A Standing Ovation for the Prop Teams

by Chris Peterson, OnStage Blog Founder

Let’s talk about the people who are quietly holding the theatre world together—sometimes literally with hot glue, duct tape, and an unmatched talent for making magic out of chaos. Yes, I’m talking about the prop team. The wizards. The MacGyvers. The ones who hear a director casually say, “Can we get a 1950s toaster that explodes on cue but also has a sentimental backstory?”—and then somehow… make it happen.

Props aren't just “stuff.” They’re characters in their own right. A well-timed letter, a chipped coffee mug, a vintage suitcase—those aren’t just aesthetic choices. They tell us who the people on stage are. Where they've been. What they carry with them, figuratively and literally. The right prop can land a joke, shatter a heart, or ground a moment in something real. And someone backstage made that moment happen with precision, patience, and probably a soldering iron.

The props team is like the theatre’s version of a pit crew—if the pit crew also had to craft a lifelike cake that gets smashed nightly, find a rotary phone in “that weird shade of green,” and teach someone how to believably fold a map. And they do it all with the calm of a surgeon and the creativity of a five-year-old let loose in a craft store.

They are part historian (what kind of purse would a widow carry in 1912?), part engineer (how do we make this chair break every night and reset itself before the next scene?), and part therapist (yes, the actor needs this exact type of pencil to feel emotionally connected to Act 2). And let’s not forget the speed—because every show has that moment when someone yells “WE NEED A STUFFED SQUIRREL AND A FAKE WEDDING CAKE BY TOMORROW!” And somehow, some way, the prop team delivers—usually with a smile and a healthy dose of sarcasm.

They don’t ask for the spotlight. But let’s be clear: the show doesn’t work without them. The magic? The world-building? The audience believing that what’s happening onstage is real? That’s the props team, working behind the curtain, making it all feel effortless.

So the next time you’re watching a play and a character pulls out a diary that looks just old enough, or the dinner table is set so specifically it feels like someone actually lives there—think about the folks who made that happen. Think about the hands that stitched, painted, aged, researched, tested, and probably ran out of time and did it all again anyway.

To every props team out there: you’re artists, you’re engineers, you’re miracle workers. We see you. We’re in awe of you. And frankly, we wouldn’t be able to tell the story without you.