It's you or the chair! Hunting for props.

I have been out with Jamie, our company stage manager and Chris, the assistant stage manager, to start the task of furnishing the office for Glengarry in authentic 1980’s American style, on a limited budget of course.I hadn’t thought it would be particularly easy, but now I’m starting to think it is actually going to be quite difficult! The trouble is, the office furniture that we want was thrown out about 10 years ago and is now slowly rotting away in some land-fill site, beyond the reach of the even the keenest of stage managers! Newish desks have no sides and extra little cabinets which sit underneath instead of proper drawers. They might have built in shelves to put your computer monitor on. But the desks I am looking for are more traditional, maybe made of grey laminate or perhaps metal. The salesmen would not have had their own computers so the tops need to be flat and the drawers should be part of the structure. We also need filing cabinets, shelves, desk chairs and notice boards all from the same era; after our first day out hunting, it’s starting to feel a bit daunting!

We have been out to the props store of a friendly theatre in Lancaster where we hit lucky with a filing cabinet, but no desks. I was tempted by the crocodile you can see in this photo. I could imagine it sitting, looking dangerous, on top of a bookcase – could it be a symbol of the sharp practises, tenacity and ferocity of the salesmen in our play? Or would it look like the designer had totally lost it? Come and see the show if you really want to know!

We went on to a huge second-hand furniture centre which had nothing suitable except, yes, a filing cabinet. Our final stop was at a charity furniture place which was stacked out with old office furniture – but the wrong old office furniture. This was light oak laminate and quite definitely from the 90’s and not American by any stretch of the imagination. I did try to stretch my imagination, but it was no good. Next door is a shop which specializes in office furniture, both new and second-hand, and guess what, they had plenty of filing cabinets! But no suitable desks. I found two office chairs which I liked; I’m sitting in one in the photo. Jamie vetoed the other as too expensive. So, a day’s work, a 100 or so miles and our office is not a great deal better off than when we started.

I’ve since been snooping around the offices at work to see if anyone is hiding the perfect desk under a mound of papers, but so far no luck. I have found a couple of possible office chairs, however. Let’s hope their owners can be persuaded to hand them over or they may have to mysteriously disappear. The chairs, that is, not the owners; but then again, designers are notoriously single-minded and it is not good to stand between them and a prop they really, really want!