I’ve mentioned that I volunteer as a theatre stage technician, which means I wear black shoes and clothes and move set pieces on and off the stage with other techies for local productions.
Right now I’m crewing My Fair Lady, and I’m also in charge of props. That’s all of the stuff that’s handled on stage, all of the envelopes and baskets of flowers and lace fans and five-pound notes that the actors use. I collect it, organize it, work with actors on how to use it, make repairs to it, and return all of the stuff to its original position on and under two long tables at the end of each performance.
On to fake food, which matters just as much to me.
Lots of actors play vendors and sell goods onstage during the opening scene, and so I asked the director at what time of year the start of the show takes place. I learned it’s in early spring. Thanks to supermarkets, which offer every kind of produce on earth every day of the year, I know most people can no longer tell when a particular food is in season, when it is actually growing in our own regions, but I can. And in Edwardian London in early spring, poor produce sellers would only have access to what they had stored last fall. That meant I couldn’t use the fake summer peppers and zucchini I found in the prop room. Call me crazy to care (and you likely will), but to me it would look ludicrous. I did find lots of fake apples, pears, garlic, onions, cabbage and potatoes**, which were perfect. Then I went to Silverton Farms, bought old bushel baskets for a buck apiece, and loaded them up with the ‘produce’ (above).
The director wanted the kid who handles the garlic and onion basket to do something with them while he was onstage, to look busy with them. So I cut lengths of twine and showed him how to make garlands, explaining that that was what people used to do, and some still do, with alliums. He didn’t have great success making garlands and the director told him to ad lib something else.
So he did. Last night I watched him from the wings, rubbing onions on the front of his shirt the way you would apples, 100% poker faced. Just about killed me. After he crossed offstage, I walked up to him.
‘Saw you buffing the onions.’
‘Uh, yeah.’
‘Do you know what would happen if you buffed actual onions on your shirt?’
‘Uh, no.’
‘The skins would peel off all over the place.’
Silence.
‘Then I guess it’s a good thing they were fake, huh?’
This I was happy to let go, because I figure if it broke the spell for the audience, at least they’d enjoy it as much as I did.
*Why didn’t I fill the sugar bowl or creamer? Because the audience will never see inside them. If we were selling the balcony, I would have filled them.
**Some potatoes are made of painted Styro and some are Poly-fil stuffed in pantyhose. Now you know how to make fake potatoes. I know you’ll sleep easier.