I am writing this while I am eating my lunch, because this is about as close to a lunch break as I am going to get today! Technical rehearsals have begun for Love’s Labor’s Lost and The Lion in Winter and that means crunch time for the prop shop. We are a small, but scrappy bunch, the prop shop. There’s myself, the prop master, responsible for not only the research that goes into figuring out what each prop should look like and for building as much as time will allow me, but also the day-to-day running of the shop, making sure we have all of the necessary tools and supplies we need to create the props, keeping track of the budget, attending design and production meetings and generally trying to find, build, recreate, beg, borrow or steal around 300 props. Working with me is: an artisan, Caroline (a talented craftsperson who continually “makes purses out of sows ears” as we say in the south); Richard (the prop carpenter who builds all of the large projects like the bed you will see in LION); Sara (who has come out of the core offices after ten years to get her hands dirty in the prop shop); Scott (the prop shopper who bravely goes out everyday to procure anything we might need from supplies to trying to find just the right lanterns for the soldiers to carry in OTHELLO — when you see those lanterns think about Scott and the hours, and I do mean hours, he shopped to find just the right ones); and I also have an intern, Mary, (who has graciously completed so many tedious projects like hand writing all of the documents in LION).  Together, we are responsible for everything you see that can move off the set or the “properties” of the set if you will. That includes hand props, furniture, set dressing, weapons, consumables and the list goes on.

As I write, Sara and Mary are trying to make the handles on the five lanterns for LLL stay in a permanent upright position, as requested in rehearsal notes a few days ago. Why, you may ask? Ours in the prop shop is not to question, just to make the magic happen. Caroline is creating the leather wraps that will hold the candles on the sconces that yesterday Laura Julio spent an entire day scroll sawing out of wood (yes, they are wood painted to look like iron). Just prior to that, Caroline dry brushed down the ferret chair (bet you never thought you’d see that sentence in print.) Richard is cutting the posts off the foot board that he built yesterday for safety reasons and adding them to the canopy which appears on the bed later in LION. (Yes, some days we build, some days we deconstruct what we just built yesterday).  Next door, a fabulous costume intern, Renee, is cutting some 50 yards of blue dupioni which will drape anything that stands still when Phillip makes his entrance in LION. Scott is off in Watsonville buying a range of things from a twiggy basket (not too tall, not too short) to the metal that will be forged into the blood dagger for LION. (Joe, our technical director, and I are pooling our talents to create this little piece of stage magic.) And I am off to the Glen to do a fire arms test for OTHELLO. We have a real gun, which fires blanks, but a real gun nonetheless. It is kept under lock and key and it is my job to make sure it functions properly before putting it in the actor’s hands. Yes, I am like the person who tastes the food for royalty to make sure it’s not poison.  We have a lock-up in the props shop full of guns, knives, daggers, swords, bows and arrows. If you need something from me in the next few days I suggest you speak softly and carry a big stick. Well, off to test the gun and try to whittle down the some 100 to-do line items on my list. When you come see the shows remember to notice how nicely those handles stay upright on the lanterns in LLL!

–Lydia Bushfield

Next up in The Green Room: Acting Intern Alexandra Pucci