Who makes all the stuff?!

Where do we get the Honus Wagner T-206 card Joey finds in Miss Young's attic in Honus and Me? After every performance, the cast has a question and answer session with the audience. I've noticed that a large portion of the questions asked are about the things we hold on stage. These props are all created or acquired by our very own Childsplay's Property Master, Jim Luther. Recently I had the pleasure of chatting with Jim as he shared with me his process on making the show as authentic as possible.

The first thing Jim showed me was the thickest binder I have ever seen! A big part of Jim's job is research. He spends endless hours just looking things up: from how a baseball mitt looked different in 1909 than in 2009 to Honus Wagner's autograph and places he attended. He finds all this information through the internet, books, and other sources, and collects the information on his incredibly huge folder.

A lot of detail goes into his work. Jim showed me a variety of baseball cards he purchased from thrift stores and local sports shops, pointing out their strategic placement in the show's card shop and their specific order in Joey's card collection in his room. He showed me the Cracker Jack box which my character uses in the World Series of 1909 (which looks very different than a box you'd buy today) and he told me about the bidding war he fought on eBay to find just the right replica.

Jim also creates a lot of the props from scratch. From making imitations of the famous Honus Wagner T-206 card to the period bunting (pictured above) of the dead ball era.