In Which We Reveal Secrets of a Large Library

Those of you who were fortunate to see our production of Educating Rita couldn’t avoid noticing the great number of books on stage. While plenty of these books were real, many were not. They were specially-made panels of prop books. Book panels are lighter and easier to store, and can be adapted to any size shelf. They begin as discard books destined for the recycler. Using a band saw, the books were cut about three inches from the spine. We used a heavy-duty glue gun to fasten them on the backing board, which in this case was quarter inch MDF that we had cut to the size of the shelves, and pre-painted flat brown-black. Once the book panels were complete, they were fitted into the shelves and held in place with a small screw. We put a small block of wood behind each panel to keep all the panels the same distance from the shelf edges. When these dummy books are interspersed among shelves containing real books, even we can’t spot the fakes from the audience!

Our Props Master Tracy Berryman can often be seen trolling local thrift shops, searching for the perfect prop or set dressing. The Tacoma St. Vincent de Paul is one of Tracy’s favorite haunts, and it is here that she formulated her plan. The books that the thrift store is unable to sell are gathered into large cardboard bins and sent off to be recycled, earning a bit of cash for the shop and saving a tree or two as well. The recycler will pay a higher price for books that have already had their spines removed, and all we needed were the spines. The nice guys at St. Vinnie’s were happy to deliver the boxes of books to our temporary scene shop at Puget Sound Builders, where we chose appropriate books and removed the spines. And when we were finished, they retrieved the (now spineless) books, ready for the recycler. We at Theatre Northwest are happy that we could work with this organization in a way that would benefit us both.