Mary Therese Creede and her team at Jerald Studio are the creative minds behind all of the iconic Hamilton props. Creede and her team know these props inside and out and they have shared some secrets on which props were the most challenging to create, which props are the most innovative and which props are often overlooked by audiences. Read below to learn more about these props!
Photo Credit: Joan Marcus
The Barrels and Planks
“Actors are often building their own props on stage,” explained Creede. “They move the barrel and now it’s the bar at Fraunces Tavern. It’s genius how they repurpose on stage. They use the tavern table in so many ways.”
Photo Credit: Joan Marcus
The Dueling Pistols
“The pistols are cast in really hard rubber. Often, they would drop the pistols, so we had to make a cast and recreate them entirely in durable, hard rubber,” Creede shared. “Then, we add metal parts so when it drops it sounds like metal. We also had to reinforce the trigger because actors kept pulling it.”
The Rope
“There are thousands of feet of rope on stage. Each rope is specific. Each has a number and a configuration,” Creede said. “They seem just hung up there because that’s how it’s supposed to seem, but each [coil] is designed with a specific configuration in mind and must hold up through shipping [to shows in other cities]. Every single rope must be measured to come to exact configuration size. A single coil is easily 30 feet of rope.” Also interestingly, these coils are identical across all sets and companies!
The Candles
“There are 109 candles per company. First, we get a battery-operated candle, then we take it apart and alter the circuit boards by adding resistors and leads and wire them so that the lights and flickering can be controlled from the lighting board by a single operator,” Creede explained. “We have this down now but making it maintenance-friendly has been a process.”
Photo Credit: Joan Marcus
You can be in the room where it happens when Hamilton returns to Walton Arts Center for 12 performances Aug. 16-25. Best availability for tickets is in the Aug. 20-25 performances.