There is a lot more to propping a show than many theatre people realize. Veteran prop master Amy Mussman's boook, aptly titled The Prop Master, is here to escort readers through the steps needed to be a top-notch properties master in any level of theatre.

Filled with wonderful illustrations by Amy's talented brother, James, The Prop Master is a must-buy for anyone taking on the daunting task of propping a stage production. The text leads the prop master from planning to production, including preliminary paperwork and research procedures; budget management; techniques for procuring props; ways to operate within rehearsal, technical, and performance processes; and obligations to other production departments along the way. Features such as a "Tips and Techniques" section devoted to creating common props, an in-depth job description, and detailed definitions of various props make this an invaluable resource for both the novice and experienced prop master.

A Wickersham Brother

The Wickersham brothers torment Horton. In our community theatre production they were not the traditional dark brown/black we associate with monkeys but rather yellow and purple. As the designer wanted the actors to move easily—they had to swing on rings dropped from the ceiling and do other climbing activities—she created this costume.   She started with a yellow turtleneck and yellow tights. Then made the crop top and bloomers out of purple fur. You also could use sweats as I mention in The Drama Teacher's Survival Guide. However, I don’t think they would be as effective as the fake fur.  The head would be the hardest item to sew.

I loved the idea of the wrist and foot bands and the very simple makeup—just clown white around the mouth. The rest had to be created by the actor with movement and voice.

The simplicity of this costume would work well for any animal you need to dress.  It lets the actor come up with a great variety of movement and allows for super creativity.

Always something fresh and new at Contemporary Drama Service -- true to our name! For over 35 years we've been publishing new and different plays. Our musicals, plays and monologue collections are especially designed for schools, churches and community theatre. They can be used in the classroom, on-stage, or for school radio and TV.

One-Act Plays, Full-Length Plays and Middle School Comedy Plays

Contemporary Drama Service offers comedy scripts for large casts and small -- full-length plays and one-act plays. Just off the press is a play collection book titled Thirty Short Comedy Plays for Teens by Laurie Allen that will keep your teens laughing on-stage and off. The dialogue in these plays features uninhibited and uniqe characters that challenge young actors to take chances and explore opportunities. Some of the play titles include "Class Clown," "The Kissing Booth" and "Just Act Natural." Laurie Allen's plays have been performed at national speech and forensic contests with great success.

Monologue Books and Monologue Collections

Award-winning playwright Peg Kehret has another new book of thought-provoking monologues for teens, Tell It Like It Is. These monologues are both comedic and serious to help provide insights for the performers and audience to learn who they are and why. They give the actors the opportunity to recount a memorable event that opened the way to their maturity. Sample titles include "The Tooth Fairy Forgot," "Goodbye Old Jeans" and "Why It Took Me Four Hours to Make My Bed."

Church Plays

See our website for a complete listing of plays for churches, church drams and drama ministry plays for adults and children year-round. Our specialty is plays and musicals for Easter and Christmas. Many mainline churches have considered our plays the best available anywhere for over 35 years. Currently in great demand are our fund-raising mystery dinner theatres.

Theatre Texts and Drama Books

Our parent company Meriwether Publishing Ltd. continues to release the best in new theatre art books and theatre textbooks. New theate books include: Acting Games for Individual Performers by Gavin Levy, Drama Games and Improvs by Justine Jones and Mary Ann Kelley, and The Drama Teacher's Survival Guide by Margaret F. Johnson.

Visit our websites and find everything you need in drama resources for schools and churches.

Yertle the Turtle

One of the joys of retirement is being involved with our local community theatre and being cast in various musicals. I am still re-cooping from Seussical where I was Yertle the Turtle, the judge at the end of the show when Horton is put in trial for talking to a speck, loitering and sitting on an egg.  The director also decided that the turtle be included in other scenes—“McElligot’s Pool,” “Chasing the Whos,” “Circus McGurkus,” and “Solla Solew.”  I was very happy to be in just one scene, but we do what the director wants, right?

As I was a member of the chorus the makeup was very simple—cheekbones, nasal labial, eyebrows and eyes—making everyone somewhat alike. The costumes were simple as well, jumpsuits with added headgear—fish, hands, etc. Even though I was in the chorus, I wasn’t costumed like them but rather as a turtle, so I decided at the last minute that the one thing that made a turtle unique was his mouth.

I used an eyebrow pencil to make the lines around the mouth and tried to use a brush and clown white to do the highlight, but it was difficult and smeared. After two evenings of muddy lips I then came up with a brilliant idea—why not use the lightest under-eye concealer  (CG Invisible)? And VIOLA—success! It didn’t smear and stayed on throughout the run of the show, even after drinking water. This should work well for any of your students who have trouble with age makeup, if aging is absolutely necessary. (See Chapter 18 on hair and makeup in The Drama Teacher's Survival Guide) It might be more expensive than clown white, but the results will be well worth it. As I am an "older" individual, I didn’t need to do much with the nasal labial—no highlight required. Several days later I added the brown lips using the eyebrow pencil as a lip liner. (Lovely wig, isn’t it?)

Next time, we will talk about a great animal costume.

With the warm, lazy days of vacations and lighter schedules virtually here, it’s easy to dismiss thoughts of Christmas as being waaaay out there in the future. The reality for those of us who have directed Christmas plays, however, is that summer is precisely the time when we need to formulate our game plan for the Advent and Christmas seasons. Sketches for the Advent wreath? Check. Pageant for the children’s Sunday school department? Check. Christmas Eve carols and candlelight service? Check.

We offer such a diverse array of scripts that I’m confident you’ll find the script that is just right for your congregation and situation, whether it’s humor you’re looking for (A Cricket County Christmas), or something for the youth group (Operation Christ Child), or an easy-does-it program for the kids (An American Christmas), or a performance to address that pre-Christmas stress we all feel (A Simply Abundant Christmas).

To aid you in your decision-making, christianplaysandmusicals.com categorizes all our plays by type. From there, you may read individual play descriptions. Accessing a play’s production notes and cast list is just a click away. If you need further information to help you decide, you may purchase preview copies for $2.95 each. Have a wonderful summer, and don’t forget to choose your Christmas plays or programs early so you’ll have sufficient rehearsal time this fall!

Drama Games and Improvs

Many drama teachers told us that they didn't have the time to organize a semester-long curriculum from our several books of improvisation. Could we publish a book clearly focused on improv and drama games? Of course we could! We talked with our authors Justine Jones and Mary Ann Kelley, who wrote Improv Ideas, and they went to work on a second book, Drama Games and Improvs, that can be used in the classroom and beyond. It has enough games and ideas to provide for more than a year of classroom activities.

The book is divided into 30 units with 74 lessons and 134 games. The activities emphasize group building, characterization, plot structure, ensemble acting, creativity, the art of listening and silence, and following directions. Four integrative projects allow students to apply everything they've learned at the end of the semester.

Equally useful for drama teachers and workshop directors, this book guarantees that drama students of all ages and skill levels will have fun while learning acting essentials. Simultaneously disciplined and flexible, the activities in this book are designed to build on those preceding them. The game-intense structure and flexibility of the semester gives the entire class a feeling of spontaneity and venturesome exploration that most students find hard to resist.

Justine Jones has taught improvisation drama for over thirty years in secondary schools. She has studied drama in the US, UK and Canada.

Mary Ann Kelley has taught drama for thirty years with the central focus of developing plays through improvisation.

Books on theatre games and improvisation have grown in popularity over the years. We at Meriwether Publishing have worked with our authors to develop many new books on improv, theatre games and acting games.

While we all enjoy the splendor that is Hollywood, extravagant costumes are not something most community theaters or elementary schools can afford. In fact, many mothers have stretched their imaginations to new limits making goats and shepherds out of third graders!

When I first began making costumes, I bought the material and made each one from scratch, not realizing there were fortunes in time, effort, and money to be saved with just a little ingenuity. The experienced eye looks at a black princess-style coat and sees it trimmed to reflect a style popular in the early 1800s. Children's costumes need not be constructed from collar to hem when an old dress could be transformed with only a primitive bit of sewing, or a lady's blouse might very nicely antique a young boy. Even those who sew constantly don't naturally think in these metaphoric terms, because it isn't relevant to everyday sewing. Knowing how to sew gives you an advantage, but you don't have to be an expert to assemble a costume that begins with a fitted bodice from a discarded dress or that is built on an old coat.

When a tree must walk across a stage, it must have someone inside or behind it. If your task is to create a moveable, wearable tree or some other large costume to represent an inanimate object, you must learn about wire construction. Stage supply stores sell wire designed for this purpose, but at a cost that may be out of reach for your limited budget. Don't despair! Coat hangers abound in most everyone's closets, and they're malleable yet sturdy. Baling wire or fence wire is also fairly inexpensive. With a pair of pliers, you can make a frame out of coat hangers. Stabilize it by sewing fabric over it. Don't worry about what color of pattern your fabric is, since the only way to produce those final realistic touches is by painting the fabric anyway. Wire construction requires some real planning and a lot of trial and error. It isn't my favorite task as a costumer, and after agonizing over a clock and a tree for a couple of Ravel operas, I thought I'd get to deposit the experience deep in my memory bank and move on. Not long afterwards, I was asked to make a tooth big enough to wear! A costumer's life is one of constant challenge, but then that's the joy of it.

From Elegantly Frugal Costumes by Shirley Dearing

I have been flying high ever since Meriwether chose to publish my book, The Drama Teacher's Survival Guide. The book took me about twenty-five years from start to finish. I started working on the manuscript during a 100-day teacher’s strike in 1981.  I desperately needed to keep my mind off the anguish and trauma of the strike so I decided to go back to my thesis, pull out everything they had rejected and formulate what I really cared about. You know colleges have strict rules on how and what is put in the thesis.  I wanted to have a hands-on approach to directing high school theatre, not some cold, academic tome. 

I kept plugging away on it and then I discovered the computer.  I went wild!  Spent all summer with an Apple IIE, borrowed from school, with my department chairman as instructor and computer guru.  That fall the drama department bought their first Apple (Mac Plus, better known as The Mighty Mac) with a 20 meg. hard drive: “The largest hard drive I would ever need!"

For the next 11 years I spent my summers—when not doing summer theatre—working and revising. Along the way I had many wonderful readers who gave wonderful feedback.  After retirement I worked in earnest and by 2002 it was mostly complete.  I found an editor who kept it for four years when they decided that the company couldn’t publish it!

Then I started sending out letters. Meriwether liked it and the rest is history.  Now I am adding a blog to make my book complete.  This is a new adventure for me and I am excited to get started. I’d love to hear from any of you out there about theatre or any questions you have about your programs. Will have more coming soon. 

There’s something irresistible about the combination of drama and dining. My church joins an Africa-American congregation for a picnic in the park each July. We all look forward to their soulful choir numbers, revisiting old relationships or forging new ones, and tables filled with potluck-style dishes. Why not introduce a drama at your next church picnic? Choose carefully, though – you won’t want too many set requirements beyond maybe a lawn chair or two. The Balloon Party is one example. It’s on spiritual gifts, and balloons are the only prop you need! The Sound of Freedom is appropriate for a patriotic theme close to the Fourth of July. For a Mother’s or Father’s Day theme, Mom and Dad, It’s Your Day is a breeze to perform at a picnic (pun intended). Keep it simple and enjoy the camaraderie and creativity in the great outdoors, and may the weather cooperate with you!

You can always take it indoors and perform a dinner theatre. This is an excellent way for youth groups to raise funds for conventions, mission trips, and other expenses. Everyone looks forward to special evenings like these, where they are treated to great food and entertained at the same time! Our latest dinner theatre offering is Who Dun Stole the Bride? This is a funny one – guaranteed laughs while the hokiest cast of hillbillies you’ve ever seen – yep, they give The Beverly Hillbillies a run for the money – tries to solve the mystery of the missing bride. When the audience jumps in, the interactions are spontaneous and lively. It’s fun for all ages!

I hope I’ve whetted your appetite for your own special event this summer. Church picnics and dinner theatre are a delicious way to do drama!