The actors take their final bows. The show has had its final performance. Flowers are given, hugs are had, and parents are proud. What stood out about the show? The acting? The music? The script? The set or costume design? It may be something you didn’t notice: the props. Props play a lead role in how successful or unsuccessful a theater production may be.
Sarah Breinig is the director, stage director and prop designer at Olivet Nazarene University (ONU) Theatre and Marketing Director of Green Room Theatre Company.
“The moment you hand an actor a prop, they go from good to great. It makes their acting more true. If you give [an actor] a realistic prop, it grounds their acting in a tangible way. Props and costumes cement talent that’s already there, it’s just the polish on top that really makes them sing,” she said.
Props vary greatly from show to show. Whether a production is at the high school or Broadway level has a lot to do with how the props are sourced and used.
In the professional theater industry, it is standard that someone would design a prop and another person would make it. The typical prop design process at Green Room Theatre Company does not function in that way. For example, The Royal Shakespeare Company has the resources to create 1:25 ratio models of each of their props before actually creating each one, but that is not the case for a smaller company like Green Room Theatre Company. The budget at Green Room allows room for creativity and thinking outside of the box, as well as reusing certain props from show to show.
The process at Green Room Theater Company looks something like this: the prop designer will read the script and compile a list of props needed. They will then check the prop rooms in Sims Theater and Larsen Fine Arts Center. Props that cannot be sourced from existing props will then be handmade or bought, as long as they fit into budget.
“During the fall 2020 production of A Midsummer’s Night Dream, we gave the actors a maraca that kept breaking,” Breinig said.
“Eventually, we lost all of the beads inside of the maraca, so we ended up filling it up with googly eyes. To this day, it remains as the googly eye maraca that not everyone knows is full of googly eyes.”
Prop design isn’t all fun and games, though. It can come with physical and even emotional hardships.
“Some props are easy and don’t take heart and soul, but sometimes you work really hard on this really cool prop and the director decides that they don’t like it anymore because it doesn’t fit their image,” Breinig said.
Although prop design can come with its hardships, it is also very rewarding for the people who design them and the actors who get to use them.
“If you do your job right, no one goes ‘wow that prop was so great.’ Your props will just add to the dynamic. It puts a nice little bow on the whole of the show.”
Sarah Breinig
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