Making the Magic
Step into the workshop with Stephen Elgar, Head of Properties at Vancouver Opera
Vancouver Opera presents The Magic Flute - October 21st to 29th, at the Queen Elizabeth Theatre.
Stephen Elgar, Vancouver Opera’s Head of Properties, opens the workshop to share how he brings magic to the mundane, creating objects fit for the stage. Stephen discusses his career from restoring furniture to preparing “pony-trikes” and a “three-headed dragon” for The Magic Flute.
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Ashley Daniel Foot:
It's Inside Vancouver Opera and today we're leaving the rehearsal room and heading into the shop to chat with Vancouver Opera's Head of Properties, Stephen Elgar. I talked with Stephen about how he got into opera.
Stephen Elgar:
I knew a couple of people in the production department here. They contacted me in last minute wondering if I could help him source some furniture for this production…
Ashley Daniel Foot:
Stephen has a fascinating career by way of furniture restoration and his experience of Vancouver Opera has been varied and unique. And here's our conversation.
Stephen Elgar:
Property is anything that a performer may use touch while on stage during the show. That always even can be just like set dressing. So it's a bit of everything in the scenic world that isn't necessarily scenery, more physical, useful pieces and decor.
Ashley Daniel Foot:
So when you know that a production is coming up, say for example The Magic Flute, where does your work begin? How do you know what you have to do?
Stephen Elgar:
So The Magic Flute is a little different. There are two ways shows will come in. Maybe they're going to be building a show or we're going to be renting a show and there's many different levels of rental. But Magic Flute coming in is a full rental production from the COC, Canadian Opera Company. So it's come in and essentially what happens first thing with this is that I watch the archival. It's something that already exists. Watching archival, flagging for things like the torches, which require pyro, weapons, scenery that's getting used, quick changes, movement and actions of the different props that are coming. Review the list and the archival from the COC to check what they have and wait for the props to arrive.
Once the physical props arrive here, you get them all out, inspect them, see how they all work. Some things in this, there are some bikes that look like ponies, we call them pony trikes. There's a lot of alignment issues with them and there's a lot of notes on those. So me spending the time to really understand how the prop works, even though it may look like I'm just riding around the bike and having fun, but actually understanding, seeing how it gets out of line, seeing how its repaired helps down the line so I can repair it hopefully to solve the problem or be on top of it when we move into the theatre during the run of the show.
What's interesting about this, this show seems to have gone out a few different times and been remounted by the COC. I believe it also went to Philadelphia and in Pittsburgh as well. And you can see the little changes, the little bit of consistencies between the different paperwork and different times that I have seen some changes like this confetti at the end of the show. In the original production, it seemed the confetti came from very limited spots. But then in the last production, they wanted all the chorus ladies to have baskets to throw confetti out. So this has been added on, but that was not necessarily in my paperwork until I looked in the fifth set of notes that were sent to me from properties at the COC.
Ashley Daniel Foot:
So tell me about your first production with Vancouver Opera and your introduction to the world of opera properties.
Stephen Elgar:
I have a really weird introduction to the world of opera at my first time in VO. I actually got into VO during the pandemic of all times. My first production was actually during the digital season. It was La Voix humaine, Rachel Peake was the director. Amir Ofek was the designer. The old props team wasn't available from my understanding. And this first show had a lot of furniture. And furniture, in particular, is my background, restoration and refinishing. I knew a couple of people in the production department here. They contacted me in the last minute wondering if I could help them source some furniture for this production. And then it evolved into this Head of Properties role that I'm now in. This would be my fourth season, I believe, sounds about right.
Ashley Daniel Foot:
In furniture restoration, are there any similarities between that work and the work that you do in properties?
Stephen Elgar:
Yeah, there's a lot of similarity, a lot of furnishing and decoration work, right? Detailing, staining, all that when you're talking about furniture on stage. Biggest difference, often I make the joke, is that one job, often the opera, I'm paid to make things look like crap. And my other job I make things look really nice. So that's kind of the biggest difference.
Ashley Daniel Foot:
I remember when you were working on The Flying Dutchman last season, you were dealing with many, many bottles. Tell us about that process.
Stephen Elgar:
The last scene, celebratory scene, they wanted to have bottles for all the chorus, and I think some of the principles. And silly me showed the director the one clay bottle that I had, which is really period accurate for the time. And Brian Deedrick really fell in love with that bottle. So it was going to be out of budget and really hard to find actual clay bottles because what he really loved was the pop top. Best way to say the Grolsch bottles pop top, right, not a twist-off one. That's what he really wanted and really liked the clay. So I did some Googling. I know there's a lot of people that got into the kombucha making or other things during the pandemic. So I found someone selling a bunch of Grolsch bottles. I think that was about 40 there. I needed 50. So shucks, I bought 12 bottles and I had to drink them. Oh, my God. Tough life. We painted them to give the illusion of clay and unless you are a foot away, you can't tell, which was really, really cool. They turned out really, really well.
Ashley Daniel Foot:
You mentioned distance and that's definitely something I think about when I'm watching opera and the Queen Elizabeth Theatre.
Stephen Elgar:
40-foot rule. If you can't see it or the details are not really noticeable from 40 feet, it's not really worth the time to focus on. When you are making something, unlike if you're making it for film or for a smaller house, you want to articulate the details. So instead of, let's say, I was working on a clock, instead of me really worrying about you seeing the number one, the number two… I'm going to focus on the 12, the three, the six, the nine. And the hands are really more of a hyper-focus, whether it's adding extra highlight shadow, even a bit of a sheen, but not focusing more on those details, right?
One of my actual favourite things when we're talking about the scale is that often there's text or a book, a pamphlet or something on stage. I always love to throw little jokes in there for the performers that they can read, but no one will see. All you need the house to see is some black markings to show that there's writing on a page. One time I had to do cue cards for a piece. On every cue card, I just wrote different Spice Girl lyrics. So it's little things like that.
Ashley Daniel Foot:
Tell us about Magic Flute and what you've been uncovering as you've been unpacking the crates and itemizing it all.
Stephen Elgar:
It's going to be a big show. It's really, really cool. I'm really, really excited for the animal masks. The puppetry elements of these animal masks, they're really, really awesome. My assistant, Jesse Orr, she's a puppeteer, she's really excited. I’m willing to understand it's an art form that I don't know too much about, so I'm definitely really picking her knowledge and working with these things. It's going to be a little bit of a different process with me because there's a lot more puppetry-esque elements in the props work. I'm going to actually be involved a lot more within the rehearsal process and with the performers just to help assist stage management, getting them on and getting them comfortable. The three-headed dragon that's in this show, the costume takes four people to put on, so I'm going to be in there a little bit more engaged with them.
Ashley Daniel Foot:
When you think about props, why do you think they're so essential to opera storytelling?
Stephen Elgar:
I think you talk to performers, a lot of character work can happen with the simplest things. The Flying Dutchman, the Dutchman, in the end, angry and whatnot. Having that bottle in his hand swinging away. It's a part of the character that is developed and it is an extension of the being. It's an extension of the story. So to me, props is an extension of scenery and scenery, the whole production itself. Otherwise, without these elements, it's going to be a naked performer in an empty, dark stage with an orchestra. It makes the magic
Ashley Daniel Foot:
We call Stephen Mr. Magic because Stephen is able to turn, well, as you've heard, water bottles into wine bottles. I don't know if he can actually affect what's in the bottles, but he can certainly affect what's on the outside. Stephen is always creating and crafting and sourcing, and I look forward to hearing more about what Stephen's up to in the operas to come this season. So just a reminder, if you haven't got your tickets, make sure to head to VancouverOpera.ca to buy your tickets for The Magic Flute, which is on stage from October 21st to 29th. And don't forget the rest of our season, Don Pasquale, and then a little opera no one's heard of called Carmen. I'll see you at the opera.
CREDITS
Host - Ashley Daniel Foot
Guest - Stephen Elgar
Editor - Mack McGillivray
Bravo! Engrossing dialogue on the manner in which Stephen Elgar, the Chief Curator of Illusions at Vancouver Opera, unveils the artistry in morphing commonplace items into whimsical stage adornments for "The Magic Flute". His journey, chiseled from the exactitude of furniture renaissance, now flourishes in the lyrical sphere, where the ordinary is nurtured into the mystical. Through rigorous groundwork, from delving into age-old manuscripts to hands-on orchestration of fanciful items like "pony-trikes", Elgar conducts a visual banquet. His tale, weaving through bygone restoration to contemporary fabrication, beckons us to view our aptitudes as gateways to unexplored, captivating realms, akin to the colorful, fantastical ambiance of the opera.
thank you for this incredible response !