Sourcing 1960s home furnishings, repairing vintage chainsaws,
fire-proofing thousands of dead leaves and making a coffin are just
some on the tasks that have lately been on the very long to-do list
for STC's Head of the Props Department Alex Stuart.
The STC productions Blood
Weddingand Lootwere created in the
company workshops, so Stuart and his small, hard-working team were
put to the test. It was nothing new for the department, who work
closely with the set construction, sound, costume and lighting
departments to make the visions of set and costume designers
attached to each show a reality.
Stuart, who has been with STC for almost a decade and head of
department for six years, describes his area as "broad
ranging".
"We pick up the slack," he says. "I find a lot of things that come
up in a production that no-one wants to deal with get thrown my
way, a lot of the tricky effects and such, so there's a lot of
problem solving."
This means anything from furniture or loose items, kitchens or
cabinets, lamps or musical instruments can fall to the props
department. Sometimes shows demand they think outside the box, such
as when they were asked to create topiary swans for The Way of the Worldin 2003.
The solution was both simple and clever: they ended up covering
models in popcorn and spraying it green.
"They looked really good and it was probably a bit left of centre,"
Stuart says. "But I wouldn't do it again because we had problems
with pigeons back at the warehouse."
One of the most challenging productions to date for the department
was The War of the
Roses, which required machines to drop a stream of gold
confetti on the Sydney Theatre stage for more than an hour.
"Although there wasn't a lot of stage or props in that show, the
whole confetti thing was thrown, by default, into my basket and it
was a very difficult technical thing," says Stuart. "There was a
lot of trial and error in that show, and we started off by
workshopping lots of different ideas for how these machines might
work. From this we built some prototypes and figured out which was
the best direction to go, because it had never been done before,
dropping that amount of confetti for that period of time."
Stuart and his team clearly relish the challenges thrown forward by
each new production and they pride themselves on achieving the
designer's vision as closely as possible. However this can also
make for a highly stressful work environment.
"There was a lot of pressure and scratching of heads with The War of the Roses," he
says. "If the props didn't work, then the show didn't work."
Another challenging production for the props department was the
eight-hour Barrie Kosky directed epic The Lost Echo, which
required an unprecedented number of props including motor driven
items, blood, sleight of hand tricks and bits of furniture that
performed unusual functions. Despite the challenges, Stuart counts
it as one of his favourites to work on.
"That was a good show, so big and expensive and so many different
things in it," he says. "It didn't seem overwhelming to me because
it was such an engaging process."
Not all shows are so demanding, and for most productions the
majority of the items on stage are bought rather than made. Often
making the items look as realistic as possible is a key priority,
which is why real food is often used in performances. In the recent
production of The White
Guard, Stuart chose to install a real cut Christmas
tree as it had a better "look and smell" than a fake one and,
despite the stage lights, it surprised everyone by lasting five
weeks in a bucket of water. For the production of Loot,
his team found many of the 1960s period props and set pieces in
op-shops and auctions.
"Most shows are fairly straightforward, mostly furniture, so a lot
of buying goes on," says Stuart. "Usually we start by looking for
the objects the designer has asked for but if we can't find it, or
we know that because of the size of whatever that we won't find it,
then we'll make it here."
Of course, prop items from past productions are often reused,
particularly since STC has committed to the Greening The Wharf
program, which encourages all of the workshops to recycle materials
as much as possible to reduce waste.
"We have quite a bit in storage," Stuart says. "You can never have
too much, and we have heaps of stuff at our warehouse, but only a
limited amount of room so it's sometimes a toss up about what we
keep or what might be useful later on.
Once a show is up and running, the bulk of Stuart's job is done but
he is never quite able to walk away, as changes or problems with
the props during the season run must be dealt with promptly.
"Sometimes you get two weeks into a show and things shift, and it
becomes apparent that a particular prop is not working for stage
management and we need to come up with something simpler," he says.
"There are lots of back up plans."
Alex Lalak
Feature: Props Department
Date posted: 21 Sep 2011Author: STC