Monday, August 29, 2011

RENT is due…

by Joe Stallone, Properties Designer

…due to open at New Rep on September 6th! I’m the Props Designer, or as the position was known back in the day, th
e Properties Master.  (Consider the irony; my professional day job could have the same title: I have a real estate brokerage.  Theatre imitating life?)

I have been living inside this piece of theatre for the past few weeks and have a unique and interesting perspective of both the production and the play as well as some unique and interesting tasks and design challenges.  I love doing props because I not only get to see and hear this play, but I get to touch it and feel it and engage with it through the things that help create the look and feel of the atmosphere in which it takes place, and also through the variety of items used by the characters.  So I get to experience this play internally as well as externally through the hands and fingers and bodies and eyes of each character as well as from a position of overview.  I get to live in the play and in each character for bits of time with each prop or set piece that I make or find or choose.  And each time it brings me deeper inside myself.  It’s a mind-blower.

During RENT rehearsals, I laugh, I cry, I sigh and I dream.  But most of all, I remember.  I remember my friends, lovers, and family that are gone.  I remember the skin-tightening stress of wondering if I had “it” or if he or she had “it” or who would be next.  I remember that this epidemic is not over.  I remember that it claims lives every day.  We must all remember.

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