Prop-era: Lori Harrison Edition

My first prop-er introduction to Lori Harrison, San Francisco Opera’s longtime Head of Properties, was in June 2016. Don Carlo was closing, and after the final performance, the production was being retired. I received a call from Lori asking if there were any props from the show that I would like to bring into the Archives. New to my role, I was thrilled that she thought to ask and said I would come over first thing in the morning. Lori’s response: “Great! But you need to come now. It will be too late tomorrow morning.”

Of course, I headed right over. Lori led me around the deck where the props were staged and ready to go. I took quick photos of those that were of interest, Lori took mental notes, and that was that. The next morning, I found myself sharing my office with heretics from Don Carlo. Three, to be precise.

What I could not have known at that time, was that this was the beginning of a wonderfully collaborative relationship between the Props department and the Archives, the highpoint being the numerous Centennial Season exhibitions in 2022.

After more than three decades with the Company, Lori Harrison will be retiring this December. The following, taken from a series of conversations conducted between Ann Farris (Archives volunteer extraordinaire), myself, and Lori beginning in 2021, recalls moments from her journey to the stage and remarkable tenure with San Francisco Opera.

Overture: The Early Years, 1978–1985

In 1978, at the end of my end of my time at U Penn, I applied to Santa Fe Opera, to be an apprentice for the summer.

So that’s where I started with opera, sitting on the back deck, gluing webbing onto a ground cloth, and it was exciting. I was 18 years old and I knew nothing about the scheduling and anything else that was going on. The first orchestra rehearsal happened right that day, and the first notes of Tosca came out of the theater, and I’m sitting on the deck with the Sangre de Cristo Mountains all around, and I started to cry. It was astounding, and I completely fell into opera at that moment.

They put all the stagehands in costumes for the Te Deum scene in Act I, and for some reason I had this enormous white nun costume. Like, all the other nuns were normal nuns, but I was sort of the Mother Superior in this procession. And, of course, right afterwards is this gigantic scene change. I had my wimple and the big white cape, and the whole costume, and underneath I’m checking to be sure I have my hammer and my tools.

After three years at Santa Fe, I got a job at Miami Opera as prop master, which was terrifying. The level at which Alice Maguire ran the prop shop in Santa Fe, I mean, it was incomparable, and I didn’t know any of the prop-building techniques. I could build scenery, but I’d never really done any prop building. But I got this job in Miami, and (before leaving Santa Fe) I walked around Alice’s prop shop, and I wrote down everything. I wrote the contents of the cabinets, and talked to people about how you do things. I ended up staying in Miami for three seasons.

I had a workspace in a dark, dingy garage, at the back of the opera building. During my three seasons in Miami, I stage managed a tour of The Impresario that went throughout the state of Florida, and I built props. I sort of taught myself to build props, upholster, and do all those things. And that was closer to my skillset than anything I’d ever done. I really loved that.

So, from there I went to Chautauqua Opera for a couple of seasons.

Act I: San Francisco Opera, 1985–1991

Here I was, moving every three months, because I was doing summers in Santa Fe or at Chautauqua, and winters in Miami, or wherever, and I couldn’t get close to anybody. The minute I got close to somebody, then I would never see them again. I thought, you know, I’m going to be (laughs) 50 years old someday, with nothing but a bunch of war stories. I wouldn’t have a family. I wouldn’t have friends.

It was time to go somewhere and stay there, and this idea of blowing off everything and moving to a city and then starting over without a job was intriguing. I turned down a job at Texas Opera Theatre; I turned down Chautauqua; I turned down Miami; I turned down all of the things that were sort of on my plate, and I got on a plane with a suitcase and a toolbox and landed in the Oakland Airport, in the spring of 1985, with nothing.

More guts than I can even FATHOM in retrospect. But it seems to have worked: I found a job building scenery at a rock-and-roll shop first, then people I knew from other opera companies helped me get a job at San Francisco Opera. Here I started as an assistant stage manager (then called production assistant), then became a draftsperson in the Technical Department, then “went union,” getting into the Scene Shop and onto the Prop Crew.

I was second production assistant on Billy Budd. I didn’t know much about being a stage manager. I could read music because I played the piano, but I really didn’t know much about reading scores and so I would study the score. And Billy Budd is actually a pretty difficult score; the counts are really difficult. So on the bus to and from my rock-and-roll scene-shop job, I would have my headphones on and a little cassette player and the score. And I sat there on the bus towards the end, counting, and I’m like, they’re going to hang Billy Budd! They’re going to … ! And I started crying, and these other people on the bus are looking at me like, what is the matter? I’m like, they’re going to hang Billy Budd! Because, you know, opera does that to you.

Fairly quickly, I shifted to the prop crew proper, as it were, just as a regular crew member, from 1987 until 1991.

The production that stands out the most from that time was War and Peace; it was a massive, massive show. I’ve never seen or done a show as huge as that. When it came to running it we had come up with a system that I had stolen from Santa Fe in which each of the four Keys and Back-up Keys (crew who run the show from side stage) was responsible for maintaining a show and keeping track of it; knowing that things were clean, replaced, and placed, and all that. There was a point at which I finally counted all the props in War and Peace. I went through a list, and it was like 3,000 items. That was extraordinary. I really loved that. That’s when I realized that the scale of opera is really great … that’s where you want to be, in props.

Intermission: Movie Time! 1991–1997

For personal reasons, I stepped away from the Company for a time. I spent those in between years working on movies, and I really loved that too.

Over the years I worked on several feature films, TV series, and at Industrial Light and Magic: in the Model Shop and on commercials and features.

While working on a bunch of different movies, I came up with my movie prop theory which is that onstage, you’re looking from the outside of a picture, and the designer is responsible for creating that picture and you’re filling it in. It has to do with shape and form and the colors which match each other and you’re creating essentially a three-dimensional version of a two-dimensional picture.

But for film you don’t know where the camera is going to be, so I consider film to be character driven because you’re looking from the inside out. The camera is catching details of a character’s world. As a prop set decorator you have to be that character and choose the book that they’re reading on their night tables and in their bookshelves and what they’re hanging on their walls and what their choices are and what their budget is and what season it is outside. You’re completely going from the inside out, and I felt that somehow live theater—certainly in the scale of opera—was more outside in.

This theory has served me in great stead when we started doing high-def video in the Opera House, because that’s where those two worlds of propping got married in my mind. I was able to use all those character driven sensibilities on an opera stage.

During this time, I also realized that what I wanted to do was Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, and Harry Potter movies. What we were doing in San Francisco was Nash Bridges and cops and robbers. We were not going to do a Jane Austen movie here. It was not going to happen.

So when the Prop Master position opened at the Opera House, I applied with the realization that for period and historical prop work this was the best—and only—game in town. That was in 1997, and I’ve been here ever since.

Act II: San Francisco Opera, Head of Properties, 1998–2024

When I started in the Prop Department, props were a little bit of the laughingstock. But now, on our deck, I have to say, we get along better than we ever have. I joke sometimes that when you look at the deck and how it operates, props is downstage left, electrics is downstage right, grips are upstage right, sound is upstairs upstage left, and never the four shall meet. More than ever we have the constant walking back and forth and checking in on how things are going and how we can help one another.

What’s on our deck is not what you find at most Houses in the world. Down to the earliest, most recently hired wig and makeup artist, grip, electrician, prop person, sound technician, and dresser we have people that want to stay, that watch the shows, that care about what they do: they have pride in what they do, learn from one another, and the longer they’re here the more that’s the case. The level of participation, in caring about the final product, being familiar with the operas we do, and all of what you find on our stage at the crew level is pretty unique.

But I’d have to say that the hardest thing to learn when I became a Department Head was to NOT do things. I got into Props because it is fun and creative. I had to learn—sometimes the hard way—that the people on my crew want to be creative for the same reasons that I do. I therefore can’t do all the “creating”: I have to let them be creative, or they will simply leave and find something else to do. Ultimately what I learned was how fabulous the folks are that come into my department—in all different ways. They have different and interesting backgrounds, skills, talents, and perspectives that add great depth and dimension to what we can provide as a department. My job as a manager involves much more collaboration than I remember existing when I was just on the crew. I consider my job to include first and foremost making sure that the people in my department are successful and productive and have everything they need to accomplish the quality of what we put on stage.

As far as I’m concerned, we can always find a way. That’s in my nature. 

 

Barbara Rominski is San Francisco Opera’s Director of Archives.