Experience: Assistant Properties Master at the Texas Shakespeare Festival

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After finishing my sophomore year at CCM, I spent May through July 2016  in a small town east of Dallas, Texas working in a properties shop at the Texas Shakespeare Festval. I worked on 4 mainstage productions, assisting the prop master in managerial duties and supervising 3 interns while building custom props for the 4 shows. I also had the opportunity to serve as the properties designer for 3 smaller productions: a studio production of a classic play, a world premiere of a children's show on the Main Stage, and a new work written by a group of visiting artists from Chongqing, China. This position allowed me to practice the craftsmanship I learned at CCM while making props, and use the leadership skills I learned while supervising others in CCM’s prop shop. Once the four main shows opened, the prop master left and I was in charge of all repairs for the run of the shows as well as managing the shop while the props for my 3 smaller shows were being built. The four main shows and the children's show played in rotating repertory style, which means that a show will play at 2:00 PM on a given day and a different show will play at 7:30 the same day. A crew of 26 people changed out the set, props, and lights between the shows in 2 hours or less for the month that the shows were running, and I was in charge of coordinating all the prop changeovers. 

 

It was a new experience for me to be a big fish in a smaller pond for the first time, and assuming a small leadership role helped me grow as a properties manager and artisan. I made many, many, props over the course of the summer, including 2 different horses and a lot of tables. My artifact from the summer is a collection of photographs documenting my work from a summer of building, painting, sewing, and crafting thing that aren't sold in stores or that serve an unusual purpose.

 

 

This experience has already helped me in my professional career. As with any theatre company, the connections I made at this job have opened up a lot of new and interesting pathways in the design world as well as others, and I actually got the connection for my next internship from the scenic designer of the Festival. The projects I worked on are great material for a portfolio, and this chance to demonstrate skills easily applicable to any shop in the country isn’t easy to come by. Working at the Texas Shakespeare Festival was a great use of my summer, and I wouldn’t change a thing about the experience.