A sofa with a history – the production blog

4 May 2011

“ave a Decco” at our furniture

The phrase “In an ideal world” always gives me a sense of foreboding especially when said by a Designer prior to them revealing their model box ideas for a forthcoming production design. This is then normally followed with “there may be a couple of points that may be tricky”. Yes, and these tend to be of the decimal kind in respect of the budget.

I’m sat in my office having just sorted my petty cash prior to the dress rehearsal of Moonlight and Magnolias, amazed at the wonderful job A.J. (Ami-Jayne, Company Manager) and the team have done yet again within our tight budgets.

For those that don’t know, the show is set in a film producer’s office in Hollywood in the 1930’s and Art Decco furniture, which was all the rage then, is all the rage now and commanding very high prices and not something easy to borrow.

But this has not stopped the team scouring the country to buy and find the items we wanted with their usual fervour. Mind you, we did have to restrain Victoria in a bidding frenzy, after a pair of chairs shouting “just another twenty and I’m sure I’ll get them”. Though she lost the auction, we still have the chairs as she managed to convince the buyer that we would happily transport them up north for him, if we could just borrow them for a few weeks en route (never play poker with that girl!)

To give you an idea of the work that goes into finding props, I’ve attached a photo of the model sofa we were given for reference. When you come to the  the show you’ll  see  the one we have on stage which was eventually tracked down in Devon and is remarkably similar!

Amazingly this comes with a complete full history discovered as we were re-covering it to match our stage design. Now if you would like your family to be the next name on this original piece of 1930’s furniture, contact the production office later in the run production@watermill.org.uk

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