AUDREY MAUE
PROPS MANAGER & ARTISAN
Plumas Negras
Illinois Theatre
Position Held: Props Manager
Director: Marie Ramirez Downing
Cultural Consultant/Artist in Residence: Sofia Saavedra Barriento
Scenic Designer: Reiko Huffman
Costume Designer: Stephanie Spotts
Lighting Designer: Jasmyn Oliveros
Sound Designer: Daniella Brown
Technical Director: Bobby Reynolds
Scenic Charge Artist: Jordan Couper
Production Photos: Darrell Hoemann
Lettuce Fabrication
The story of Plumas Negras is largely set on a lettuce field in East Salinas, CA. As a props department, we needed to find a way of creating 24 artificial lettuce heads for the field that not only looked realistic, but also allowed them to be picked from the ground and peeled. At the beginning of the process, we tested numerous materials to determine which would look the most natural. Fabric and coffee filters coated in a water/glue mixture gave promising results, but we ultimately decided to use heat-shrunken plastic paint tarp, painted with different shades of green spray paint and hot glued around a foam ball base. For the pieces of lettuce that were peeled off of the lettuce heads each performance, we embedded a washer in the plastic when shrinking it. Five of the lettuce leaves were attached to each head by magnets.
Early fake lettuce testing.
Lettuce leaf with embedded washer before painting.
Finished lettuce head with peel-able leaves placed.
In addition to the 24 peel-able heads of lettuce, 6 heads that remained in the ground needed to glow. In collaboration with Eben Alguire and the lighting designer, Jasmyn Oliveros, we figured out a way to illuminate them in different colors using fiber optics. Eben designed the electronic system and discovered that optical fibers allowed us to easily spread light from the core to the lettuce leaves. As the props manager, I determined how to make the light from the fibers visible through the paint, while still making them identical in appearance to the peel-able heads. This required sanding the paint, adding extra layers of leaves, and placing the optical fibers very carefully so they were hidden from the audience.
In-progress lettuce head with optical fibers.
Glowing lettuce head.
Other Notable Props
Crates
Plumas Negras needed 20 crates that acted as lettuce crates as well as other furniture in the show. For example, the crates were also used as chairs, a grocery counter, and desks. We purchased 10 of the crates, but the other 10 were custom built to support weight so they could be stood and sat on. All the crates were painted to look identical.
Skeleton Car Sculptures
In one scene of Plumas Negras, one of the characters is working on sculptures of skeletons driving low-rider cars. The sculptures were created using paper mache covered plastic skeletons and cardboard.
Paperwork Samples
Below are the first pages of my props list and budget for Plumas Negras.
Props List
Props Budget