food porn.

I really love watching food onstage, in movies, on tv, in magazines. Its totally pornographic the way that our culture approaches depictions of food — from the now-defunct Gourmet magazine (RIP), to the sporting-event-like cooking shows on the Food Network, to hot dog eating contests, to the new obsession with high-end locally grown food, food spans from image to icon.

I mean, check out that cake. Gourmet covers and images traditionally have turned food into a kind of logo. Its amazing the abstraction in their covers. Look at this one from the 80s:

So, thats gourmet. We can talk all day about food styling, and fake food and all of that. Or not. Suffice to say that I think when food is eaten onstage or in film it should be real, and it should be disgusting. I watched Marie Antoinette last night and LOVED watching them eat gross pastries. I know this is much harder onstage because they have to do it every night, over and over again, but I’ve done people scarfing hot dogs (tofu dogs, cut in half, whole wheat buns), and talking with a mouth full of muffin (angelicas kitchen vegan sugar free savory muffin).

What I havent seen nearly enough of, I think is food in its visceral form as backdrop, or as other than food. But check out the new video for Charlotte Gainsbourg’s collaboration with Beck… while there are many beautiful things about it, I love the use of food in the sets… particularly the skateboard on the hamburgers. Plus, its a sweet song.

fun theory

well, you can tell I haven’t been working a lot, because this is about to veer away from props to a certain extent.

VW has this pretty adorable “fun theory” campaign going on, where they make tasks like recycling and climbing stairs more appealing by making them fun. Its about innovative incursions on things. Making a flight of stairs into a giant piano, for example, or a “never-ending” trashcan.

The arcade (below) is my personal favorite, but you can see all of them, and the rest of the campaign, here.

I wonder how effective thee kinds of campaigns are. I love how they are obviously supporting young artists, and making more creative forms of advertising. But are they getting people to buy VWs? That said, I’m talking about it on my blog, so that must be something.

thank you googlemaps

I LOVE the local search on googlemaps. Today, I loved it a little bit more, when searching for an emergency coffee table, and trying to find all the furniture stores in chinatown. Hate it when a store that has gone out of business is listed? Googlemaps has the answer.

“I don’t shop for a living. I WORK” volume 3

see volume 1 and volume 2

ALLENTOWN TOY

Ok, so this one isn’t in New York, but it is another one of my all time favorites. Allentown Toy is a carnival toy manufacturing company in Allentown, PA (I know, go figure).

Anyways, like the other businesses I’ve written about, Allentown Toy is staffed by people who are really enthusiastic about what they do. They really love their toys, love their jobs, and have creative solutions to problems.

The first time I dealt with them was on Paradise Park, at the Signature in 2007. Some images of the set to give you a sense of the show:

so, thats when they’re all dancing to “Real Love” by Mary J Blige. Notice the Pooh-Bears in the corner, oh, and the bumper car.

… and the pile of plush supermen toys

and the penguins top left, oh, and the bouncy castle being inflated and crushed against the ceiling.

So, that was Paradise Park. It was a pretty nuts show. I learned so much from that project (I was the assistant props master), and I think its a show that really changed how I think about scenery… It was amazing. This is besides the point. There was a lot of carnival crap in that play. The supermen were shipped to us, (theres a great story involving them going to the fireproofers and the guys going a little crazy from being in a room with that many superman toys), but the Pooh Bears, the Penguins and some other bears had to be picked up.

So, off I went in my boss’ Explorer to Allentown to get the stuffed animals.

The Allentown Toy office is a warehouse with a front office with thousands of samples hanging from the ceiling. Like THOUSANDS. So, theres normal-looking desks, filing cabinets etc and then riotous color from all the toys and inflatables and so on. The company is run and staffed by these lovely hippies. Which, honestly, was not what I expected at all. I think they all hang out in the rooms full of giant canival toys and smoke weed all day and thats why they’re so nice.

Anyways, we load up the explorer with the 250 stuffed animals, and I drive back to NYC in a car so jammed with animals that they are literally pressed up against the windows and piled in the passenger seat. Weirdest trip through the tunnel ever. The people at the theater laughed for the next few days after I pulled up in that state.

My most recent interaction with allentown was also pretty great. I did an opera at Montclair State University and I needed a 36″ inflatable baseball bat. And a squeaky hammer. And a giant heart shaped balloon (they didn’t have that, but had good suggestions about where to find one). They went way out of their way to sell me only one or two of each. Check it out!

Moral of the story? If you ever need carnival toys, these are the guys to go to. They’re awesome.

 

to the lost props

One of the things that is totally true about being a props master is that 80% of what we do is thrown out. Usually, in fact, its the most difficult or time consuming props that are thrown by the wayside or made unrecognizable. So today, I devote my post to some of those props. May they rest in peace.

THE DRESS RUG

Ok, this is a prop that was for An Oresteia, at CSC last winter. The original request was for a 30′ red carpet made of little girls’ dresses sewn together. The idea was that as Agaememnon returned from Troy, his wife Clytemnestra lays out a red carpet for him to alk on when he enters the house. BUT the carpet is made of little tiny dresses, signifying the dead Iphigenia, whom he sacrificed for his victory at Troy. This, in turn, symbolizes that Clytmenestra was STILL MAD. And intended to kill him. Pretty tough symbolism, I know. But bear with me.

This poor prop went through various permuations, and eventually I ended up buying 90 pre-made dresses, dyeing them and sewing them. I was actually super-excited about it, since I love any and all things quilted in all of their forms. Heres a shot of the scene with the original prop:

Needless to say, given the title of this post, the poor thing was cut. Over night we had to churn out a new version of the prop, involving only one dress, at the end and a long red silk train. By the end, we should have just bought an oriental carpet!

THE PAINTING

OK, this was/ is a prop for In the Next Room (the vibrator play), now at the Lyceum. Essentially, one of the characters is painting a portrait of another character posing as the virgin mary with a baby. I was asked to make an unfinished painting of the scene. Of course, I had only photos of the actress in the pose and costume renderings. It was supposed to be an oil painting, so I did an underpainting, and then added detail in color. All using acrylic paint instead. In the script he mentions how important her hands are, so they are the most finished parts of the painting.

Heres a link to the flickr set for the painting… I got a lot of notes on it. The first image is actually the final product.

Long story short, I go to the invited dress of this play, only to discover that the painting is covered by a towel for the entirety of the time it spends facing downstage!!! BURN!

I could go on and on about these props. Do you remember the bondage gear for The Bacchae at Shakespeare in the Park. No? Well, thats because you never saw it. No one did. But I spent a week making it.

But the truth about most of these items is that they’re the kind of props that are too illustrative. Its more interesting to imagine what kind of painter the artist is in In the Next Room. You don’t need to drive your point home with 100 dresses. 1 will suffice.

This is one of the disadvantages to the props master being technically not on the design team. We are expected to make things even when we know they’re going to get cut, as opposed to asked our opinions which are often: this is never going to be as powerful as the imagined thing. It will get cut.

Sigh. I have to say, though, the crazy stuff, the stuff that gets cut, is often the most entertaining to work on. So, RIP Lost Props. I’m glad you have been in my life.

 

” don’t shop for a living. I WORK” volume 2.

FABULOUS FANNY

As a props master, eyewear generally doesn’t fall into our purview. Usually its costumes/warddrobe’s problem. Unless, of course, the play is set at an opticians, or there are eyeglasses that are worn and taken off… then they become props. Kind of.

Anyways, I ended up at fab fannys when I was doing wardrobe for a movie and we needed vintage 80s eyeglasses. The place is like a treasure trove. You know every cute girl you see on the street in Brooklyn with awesome kind of dorky vintage eyeglasses? Odds are she didn’t find them in her grandmothers closet or at a random thrift store in Oregon. She bought them here.

Organized like a regular opticians (with the drawers full of frames), this tiny store has an incredible selection. More importantly, much like the Main Squeeze, they are run by people who are passionate about what they do, and have a sense of humor about it. Also, they are super performance-friendly. If you are working on theater or a film, you can take up to 10 pairs on fittings. They also do rentals for photo shoots.

And its not just hip 80s eyewear. Check out these 1880s goggles!

I’ll be getting my steampunk frames here.

Oh Baby, part 2

So, a while back I wrote a post about finding a stage baby for In the Next Room (the vibrator play).

At the time, I was looking into having a re-born doll made. Think: ladies that craft hyper-realistic baby dolls and then treat them like real children. Its some kind of cross between the sculptor Ron Mueck (see below) and a quilting bee.

 

Anyways, after some discussion, turns out it take about as long to make one of these dolls as it does to make a real baby. So, not really within the “we need it yesterday” time frame for theatrical productions.

We basically needed many different baby options that we could cannibalize to make the ideal baby. I found a website that manufactures the re-born style dolls, and another that sells parts and paint kits for making them yourself. The final baby did not end up being ready made, but the manufactured one came in some of the most amazing packaging i’ve ever seen. Behold:

The whole thing made me think of the theory of the Uncanny Valley — a technical theory which posits that as human like robots, characters, dolls etc get closer and closer to looking like actual humans, theres a moment of revulsion (ie. a valley), which comes in somewhere around a corpse. Think: talking dogs and the characters in “Up” are cute, a hyper-realistic baby strapped to the inside of a cardboard box is not. It is, in fact, uncanny. On that note, the same company also makes miniature versions of these dolls. Check it out:

 

… Yep. So, the final result on Baby was a hodge-podge of several different dolls, with custom paint work on the face. This meant that my boss spent several days in her apartment surrounded by baby parts, and eventually had to BAKE the head (its a heat-set paint). Talk about a bun in the oven! Heres the one we ended up using. Enjoy!

“I don’t shop for a living. I WORK” — Part 1. THE MAIN SQUEEZE

When I was in high school I worked retail. One day I got into a fight with a woman that I’ve never forgotten: She was trying to return an item she had purchased 4 months earlier, and when I said we couldn’t accept it, she said angrily, “i havent had time to return it because I dont shop for a living, I work“. Which, of course, implied that I, the 17-year-old salesgirl, was shopping all day, not working. Because thats what working retail is. Apparently.

Of course I said something sassy along the lines of “really? Because its 2pm on a Tuesday and I’m at work and you’ve been shopping for the last 45 minutes”.

Anyways, I’ve never forgotten it, especially now that I shop for a living.

So, in honor of that complete bitch and her bad attitude, I present: “I dont shop for a living, I WORK” a series on my favorite stores in NYC… or maybe the world. Who knows.

OK. Part 1: THE MAIN SQUEEZE

The Main Squeeze is, honestly, one of the reasons I started writing this blog. Its an incredibly cool place that you would only enounter in New York, but I would never have had to go there if I wasn’t a prop master.

The Main Squeeze is, you guessed it, an accordion store. Apparently kind of the only one in New York. It is the kind of business that makes professional shoppers like myself really happy. Its a tiny storefront on the LES run by a lovely man named Walter. Sometimes you have to knock really loud because he is giving an accordion lesson in the back, but Walter is very passionate about his job and his business.

He knows every accordion player in the city. When I went there for supplies for Paradise Park (Charles Mee, the Signature Theater 2008), he knew our accordion player intimately. The last time I was there, he gave me a history of the accordion which culminated in a discussion about how the accordion became so important in Mexican folk music. Apparently, the Emperor Maximilian (famous Manet portrait of his execution below), was really into “new technology” and imported the accordion to Mexico in the late 19th century.

Yeah. I totally love stuff like that.

Ok, theres another kicker. Walter/ The Main Squeeze also has a band. The Main Squeeze Orchestra. Its FORTY ACCORDION-PLAYING WOMEN. Their rendition of “Love Will Tear us Apart”, perhaps?

a quick amendment: walters description of how he started the band: http://www.mainsqueezeorchestra.com/bandleader.html

Old Bag

Dear Old Bag,

Its not you, its me. This is not a desertion, its not that I don’t love you anymore. Please don’t be offended.

My life has changed, thats all. Instead of needing to carry around books and supplies and the occasional bottle of wine, I need to carry tools, and paint, and props. So many props.

Do not be hurt, Old Bag. I have not replaced you. New Bag is for a different purpose. Thats all.

Remember the good times, and know that you are passing into a new, calmer phase of your existence.

Remember when I bought you at a bike store in Georgetown because I had decided that bike messengers were cool.

Remember me sticking dozens of pins and buttons in you in high school, and then sheepishly taking them all out again in college.

Remember carrying books and exams, and finally my thesi,s through freezing winters in Chicago. Remember the slush that got kicked up from the back tire of my bike, turning your underside black.

Remember being filled with clothing on innumerable trips, and remember being used as a pillow when I was camping. Remember the floors of countless subway cars, scene shops, theaters and dive bars in New York. Remember that time I had to bring you with me when I went to the Met and I checked you because It was a black tie event.

We have travelled together to Europe and the Middle East, across the country many times.

You’re still strong, Old Bag. You’re still useful. You will be my paint kit and my tool kit. This is a promotion, really, to a Specialized Role.

I will always love you, Old Bag. Don’t worry about that.

Love,

Meredith

propping the hood

Recently, I have been working on a project called “broke-ology”, for Lincoln Center Theater.

The play is set in the house of a black family in a run down neighborhood in Kansas City, Kansas. The parents expected early on to be able to eventually move out of the neighborhood, on to bigger and better things, but got kind of stuck there by circumstances. Anyways, its a lovely script, and you should see it if you get a chance, but we’re here to talk about the props.

The set is the interior of the house this family has been living in for 20-odd years. It is run-down, but not so much from neglect as from use. Prop-wise this meant lots and lots and LOTS of stuff. Collected knick knacks and board games and so on, of course, but also accumulated junk mail, things on the fridge (and in it), strange combinations of dishes. We paid a lot of attention to the way random things gather in houses.

Hilariously, my house was an ideal place to research this project. I sublet in a large 4-bedroom apartment in Bed-Stuy (which is certainly a run down neighborhood). The apartment has been lived in by the same people for a fairly long period of time, and its large enough for stuff to have really accumulated. I realized in the course of this project, that that is actually pretty unusual amongst people I know — most people don’t have enough space and aren’t settled enough for the objects in their homes to, well, settle. Or, they’re just neater.

One of the things that came up a lot on Broke-Ology, was the little details, like, phone cords stuck in random corners, or dead batteries, or whatever. My own home provided ample inspiration for this:

notice: half-empty tupperware, old packaging, a mixture of things thats basically pretty random.

this was pretty useful, because we also had a kitchen hutch in the show. Notice, spice containers, cups,mystery bottles of things etc.

This one is also great. The cord coming down. The pile of junk mail. The cups of pens. All of these are also on the Broke-Ology set… and the coup de grace:

There wasn’t a cat in the house in the show, but this nook of my apartment sort of perfectly captures the sense of precarious, yet settled: things that have been balanced on each other for so long that now they are totally secure.

So, does art imitate life? Who knows. All I know is that propping this show was all about scrutinizing my environment more carefully — seeing detail. More than most projects I’ve worked on this one asked that kind of observation of me. I think any realistic interior will demand that of a Props Master: set dressing is all about thinking about pathways through a space. But this was in MY space, even though the setting and the characters had very little to do with me.

Not only did I see pieces of the set in my own home, but I also did most of the shopping for the show in Bed-Stuy. Thrift stores, 99cent stores, stop sales, picking things off the street, Bed-Stuy was the place that other people would have had to travel to to shop the show, whereas I simply picked things up on my way to work.

At any rate, it was certainly a pretty incredible process. You can check out some of the photos here, and if you get a chance, you should check it out. Its in previews now, and opens October 5.