THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, March 31, 1996 TAG: 9603280041
SECTION: REAL LIFE PAGE: K3 EDITION: FINAL
COLUMN: MY JOB
SOURCE: BY CHARLISE LYLES, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Medium: 91 lines
FIRST YOU NOTICE the huge Mason jar of brownish liquid. ``Jack Daniel's,'' Kathy Martin explains. As she closes the door, you notice the 16-gauge, double-barrel shotgun propped in the corner. She smiles apologetically.
Then there is the suit of armor and the colorful Indian shadow puppets that seem to watch over the room.
But none of it distracts Martin - they're all things from plays past.
She's got new things to find. Flea markets to scrounge. Swords to fetch. HQs to visit. The scavenger hunt that she loves so well is about to begin.
As Virginia Stage Company properties manager, Martin gathers the odds and ends - from dishes to telephones to books - that bring a play to life: Hamlet's goblet, Blanche Dubois' cigarette, George and Martha's liquor glasses.
``It's got to be real,'' says Martin, a tall, shy woman. ``Carpet, paintings, sheets, ashtrays, food, trees - yes, trees are props. All of these little things make the experience of theater real for the audience. It's my job, to make it real.''
By trade, Martin is a theater artisan. Like sound and light technicians, set-builders and costumers, she labors behind the scenes to create the magic of theater. She's a general handywoman whose skills include upholstering, graphic design, general craft-making, light carpentry, an acute eye for detail and excellent scrounging-around abilities.
``I can also beg really well,'' says Martin, who has convinced local antique stores to lend her furniture. ``And I never throw anything away.''
First, she studies the script, noting every single possible prop. ``If there's a cigarette, that means there's an ashtray.'' Then she confers with the set designer and director on matters of creative interpretation. ``A sofa may become a loveseat. An electric typewriter may become a computer.''
During rehearsal, she supplies actors with temporary props. ``You don't want them to get used to them, though. They say, `Oh, this sword is too heavy' when they get the real thing.''
Often, the job calls for oddball tasks.
Like the time they needed the shadow puppets for ``A Perfect Ganesh,'' a drama about two women who travel to India seeking solace from breast cancer and the death of a son. The puppets provided a climatic moment of enlightenment. Where would Martin find them?
She hastened to a puppet book, copied designs she found there, and spent four days coloring enlarged versions of the puppets with magic markers.
The production of ``Blithe Spirit'' required a seance table - one that the audience would believe moved by itself. ``We had to build a table with legs that fit into a track cut into a rug,'' explains Martin. ``We had to paint the design in the rug'' to conceal the track.
To give Hamlet's furniture that weathered look, Martin and assistant Chris Spires used a ``burn and brush'' technique. They set fire to the furniture, doused it, brushed and glazed it with polyurethane.
Martin's life wasn't always like this. She was once a law enforcement major at Averett College in Danville. Then she went to the theater one night to help a friend who had box-office duty. The techs were desperate for someone to help paint props.
``After that day, I don't think I ever left the theater,'' she said. ``She's in her sixth season at VSC. The job pays less than $25,000 a year.
For Martin, there is a certain intrigue to making it real. Her worst nightmare is that person in the audience, shifting in a seat, thinking, ``I don't believe they had those back then.''
``Anything less than the authentic item can be a total distraction for the theatergoer,'' says Martin.
So her shelf is stacked with books like ``The What, Where and When of Theater Props'' and other treatises on centuries-old furniture and documents. Martin needs to know things like when plastic was invented or when the pop-up toaster came along. One man's trivia is another man's occupation.
For ``Pump Boys and Dinettes,'' a country musical revue, Martin was hell-bent on fulfilling the director's request for a Sinclair gasoline sign. ``I found it at a big flea market in Hampton,'' says Martin, a finder's twinkle in her eye. ``I just happened to walk by a real one and a replica.''
A phone is a prop. But the phone ring is the sound department. A lamp is a prop. But the light is the electrical department.
In one performance of `Blithe Spirit,' the phone failed to ring to inform a character that his wife had died, a crucial turn in the script, recalls Martin.
``So the actor ran out the door as if someone had called him and he said, ``What? My wife at the bottom of the hill in a car crash!' It was really beautiful.
``That's the joy of live theater.'' ILLUSTRATION: Photo
MOTOYA NAKAMURA/The Virginian-Pilot
Kathy Martin, Virginia Stage Company prop manager, says she can
``beg really well. And I never throw anything away.''
by CNB