Barbara, props at the opera

If it fits in your hands, it’s good

His daily challenge, to Barbara, to satisfy the director’s every wish. Even his whims. In the cinema, it’s easier than in the theater. We quickly replaced the accessory with a special effect. That’s her job, the red haired lady. While FX, her computer scientist husband, is teleworking, she searches around, she noses, she draws, she tinkers … She is a props specialist. Not a decorator, eh! The skills of the props stop when you can no longer carry the object alone, with both hands. After that, it’s the decorator’s business. If a book needs to light up when you open it, it’s not complicated at the cinema, with a mouse and a keyboard. On the stage of the Opéra de Rouen, it’s a different story. This is where Barbara has to use all her imagination. A little ingenuity, a sense of DIY and we end up finding the solution. It’s like this hero who must start to bleed profusely. There, we blow up a condom full of hemoglobin. That’s the job of a props. It is doing everything possible to credibly serve the scene. Sometimes it’s very simple, you just have to find a small lambda object. Sometimes it’s just magic.