Week 2: "Mastering Hand and Set Properties"
Hand Properties Definition
Hand properties—any objects that can be held in the hand and easily manipulated—are extensions of gesture because they increase the variety of possible illustrations with the arms and hands, and sometimes even with the legs and head. Because the director, as part of her design function, can suggest the use of specific hand properties and how to use them, she can make them specific tools of director-actor communication.
Concept. Although a hand property has inherent meaning—for example, an umbrella is something to ward off rain or sun, a book is something to read, a cigar is something to smoke, a cup is something to drink from, and so on—most of the hand properties used on the stage should be employed for reasons other than what their literal functions intend. Only occasionally do we draw an audience’s attention to a hand property in its functional use—perhaps a knife for cutting, a gun for shooting, or a weapon of any sort for murdering. Nor are hand properties used merely to provide the obvious exterior reality of everyday life. By and large, audiences should notice hand properties only peripherally and should not be made to concentrate on them, except in unusual circumstances when it is appropriate that attention be drawn to them. Hand properties have many more values for illustrating aspects of character or action than their functional qualities.
The principal use of hand properties is to help actors “talk” through gestures, for they can (1) extend the length of the arm (with a pointer), (2) increase the size of the hand (with a book), (3) make the hands and fingers active (with a pen, a cigarette), (4) produce sound (by closing a book), (5) show nervousness (with a handkerchief, a cup and saucer), and much more. Everything an actor touches, if she uses it properly, can convey a sensory impression simply because an audience can actually feel the way the actor touches it and can empathize with her.
The primary purpose of a hand property, then, is not its functional use but its potential for underlining dramatic ideas—the subtle aspects of characterization or dramatic action in a scene. In one sense, properties provide an additional pair of eyes for the actor. Because the members of an audience vary in their actual distance from the stage, with a large number actually unable to see the detailed eye movements of the actors, the skillful use of hand properties by the actor can actually convey to even the farthest reaches of the audience a sense of what the actor’s eyes are doing, so closely is such amplified gesture allied with inner feeling. Movies and television, with their close-ups, have no such problem, but the stage must rely on significant illustrative tools such as properties to augment the eyes, particularly with Realistic drama.
Characteristics of hand properties.
Actors and directors should be highly aware of the qualities and characteristics of hand properties. It is how an actor uses a property that will convey idea, and the how can be exploited only if the property is completely understood. As a director, you must develop a keen imagination with properties if you are to learn how to exploit them fully. Make a habit of looking carefully at a property: What are its peculiar and individual characteristics? If it is smooth, can it be rubbed against the face? What are its “sound” characteristics (does it snap, pop, etc.?) and how can they be exploited? Will its weight cause it to do certain things in the hands of an actor? Can it be stretched or rubbed against other materials? Can it be torn or pulled apart? All questions of this sort open up the imaginative, fresh use of properties. The trite use of a property by an actor implies that she does not actually see and feel the property; in other words, the actor does not actually know the property’s nature and possibilities.
As you can see, then, all of the preceding questions are pursuing the same point: how a hand property is used effectively by an actor to illustrate dramatic action in a fresh, active, and sensitive way. The purpose is to reveal a character’s state of mind, not to show the property itself. The audience’s attention must be on the feelings of the characters, and not on the object, except in those rare instances when an object (for instance, a gun) becomes momentarily the dramatic action itself.
For these reasons, you can see that an action such as eating is not intended to improve the health of the character in front of the audience or to give a reason for sitting at a dining table. Instead, it gives an actor some hand and mouth tools for illustration. A book in an actor’s hand might possibly be read to show the audience that the character is improving his mind or that he is the intellectual sort; but usually, it is used to illustrate nervousness, to emphasize a point by banging the book closed or slamming it on a table, or to show preoccupation and interior disturbance. Appropriately used hand properties have the ability to reveal detailed psychological states in characters in line with the structural core of modern prose drama; they have distinctive capacities for revealing subtext.
Improvisations with hand properties.
The word improvisation is used here to denote what the actor and director must do in order to find the best illustrations. Only through constant experimentation during the rehearsal process can a property be fully exploited or another property substituted to make the necessary revelations. Actors should always work with real hand properties just as soon as their hands are free from carrying scripts, because properties will suggest buried dramatic action to the actor, as well as prompt her how to reveal what she already understands. Only when the use of a property has been fully exploited in rehearsal does it become a set piece of business in the old sense. Even if a playwright requires specific use of a hand property, the actor must work with it improvisationally to maximize its highest potential. One of the greatest lost opportunities comes about when hand properties are not introduced to the actors until very late in the rehearsal process. Even substitute or mock-up versions of the desired property begin to unlock the creative response of an actor. A good director will see to it that actual or substitute properties are available to the actors just as soon as they are enough off book to be comfortable handling objects.
Set Properties
Definition.
Set properties are those large items, usually pieces of furniture, permanently placed in a groundplan. They are specific tools of director-actor communication and not merely set decoration, for they amplify and intensify objects given life by actors. On occasion, such as when an actor moves a chair, they can become hand properties.
Concept.
We intuitively sense the territorial meanings implicit in the space and related to the large objects contained within the space such as furniture as we observe the actors/characters playing out the sublimated struggle of the dramatic action. Although a living room in a play such as Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? or Hedda Gabler is “just a living room,” it is also much more than that. It is the terrain, the battlefield on which the struggle between George and Martha—or Hedda and everyone else in her story—is waged. And, on such a battlefield, a sofa is more than a sofa. It becomes, for example, a wall behind which Albee’s George may seek protection from an attack by Martha or a fort in which Ibsen’s Hedda becomes unapproachable by Judge Brack or a perch on which she invites a confidential intimacy with Thea Elvsted. All of these are skirmishes in the larger battle of the dramatic action in the scenes of these plays. And the director’s awareness of how the furniture becomes more than “just furniture” will allow the action to be physicalized and sensed by both the actors in the scene and the audience. You will also remember that the groundplan was referred to several times as an obstacle course that must be navigated by actors in illustrating the dramatic action of a Realistic play. Again, you must be fully aware of the dramatic storytelling strength of this use, because you must learn to exploit set properties in this way.
“Tie into the furniture,” which you may have heard a director say to actors, tells actors that their composition will be stronger if they stand near or touch a piece of furniture. Such a suggestion has validity because furniture pieces not only give mass to the actor by extending his visual weight in the space but they also help him discover subtleties in the dramatic action. Members of an audience will take for granted that an actor sits on a chair or sofa, but a great deal more is being done for them than they imagine. If the specific piece of furniture on which an actor sits is well selected, it will help the actor sense what to do and how to do it, just as hand properties do. Even more important is what a well-selected piece of furniture can do to encourage sensitive reciprocation between two actors. A suggestion given to one actor to use a chair in a certain way may immediately arouse ideas for adjustment in the other actor—adjustment that can set off a chain of physical illustrations around the set piece, which will communicate strong feelings to a watcher. A word of caution, though. There are some instances when the moment is best served by space surrounding the actor or character, rather than having the actor tied into a large set property. You will sense when this is the case as you develop your sense of picturization and visual storytelling.
Creation of activity areas. (We will touch this topic more thoroughly next weeks)
Every area of your groundplan should be potent with “activity” possibilities, for they will encourage actors to use those areas for illustration and help foster the “fabric of normalcy” referred to in the discussions of action and activity. This is organic blocking in its best sense. Actors must have things to do, and you can help their motivation for crosses or uses of certain areas by providing reasons to use those areas. Downstage corners (foreground plane) that have uses other than merely sitting (telephones, desk work, bookcase) will suggest activities. It is important that the stage properties that define the downstage corners and create the “reality” of these locations be chosen in such a way that they strongly suggest activities and how these places are used in the life of the room—rather than being merely decorative. They must legitimately draw movements toward them, so that the actors’ movements toward these places are organic and not arbitrary, for both the actor and the audience who observe. Upstage areas (background plane) can also be set up this way (cabinets, bookcases, drawer for concealing objects used in the play, worktables, sinks, refrigerators, storage areas, coatrack, dish shelf, private collection of objects, etc.). As with the downstage corners, upstage locations should legitimately and organically draw movements toward them, so that in the evolving series of movements in a scene, an actor’s reasons for being in such a location or going to it are organically integrated into the logic of the scene. The midstage arrangement is the most important because most of the activity will take place on these planes. Achieve a variety in furniture placement by experimenting with all parts of conversational groupings. Increase your lines of tension in the placement to ensure full exploitation.
Variety in using pieces of furniture is a necessity if the illustrations are to be fresh and alive. Sitting on the backs of sofas or on tables is, of course, valid if the given circumstances permit characters such behavior; but chairs and sofas can be used in dozens of ways without employing exceptional uses that call attention to themselves and break our belief in the scene. As with hand properties, the director must be fully aware of the characteristics of the set properties he introduces for actor use if he is to exploit them. Fresh uses of beds, desks, stools, cabinets, and so on all lie within an actor’s imagination, and the director can make them come to life with perceptive suggestions.
Tasks Assignment
Read the whole play and write down for yourself the following:
1. List all the needed entrances and exits, including those that go to the outside and those that go to other indoor spaces for each character.
2. What other parts of the set are required (e.g., a window, balcony, stairs)?
3. What large furniture pieces are needed (e.g., a dining room table, a fridge, a cupboard, desk, bed with bedside tables, sofa, or a park bench and a trash can)?
4. Make a list of small properties (or hand props) that are required (e.g., stationery, a ring, a phone, a suitcase). Continue to update this list as you work on the scene and find need for additional objects. Do any of these small props need a piece of furniture, such as a telephone table or a desk for stationery?
5. Make a list of all necessary hand properties
Create and Use Key symbols and their meaning for yourself. Example >
Deadline: December 5, 2025
Format: pdf/docx
Studying Materials:
Physical Dramaturgy: Perspectives from the Field
Interesting to know:
