WOLF PLAY's Wall of Free Props

When walking into MCC Theater to see Hansol Jung's acclaimed WOLF PLAY, you are greeted by very little on the floor where the action will take place--a couch, a table, some balloons--but yet an entire wall chock full of stuff. There are tons of lamps and drums. There is a globe, a rocking horse, a clear container full of baseballs, a dresser toward the ceiling, a bathtub on a shelf. Every inch of the wall is filled, even the areas next to the seats, invisible to anyone not in those seats. Where did all of this stuff come from? A number of the items came from past productions the team members have worked on, and, bizarrely, some of them came from the City of New York.

"One of the things I've been doing as a props designer is trying to always reuse the props from shows that I've worked on and WOLF PLAY was a great opportunity to put all of this together," prop designer Patricia Marjorie said. "So WOLF PLAY has props from shows I've done--and I've done 17 in the last year--and props from shows Dustin [Wills, the director] has done and props from Materials for the Arts."

Materials for the Arts is run by the city and is essentially a reuse center. Institutions or individuals donate items, including paper, fabric, buttons, beads, arts & crafts supplies, small appliances, hardware and household items. Then the organization provides these items to nonprofits, public schools, city agencies or individuals with non-profit sponsorship. (Marjorie falls into the last category because she was the recipient of a New York City Artist Corps grant, making her eligible to receive props from Materials for the Arts.) Through this program, WOLF PLAY has props on its wall from the TV shows THE MARVELOUS MRS. MAISEL, MANIFEST and ONLY MURDERS IN THE BUILDING.

"Materials for the Arts is great because we can also donate the materials back to them," Marjorie explained. "So our goal is once this show is done, we want to donate most of the props that we put together for this show back to Materials for the Arts so all the artists can also take advantage those props."

Very few of the props from the wall are actually used in WOLF PLAY, which was just extended through April 2. The fridge door is opened (though there is no fridge interior), a boom box is taken down and some bowls and boxes of cereal come off a shelf, but that is pretty much it. The purpose is not to use the props, but for them to create atmosphere. When WOLF PLAY was at the Soho Rep, the team painted its space entirely white. They could not do that with MCC and, according to Marjorie, instead sought to make the theater their own through the prop wall. Marjorie, Wills, set designer You-Shin Chen and others all worked for months assembling the items. The idea was the prop wall made the fairly new MCC space feel older, more eclectic. The effect is striking. Plus, there was very little to lose with free props from the creatives' prior productions and the city.