Treasure Chair

From Mollie, Props Intern

This week marked the end of working on The Road to Mecca. With the show opening in just a few days most of the prop notes were finally finished and it was time to move onto the next show. Since we are doing back to back load-ins we are currently working on both Betrayal and Seafarer. Betrayal is a lot of pulling props that we already have in stock so I started working on Seafarer. Two armchairs were found at the local Goodwill for use in the show but the chairs needed to be made for use on the stage. I had to completely take the upholstery off the chair so that we could adapt it for the show. The chairs were these awesome green vinyl. I am pretty sure they were from the 1970's and therefore the vinyl was a little dirty to say the least.

I started from the bottom and worked my way up, taking each tack out to reveal some pretty nasty padding underneath. One of the best parts of taking apart the chair was all of the treasures that I found inside. Here is the list of items: denture cleanser wrapper, 100's of bobbypins, 26 cents, a set of house keys, an alien head guitar pick, a Valentine's Day note from Laura to Josh, lots of dirt, and a school photograph of a girl from the 1950's. It was pretty crazy. I was hoping to find the insides of the chair lined with hundred dollar bills but I guess I couldn't be that lucky. After I completely stripped the chair. I made a plywood base to replace the springs that were once the seat. By gutting and replacing the springs with plywood I took off about 20 pounds from the chair.

Now the process of repadding out the chair has begun. My first step was to cover the areas in thick foam, then padding over that, and finally cotton cloth to keep it all in. Once the final fabric is chosen for the chair I will be able to go back and put the last layer on. I am currently working on making a cover for the seat cushion but that shouldn't take me too long. I am hoping to have the chair ready for rehearsal by the end of friday, but we will see what happens.

Well that is all. Quite an eventful week.