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.
YAY! I told myself once that I was going to write a three person play with one set and that it was going to be absolutely the most inexpensive show I’d written to date: I got the exact opposite (but I did keep it to four characters and one puppet) Love to see what comes of the beers 🙂
I once made a TV set out of a cardboard box & wore it for Halloween (w/ antenna on my head and a TV guide + peanuts in a dish glued onto the top of the “console”)! Were your actors FROM the Blank? I’ve submitted a play to be read in their Living Room series and I’m wondering if casting is done w/ their team or you bring in your own…