ABSTRACT
Following initial design meetings with the scenic designer and the director to talk through the preliminary hand prop list and study the elevations or scale model for all the set props and dressing, the properties director now has a listing and the information of what is wanted. The big question is “Can we afford it?” To answer that question, a preliminary show budget must be created. The preliminary show budget estimates the cost of materials for items having to be built, modifi ed, and purchased as well as the labor estimate for the build. Each item on the prop list should have a cost associated with it, given the preliminary supposition of how it might be completed. Every properties director knows that this preliminary budget is, at best, a wildly optimistic (or pessimistic) best guess. The juggle done in the prop shop on how any one show gets built can be completed in a multitude of ways depending on what stroke of fortune allows the right fabric to be found for pennies on the dollar, what furniture can be borrowed or found in stock, and how accurate the prop list remains to the fi rst listing. Making a preliminary show budget is oftentimes an exercise in futility but, frankly, it should be done as a means to begin defi ning the show and what it will take to build it as designed. Without one, all too often what was once considered scenery or a costume can magically become props based on cost overruns in the areas with more preliminary information in the design process.
