🚀 go-pugleaf

> 
> 1.) "You Can't Take it With You" by Kaufman and Hart.  A xylophone, printing
> press, snakes, Meccano set, fireworks, etc.
> 
Not to mention the jar full of flies for the snakes and a jar of pickled
pigs feet.

>
>   Here's a topic for you:  how about a list of the most difficult plays with
>regard to props.  The reason that I bring this up is that we're doing "You
>Can't Take it With You" and I'm trying to get somebody to lend us a xylophone!
>
What about plays with bizarre items of clothing? 

"The Ride Across Lake Constance" features a smoking jacket that a character
takes off & reverses to a magician's tails, complete with hidden pockets
etc.... costumer's nightmare.....

Liz Vaughan

tektronix!tektools!lizv

Yeah--just try to get that tricky knife and that whizzo barber chair he
  
uses. Wigs. Scissors. Shears. An Organ for Mrs. Lovett....



-- 

Bill Houts
(a.k.a. Captain Chaos)
Cosmic Color Control 
tektronix!reed!houts

"You can't holler down my rain barrel,
 You can't climb my apple tree;
 I don't want to play in your yard
 If you can't be good to me."

*** REPLACE THIS LINE WITH YOUR MESSAGE ***

> Yeah--just try to get that tricky knife and that whizzo barber chair he
> uses. Wigs. Scissors. Shears. An Organ for Mrs. Lovett....

A technicality: I think you have to count the barber chair as part of the
set.  That thing is a little too big and functional to be considered
just a prop.  But then again, who reaaly know what's actually part of
the set and what's just a prop?  The distinction is fuzzy.

All of this leads me to a slightly amusing story.  I recently saw an
incredibly good production of "Sweeney" put on by the student theater
group at Snodfart University.  They were using the compressed air that 
is intended to run shop tools for the trap door under the chair and
also for the factory whistle.  When they first tried it, they realized 
that they didn't have it hooked up quite right because they blew the
whistle and one of the actors almost fell through the suddenly open
trap door.

					-- Mark A.
					...{uw-beaver|fluke}!ssc-vax!adolph

	"1 + 1 = 1, for sufficiently small values of 1..."

"Sleuth" has to be near the top.  It needs a sailor mannequin that laughs
(preferably while moving various portions of its anatomy), a grandfather
clock, a piano, etc.  It's only one set, but it is required to be
an extremely cluttered set, and cluttered with exotic items, too.
-- 
        			Peter Reiher
        			reiher@ucla-cs.arpa
        			{...ihnp4,ucbvax,sdcrdcf}!ucla-cs!reiher

Next year Berkeley Rep is doing "The Art of Dining" by Tina Howe, who
wrote the not-very-good "Painting Churches" being done by San Francisco's
ACT this year.  I'm pessimistic about The Art of Dining, but it ought to
qualify as prop-intensive, since a great deal of carefully prepared food
is supposedly consumed on stage.  I have no advance information, but I
predict that Narsai David (who is on Berkeley Rep's board) will get himself
into the act somewhere.
-- 
Richard Mateosian
{allegra,cbosgd,decwrl,hplabs,ihnp4,seismo}!nsc!srm    nsc!srm@decwrl.ARPA

In article <2730@nsc.UUCP> srm@nsc.UUCP (Richard Mateosian) writes:
>Next year Berkeley Rep is doing "The Art of Dining" by Tina Howe, 
>I'm pessimistic about The Art of Dining, but it ought to
>qualify as prop-intensive, since a great deal of carefully prepared food
>is supposedly consumed on stage.  

Your pessimism is fairly well justified.  I saw "The Art of Dining" at the
Kennedy Center in Washington D.C. a couple years ago.  The play is little
more than a curiosity, and I can't see why anyone would bother doing it
again, particularly because it is a very difficult work in terms of set
and props.  Indeed, gourmet food is required, and part of the idea of the
play is that the audience can smell the food itself, adding to the realism
(about the only good idea in the play).  The kitchen is on stage, so there
is only a certain amount of fudging possible.  The actors, then, must be able
to handle a certain amount of the cooking themselves.  In addition, the set
requires several merry-go-round horses in good condition.  A little rewriting
can get around this, I suppose, but rewriting plays to make them easier to
stage never struck me as acceptable, by and large.

Basically, "The Art of Dining" would make Grotowski barf.  It's all production
values and no text or performance substance.
-- 
        			Peter Reiher
        			reiher@ucla-cs.arpa
				soon to be reiher@LOCUS.UCLA.EDA
        			{...ihnp4,ucbvax,sdcrdcf}!ucla-cs!reiher

In article <5601@ucla-cs.ARPA> reiher@ucla-cs.UUCP (Peter Reiher) writes:

>>Next year Berkeley Rep is doing "The Art of Dining" by Tina Howe, 
>>I'm pessimistic.
>
>Your pessimism is fairly well justified. The play is little
>more than a curiosity, and I can't see why anyone would bother doing it
>again.  Indeed, gourmet food is required, and part of the idea of the
>play is that the audience can smell the food itself, adding to the realism
>(about the only good idea in the play).  The kitchen is on stage, so there
>is only a certain amount of fudging possible.

I don't KNOW, of course, but I SUSPECT that the fact that Narsai David
(TV and radio cook and owner of a well known Berkeley restaurant) is on
Berkeley Rep's board of directors has something to do with it.
-- 
Richard Mateosian
{cbosgd,fortune,hplabs,ihnp4,seismo}!nsc!srm    nsc!srm@decwrl.ARPA

> In article <2730@nsc.UUCP> srm@nsc.UUCP (Richard Mateosian) writes:
> >Next year Berkeley Rep is doing "The Art of Dining" by Tina Howe, 
> >I'm pessimistic about The Art of Dining, but it ought to
> >qualify as prop-intensive, since a great deal of carefully prepared food
    > >is supposedly consumed on stage.  
> 
> Your pessimism is fairly well justified.  I saw "The Art of Dining" at the
> Kennedy Center in Washington D.C. a couple years ago.  The play is little
> more than a curiosity, and I can't see why anyone would bother doing it
> again, particularly because it is a very difficult work in terms of set
> and props.  Indeed, gourmet food is required, and part of the idea of the
> play is that the audience can smell the food itself, adding to the realism
> (about the only good idea in the play).  The kitchen is on stage, so there
> is only a certain amount of fudging possible.  The actors, then, must be able
> to handle a certain amount of the cooking themselves.  In addition, the set
> requires several merry-go-round horses in good condition.  A little rewriting
> can get around this, I suppose, but rewriting plays to make them easier to
> stage never struck me as acceptable, by and large.
> 
> Basically, "The Art of Dining" would make Grotowski barf.  It's all production
> values and no text or performance substance.
> -- 
>         			Peter Reiher
>         			reiher@ucla-cs.arpa
> 				soon to be reiher@LOCUS.UCLA.EDA
>         			{...ihnp4,ucbvax,sdcrdcf}!ucla-cs!reiher

*** REPLACE THIS LINE WITH YOUR MESSAGE ***