string, the L-Iron pivots to pop up and stretches the spring

When the string is released the spring pulls the L-Iron back into it's resting position.

For the phone's second trick, we wanted a face to be revealed when the phone spoke to bunny.

In resting position, all we see through the hole I cut is a standard phone dial.

When a string is pulled from backstage the phone's face is revealed (I later changed the face to be much cuter than the one pictured here, which I was not at all happy with). In this picture you can see the springs that pull the panel with the dial on it back up when the string is released.

This picture (awkwardly) shows how the panel with the dial painted on it disappears down below the phone, into a hole cut into the little bedside dresser.

And here is a view from above, looking down past the springs into the hole.
This project required a good deal of futzing to get to a point where the dial panel didn't get caught on anything on the way back up, and the string moved easily without friction from where the backstage crew was operating it. It also required a lot of rehearsal because the person who is pulling the strings backstage can't see what they are doing.*fingers crossed* it seems to be working well now.

reusable knitting

2011-11-05T12:00:00.000-05:00

In Goodnight Moon, our two little kittens are puppeted by wires attached through their bodies and up the the Old Lady's knitting needles, disguised as yarn.

Because of the alternate use for the knitting needles, I couldn't have the Old Lady actually knitting. Too much was going on onstage, the knitting needed to be removable and real knitting would have quickly become a quickly unraveling mess.

Instead, I knitted a short length of...whatever this is supposed to be the start of, and knotted it off as if I was finishing. As I was tying off each loop I inserted one of these small rubber rings (found in the jewelry section of Michaels).

The rings allow the Old Lady to pretty convincingly approximate knitting by working the rings along the needles and transferring them back and forth from one needle to the other.

This trick was especially appropriate for this show, but I think with a few alterations it might be a trick I come back to often when an actor needs to be knitting on stage. Especially an actor who didn't already know how to knit, would be freed from thinking about her hands and allowed to concentrate on the scene.

...and then it gets cut...

2011-10-30T12:00:00.000-05:00

Since I started working props, I have been told over and over again that props masters have a very high burnout rate, and there are days when I totally understand why.

Much of the job is based on luck, sometimes it's all in the timing (bones and brains around halloween= easy, the same bones and brains in June= frusterating, the same goes for other holiday decorations, outdoor toys, fake seasonal flowers and any other number of things you might never have realized stores only carry seasonally).

There is an unending number of skills you'll be asked to have; carpentry, sewing, upholstery, sculpting, painting, graphic design, puppetry, rigging and many others. It can get discouraging when you are expected to be a master of all these things, and are continually being confronting with another skill you need to learn.

By far the worst things though, and the one that leads to the most frustration and burn-out, is cuts and changes. Unlike scenery, which can be difficult to change once it is built, props are pretty easy to change, so they will get changed. Often. They will also get cut. Often. Remember this beautiful rug that took Katy almost three full days of work to braid, coil and glue. They were worried about one of the rolling set pieces getting caught on it, so they decided it should be painted instead. The choice makes sense, and I agree.

This situation was sort of best scenario. Katy doesn't care too much as long as she gets paid, and I don't feel like my time was wasted. I am a little frustrated because I have plenty of other things I could have used Katy's help on, and would have been in a much better position going into tech if she hadn't spent her time on the rug, but overall I was able to pretty easily brush it all off and move on.

And to add an even happier ending, I pulled the artistic director backstage during previews, unrolled the rug and asked her if there was any way to use it. They are currently using it under all the little tables and chairs they have set up in the lobby with coloring books for the kids prior to the show, so at least someone is enjoying it (even if it is being quickly destroyed by being trampled by dozens of muddly little shoes each weekend).

The value of ME

2011-10-25T12:00:00.000-05:00

Recently, on apracticalwedding.com, a stationary designer, Julie from Up Up Creative conducted a one month "pay-what-you-can" experiment. She learned a lot about herself as an artist and business woman, and reading about her experiences and ideas helped me solidify many things that I've been struggling with as a freelance artist.

The core idea she hit on is, "What's valuable about my business is me."

Different people can pay me different amounts for the work I do (totally understandable, some theatre companies just don't have the funding that others have). The question is, how to scale the value I give to varying price points. As Julie pondered "If what's valuable about my business is me, how do I create a scale-able set of value propositions? Can I, and do I want to, provide varying amounts of me?"

In my work, I have sometimes found ways to provide varying amounts of me; projects that have fewer props, fewer unusual props, a more flexible time frame etc. I have started to realize though, that there is an amount that is too low; where what I can offer for the money a company has available to pay me, will result in a product that the company is not happy with and a I am not proud of. I can scale back the hours I spend working on a show. I can't scale back the quality of the work that I do. If the number of hours I have to spend on a project will require me to compromise quality in order to get it done, it's not a show I should be agreeing to take on.

Another element of the same idea, is that I am learning that I have better experiences with people who also see that value of me. I am learning that there is a huge difference between people who hire me because they want my experience and creativity and artistic input, and people who hire me because they have a big project that needs to get done and they don’t feel like doing it themselves. I’m also learning that the amount someone can pay does not correlate with the way I am going to be treated, and while I need the people who can pay a larger amount, I will make an effort to work with people on more limited budgets if I know I am going to be treated well and appreciated.

Miracle Milk

2011-10-20T12:00:00.000-05:00

I discovered the greatest thing ever today. I have mentioned on the blog before my struggles with milk onstage. The question is, how do you do milk onstage that will keep under stage lights, doesn't need to be purchased new every two or three days, doesn't gum up actors' throats, is relatively cheap and doesn't taste terrible.

Today I was at a magic store looking for a trick drinking glass and the store owner mentioned this product. I bought some immediately.

As soon as I got home I gave it a try. I put six drops in this small glass of water, swirled it, and got this result.

It's a little thin looking, but would still read from stage pretty well. It clumped a bit around the droplets and I think in the future I will mix it in a jar or pitcher where I can shake it really well instead of just swirling it in the glass. I was pleasantly surprised by the taste too, which was almost non-existent.

So this stuff is super cheap (this little $5 bottle will last me pretty much forever), it won't go bad, can be prepared quickly and easily by a run crew person each night, tastes like water and won't gum up any throats!

Bang-Flag Gun

2011-10-15T12:00:00.000-05:00

For Goodnight Moon there is a bit where one of the characters uses an old cartoon-y bang-flag gun. The guns themselves can be purchased fairly easily online. The mechanism they use is surprisingly easy.

The barrel is actually two pieces, attached at the end with a spring hinge.

the flag is rolled up and hidden inside the folded barrel.

The flag is weighted at the bottom, so when the barrel is opened the flag falls out and unrolls.

The trigger mechanism is just a simple lever. it wedges in place to hold the barrel shut and a quick pull allows the spring hinge to release and the barrel to open.

The guns I ordered online worked fairly well (I ordered extras just in case they fail later, they're pretty cheap and I don't entirely trust them), but they looked a little silly. The handle was too tiny for such a long gun.
I purchased three guns from the dollar store to use to beef up the handles.

After some experimentation I ended up using just one small piece of the dollar-store gun handle as an extension on the existing handle.

I secured it in place and smoothed out the seams using epoxy putty.

Finally I added the guard surrounding the trigger to give the gun a finished look.

You can see in the previous picture that I attached the trigger guard to both the barrel and the handle. I quickly realized that attaching to the barrel prevented the spring mechanism from working. I removed the epoxy putty from that connection and let the connection at the handle support the whole piece.

When the guns were assembled I covered the parts I wanted to remain silver with masking tape, and sprayed the handles brown.

I think they turned out pretty well, and much less awkward in scale than they were to start.

Fake Braided Rug

2011-10-13T11:22:00.000-05:00

For Goodnight Moon I needed a large circular braided rug for the center of the room. It needed to be round, grey (to eventually give a moon-like appearance) and 10' across. After a brief search online it became very clear that this was not something I was going to find. It had to be made.
Before I show you pictures I have to acknowledge my friend Katy who I hired to help me with this show, and who did almost all of the labor on this project.

A traditional braided rug is made from strips of wool, but wool is expensive and I wanted something thicker so I would end up with larger braids (and the process would therefor be faster.) The three colors of grey fleece were cut into roughly 2" strips and then braided together. Katy kept the braids somewhat loose to help speed the process.

to keep a rough idea of how far she was getting (and partially to keep the whole thing from turning into a tangled mess) Katy wound it on the floor as she went.

Later, when Katy had used up all the fabric I bought we took the time to lay the whole thing out neatly and flatten the braids. It went from being roughly 4'-6" across to just at 6', something to keep in mind if you take on a similar project.

Here is the rug after the first day. Unfortunately the 10 yards of fleece I purchased wasn't enough, so back to the fabric store.

A real braided rug is time consuming and difficult because all of the braids need to be stitched together along the entire length of the spiral. To speed the process for this project we decided to glue our braids to a backing instead.

Katy stitched together two widths of grey canvas to get a 10'x10' square and then started gluing, spiraling out from the center. the gluing helped to spread the braids out to their widest to cover as much area as possible with each braid.

The gluing also allowed us to leave small gaps (which add up over a 10' rug). With the grey canvas backing being a close enough color to some of the fleece, the gaps all but disappear from just a few steps back.

As Katy was gluing the braids she discovered that we should have purchased longer glue sticks (she used so many, that adding new sticks was the most annoying part of the process). She also discovered that one giant long braid wasn't the best idea. If we had done it in shorter length pieces, she would have gotten tangled less, and spent far less time untwisting the braid to get it to lay straight.

After laying out that same first day's braid on the canvas we had closer to 7' of diameter. We still need more, but this is a great start, and I'm going to bring pictures into rehearsal to make sure we want to go the whole 10' we planned before continuing.

Dancing Lamp

2011-10-05T16:06:00.000-05:00

The exciting and challenging thing about "Goodnight Moon" is that the whole room comes to life. For me that meant that there are almost no simple props. Everything becomes a puppet on some level.

This first puppet is the table lamp.

For the base of the lamp I used a round globe lamp I found at Ikea. I removed the electric that were pre-attached and turned it upside down.

I cut 2 circles of plywood to anchor the ends of the neck of the lamp. In between I attached a spring (mostly with epoxy putty), that could bend to make the lamp dance.

I attached strings to the edges of the top plywood circle, ran them through holes in the bottom circle and out the bottom of the lamp. Once the lamp is installed onstage I will run the same strings through holes in the table, around pulleys and off-stage where they can be operated by one of the actors unseen.

To give the lamp a more solid base I cut a circle of foam core with a slit to fit the cable. Once I am installing the piece onstage, this will be covered in the same blue fabric as the rest of the lamp.

Once the tipping mechanism was functioning, I needed to make the shell of the lamp. I used a stretch dance fabric so that I could get a smooth, wrinkle-free line while still getting the flexibility I needed.
I made the cover much the same way you would make a slip cover for a couch. I wrapped the fabric around the lamp base and then began pinning the excess fabric until it fit tightly. When I removed the fabric the pins gave me an exact pattern for where I needed to sew darts to make a perfect fit.

I trimmed away all the excess fabric and turned the sleeve right-side-out.

Then all I needed to do was pull the sleeve back over my lamp and hot glue it in place.

I purchased a lampshade that is held in place by the lightbulb so that I didn't need any extra hardware for that.

Finally I painted the lampshade yellow and added some rick-rack around the edges so that I could get a perfect match to the lamp in the book.

Unfortunately the first time they tried to use the lamp in rehearsal, the line I was using for the pull strings broke. When I brought the lamp home to finish rigging I replaced the strings with thick wire.

finally I ran the pull wires, and the electrical cable through a piece of foam wrapped in my blue fabric, and through holes I had drilled in my table. From here I will run lines through pulley and screw eyes, once we load the piece onstage, to where ever they need to be backstage.

Think before you speak...

2011-09-30T12:00:00.000-05:00

Last year when I was working on Menorca at 16th Street Theatre, we needed to have a table full of ancient skeletal remains for the archaeologist to be examining. I bought two Bags of Bones from the local party store (hooray doing this show right around Halloween!), and touched them with a light paint wash to make them look older. After the show the director took the bones home to add to her Halloween decorations.

In January I was working on another show that needed bones, so I called up the director and asked if I could have them; she was happy to help. After the second show, the bones ended up in one of the crates in my basement where I store prop pieces that I think I am going to keep using.

Several months after that I was working on a show doing puppets (not props) and this conversation occured after one of our tech runs.

Set Designer- I'm a little confused by the line the actor has after the first dance number about it being a perfect transition to talking about the skeletal system.

Director- We were originally thinking of those dancers as being skeletons, but with the masks and the costumes, they ended up being just strangely creepy monsters.

Costume Designer- I think it would be a little late to change the costumes, and other than that line afterwards that doesn't fit, I really like the look of them.

Director- I do too. I don't want to change the costumes, maybe we need to change or cut the line.

Set Designer- What if, when the monsters popped out of the boxes and crates, they had bones that popped out with them. Then, after the dance is over, there will be bones scattered around the stage , and the actor can pick up one of the bones and use the transitional line.

Director- That works for me.

Production Manger- I'll let the Props master (who had a conflict and wasn't at that meeting) know, and see if she can find us some bones.

Me- I have some bones we could use.

-Silent stares-

Me- In a crate in my basement.

-More silent stares-

Me- That sounds weirder now that I say it out loud...

Production Manger- Yeah...

Me- They are props leftover from another show...I bet my neighbors (who also store things in the same basement room) think I'm pretty weird... hadn't really thought of that before...

Production Manger- Moving on...

Sometimes I get so wrapped up in my own world, I forget that the things I do are weird to outsiders. I now keep the bag of bones in a closed box instead of in an open crate to avoid creeping out the other people in my building.

This week's rediculousness

2011-09-28T16:28:00.000-05:00

I am currently working on "Goodnight Moon" at Chicago Children's Theatre (going to be a great production by the way, and I'm looking forward to some exciting posts here about some super-fun props I get to build).

The set and props from the play are pulled right out of the book, and I am attempting to be as accurate as possible. Because of this, I am bring my little board-book copy of Goodnight Moon with me where ever I go so I can reference it. "What color was the bowl of mush?", "Do these slippers match the ones next to the bed?", "how close is this lamp to the shape of the lamp in the picture?" etc. I thought nothing of it, until I saw a woman staring at me in Target and realized how strange it was to be intently studying Goodnight Moon in the middle of a store. Thinking back on it, I sure it looked even more out of place when I was at Home Depot.

:)

This is my job...beating up vehicles

2011-09-25T12:00:00.001-05:00

I currently drive a Oldsmobile Bravada. Her name is Daisy and she is the most wonderful SUV/rolling prop shop I could ask for. I've had her for a little over a year and half, and if I don't beat her up too badly (she gets a lot of abuse) I plan on keeping her for a good long while.
Before I got Daisy though, I was driving a 1994 Chrysler Lebaron convertible. I loved that car, it was super cute, and it was fun to drive around in the summer with the top down. It was the perfect car for me when I needed it to just be my car. When I was working in Pennsylvania and there was a company pickup available to me when I needed it, everything was fine.
When I moved to Chicago things changed. The little storefront theatres in the city rarely have even a drill or a chop saw of their own, a company truck or van was out of the question. I rolled with the punches though and decided I would do what I had to do to get the job done. More and more I started using my convertible as if it was a pickup truck. I would put the top down and tie things into the back seat as best I could. I discovered that if I slid a ten foot board down between the front seats to the floorboard on the passenger's side, it only hung out the back of the car a few inches. I loved the looks on the faces of the old men in the home depot parking lot as they watched me walk towards my car with a stack of lumber. I loved watching the smile of realization on their face as I turned the car on, unhooked the roof and lowered the top to load everything into the back seat.
It wasn't always ideal though. Multiple times I got caught driving to the theatre with a full load right as it started to rain. As it got colder I would bundle up with hat and gloves and scarf as I would drive through the city with a desk hanging out the back and the heat blasting on my toes to try to keep warm.
One night, in early February I was moving some benches and a bookshelf I had purchased to drop them off at rehearsal. The top went down, I wedged the pieces in, and I headed downtown. I moved the pieces into the theatre and everything was fine until I went back to my car to put the top up. Apparently the heavy benches had bent or twisted or wedged some part of the mechanism the moves the convertible top up and down. The roof would start to go up, but then would stop at totally vertical and wouldn't go any further. I was standing on the front seat of the car, pushing the roof motor button with my toe and yanking on the part of the top I could reach to try to pull it down, with no luck. On top of all of this, I was already running late to pick up a friend from St Louis at the train station.
The look on her face, a perfect combination of pity, confusion, and amusement, when I pulled up in below freezing weather still makes me smile. She stood there on the curb with her bags and stared at me. All I could say was "It won't go up." She laughed at me, we got into the car and decided to head home to figure out what to do next. On the way home, because we both needed food, and because we had reached our limitations for cold, we pulled off into a Wendy's. Before going inside to order food, we decided to try again. We had been working on the top for about five minutes, me standing on the front seat pulling and Megan crouched on the trunk of the car throwing her weight against it, when two sixty-year-old women walked up and asked us if we might need some help. We told them we did. With the extra two sets of hands standing on the sides of the car pulling down, the twisted or wedged piece finally popped loose and the top closed. We thanked the women, went into Wendy's and got some much deserved dinner.
I can only imagine what those women (and those people who passed the two of us on the highway between the train station and Wendy's) must have thought of us.

Large overly fancy quill

2011-09-20T12:00:00.001-05:00

Next to the letters, Cyrano's pen is the most important prop in Cyrano. I started by making a fairly standard sized quill from a cheap (goose?) feather I bought at Michaels. I found some pretty fabulous tutorials online about how to temper the feather with heat to make it less flexible, and how to cut the correct angles and slits in the end to make the ink flow. You can look it up yourself however, because the quills I made using those tutorials were not the quills we ended up using.

Instead of a basic goose feather we decided to use a large grand ostrich plume.

I started by cutting back the feathers from the base of the quill until I had enough space for a hand to hold and write comfortably.

We wanted the pen to be able to actually write when he used it onstage. To do that I took the inside out of this ballpoint pen.

I feel it is worth noting why I chose a cheap ballpoint pen for the ink. I would have loved to have used a fountain or felt tip pen, or even a nicer ballpoint, so that I could have gotten a heavier nicer line when he wrote on the paper. In this production though, Cyrano's quill doubles as the feather in his hat. With a nicer pen, with ink that flowed more freely, I was in too much danger of the ink flowing freely onto the hat and staining it.

I attached the ink to the pen by wrapping it tightly with electrical tape (for a tight hold) and masking tape (for color and texture).

And I finished it off with a touch of black paint to imitate the staining a quill would get from being continually dipped into an ink well.

And the effect is fantastic when he writes the letter onstage and the audience (especially those who are seated in the close balcony) can see an empty page filling with poetry.

Cyrano Letters

2011-09-15T12:00:00.001-05:00

These letters were created for Cyrano. Since they are the central piece of the show we needed to make them distinctive and special.

I started with a nice parchment paper. I used a copper color for Cyrano's letters.

To differentiate Roxanne's letters, I used a silvery blue parchment.

I had an assistant on the show who actually was the one who chose the fonts and typed the letters. To get the fonts I sent her to dafont.com, one of a number of websites available to download free fonts online. It's worth checking the whole thing out if you never have, but for this project specifically we used the section of handwriting fonts. The fonts on the site are much more natural looking than any that you likely have pre-loaded on your computer and using them is considerably easier and more consistent than doing it by hand and copying. The fonts are very easy to download and install, the site even has a step-by-step list of instructions if you need help.

After seeing the letters in tech rehearsals I felt that the parchment didn't make the letters feel special enough. To help give them some definition I outlined the copper letters with a touch of bronze paint and a touch of silver to the silver letters. It's not visible from the audience, but it defines the letters a bit, and helps the edges not feel as new and modern and sharp.

One letter needed to be soaked with blood (I don't feel bad revealing this because the plot of Cyrano de Bergerac is pretty much common knowledge). To stain the letter I used a mixture of red and blue food dye diluted with a very little bit of water. This picture is with one coat of very wet dye.

And this final picture is with a second coat of dye and the bronze painted edge.

If only I could buy everything

2011-09-14T13:05:00.001-05:00

One of the hardest things about being a props master is controlling the urge to buy things. It is so difficult to see an amazing deal on an interesting piece while walking through a thrift or antique store (or worse sitting out on the side of the road). I will stare a a piece thinking "I am going to need that one day, and when I do, i am not going to be able to find it." Eventually I remind myself that if I were to buy everything that I thought that way about, I would have to spend money every month to rent space to store the stuff, and I almost always walk away.
Today was a perfect example. While walking out of the Salvation Army I saw four vintage tricycles. I have no use for them on any show I can think of in the next year, but it was really hard to walk away. They were on sale for $50 each (a quick ebay search showed similar trikes selling for up to $100), they were here in the city (so there would be no dealing with driving to pick them up or paying shipping costs) and most importantly They Matched! Other props masters will agree I'm sure. Vintage is easy enough, though you sometimes pay more than you would like for it; matching vintage is darn near impossible.

I guess the moral of today's story is you have to let these things go. I certainly can't be spending $200 on something I eventually might use, as tempting as it might be. Every once in a while an item shows up on my props list and I think "A year ago I knew exactly where I could get one of those." In the end I have to say, "Oh well" and start a new search.

The other moral of the story is, if you happen to need vintage tricycles, and you are anywhere near Chicago, they are at the Salvation Army at Clyborne and Ashland. Go get them!

Never be Afraid to Ask...Neon bar Sign

2011-09-10T13:51:00.000-05:00

Another last minute prop added to a show was a neon, Schlitz bar sign for Always Patsy Cline. In my initial conversation with the director I had asked if he wanted anything like this to help signify the transition for kitchen to bar, and he didn't think he did. After some rehearsal though, he decided that is would be fun, and just the extra touch we needed. Unfortunately that left me without an extended period of time to lurk on ebay to find a good deal. I looked into some "buy it now" options, but they were all pretty far out of our budget.

The stage manager mentioned he could get us one on rental from a theatre he worked with, but in the end, once we multiplied the per-week rental by the length of our run, it would have been almost the cost of buying one.

Eventually it dawned on me that I already had the connection I needed to get a sign. One of my very best friends works for one of the biggest beer distributors in Chicago. He had mentioned, while we were hanging out draining Schlitz bottles for show props (it's a hard life), that Schlitz was one of their beers. I called him up, told him what I needed, and he left me a sign on my front porch the next morning. We were able to use the sign free of charge as long as we didn't damage it. It worked out great! Free advertising for Schlitz and a free beautiful piece of set decoration for us.