Pop go the props if the actors don't stop

For my story this week about TheatreWorks' play "Opus," about life in a string quartet, I chatted with writer Michael Hollinger and cellist/advisor Kris Yenney. It's illuminating to hear about a script forming, especially when the writer is a violist working dissonance and other musical concepts into the language.

Then Kris talked about her art: She coaches actors on how to move with their instruments and mime playing, so they look like real classical musicians.

Kris cracked me up when she said the script was very passionate -- which meant she had to remind the actors that never, even in the heights of anger, would a real musician actually slam his violin down.

Fortunately for the props department, the actors aren't playing heirlooms. A TheatreWorks newsletter has a cool interview with prop master Sarah Lowe. I'm definitely going to have to interview a prop master one of these days. Apparently Sarah worked with a guy who supplies less pricey instruments to elementary-school music classes (Tommy, stop hitting your sister with that lute).

Then, she said, scenic artist Tom Langguth needed to tweak the cheap-o instruments a little:

"They are very glossy and kind of cheap-looking and they're very new-looking, and of course they want to look like old wood that's been painted and touched up a lot. Also we just want to bring down the gloss in general because stage light is so bright. ... Tom Langguth ... is going to be painting all of them and toning them down, making them a richer color and probably working in some special wood-grain technique that will make them look like a really old special violin."

Sarah added: "As a props person, I tend to want things to be very rugged, because actors are not focused on taking care of props -- that's not really their job."

Pictured: Mark Anderson Phillips in TheatreWorks' "Opus." Photo by Mark Kitaoka.