Tag Archives: actor love

Props!

 

My next play will have no props! No props except for a few cans of beer!

I resolved internally at some point between making a typewriter out of a priority mail box and drinking some really cheap German sparkling wine so we could use the bottles.

This was all for a recent staged reading of my play, Let’s Go, at the Blank, and I was working with actors who were so good that I wanted to give them everything they needed. They were so good that they made me look good. They were so good that they should all be rich and famous

The play itself had a lot of props. There were cups of tea, bottles of booze, papers, cigarettes, and general clutter. Sure it could all have been mimed, but once you bring in one thing, you suddenly want another thing and another thing. Before you know it, you’re making a phonograph out of a cardboard box.

Now that I’ve gone to one Prop extreme, I think it’s time to go to the other. Cans of beer. Yes, that will work. I won’t even have to empty them. The script specifically states that they get cracked onstage.  

And who are these actors who should be rich and famous because they are so good? They are: Alena Von Stroheim, Joanna Kelly, Matt Crabtree, Tad Shafer, Karen Jean Olds, and Emilia Vitti.

I give them all props in all definitions of the word.