Can anyone tell me how one goes about assembling a convincing prop newspaper for a stage play? It should look like a small-town paper, circa 1973.
The interior is completely irrelevant, but one scene involves two characters reading and discussing a front page story, which is subsequently clipped out. Which means it will a) have to be visible to the audience, and b) replaced after every show.
Any suggestions? The budget on this is nonexistent.
Can the business of the play be adjusted so that the clipping takes place off-stage?
Couldn’t you just stage it so that the audience doesn’t actually see the front page?
If not, create a fake letterhead (The Podunk Tribune) on your computer and glue it to the top of a real newspaper. If you need the article, too, print that out on your computer and glue it.
If the text doesn’t matter (I’m assuming the headline doesn’t have to be legible to the audience, or you’d have said), you’ll get passable results by just using the classified section wrapped with any reasonably-convincing all-black-and-white page from any other section. Don’t sweat the details, because you’ll just go crazy once you realize that not only were 1973 newspapers all black-and-white (as a rule), they were also considerably larger than today’s newspapers.
Get a newspaper from where ever that matches what you want seen from the audience. The date and details won’t be visible from the audience.
Have the actors lay the paper on a table to “cut out” the story. Have them use the scissors but not cut the paper. When they are done cutting have them pick a precut story off the table.
Reuse the same paper night after night.
That’s what I’d do.
Newspapers are real freakin’ cheap on a per-copy basis. Any printer in the country almost definitely wastes more “good enough” copies on any given night than you need. I’d just ask one. If you need to change the masthead, just do the already-suggested paste-up job on the front page, and there you go.
What is the play?
Where is it set? Give us more than “small town”. IF the script just indicates “small town”, how is the director leaning? Are we talking Small Town, Tx or Small Town, NJ or Small Town, Virginia??
1973 wasn’t so long ago…maybe someone on here could give you a little help with re: to what it might look like if we had a little more info.
Shryn
A Property Mistress from a long time ago…
Use a real newspaper and bring it in already folded so that you can’t see the masthead. Most audiences are going to go along with it anyway.
If you want an added touch of authenticity, go to any large academic or public library and bring up a 1973 newspaper on microfilm (some libraries have them on databases also), bring up a couple of fashion ads (or a NIXON or other then topical headline) and glue/doublesided-tape them to the real newspaper. For that matter, you can google 1970s fashion ads and do the same thing.