Couches, desks, teapots, old books, antique photos, old-fashioned cutlery, cauldrons, yellowed paper… all show up in various productions that take place in various centuries. And much of it can be found in the junk and thrift shops that are their yearly haunts. “For us, it’s the thrill of the hunt. And if the props don’t end up on stage, we don’t mind because we had so much fun doing this,” explains Bracha.

Miriam sends the team a ten-minute video clip from the era they’re supposed to be recreating (which they supplement with research on Google when necessary) so they can get a sense of what they need… and then they’re off to the junk stores and thrift shops where “respectable people” don’t shop.

There’s no official budget for props, but the production heads trust the team can be counted on to spend the least amount of money from any department. The team looks at the money they use as tzedakah money, so every penny needs to be pinched until it shrieks. Of course, they could call prop rental services, and that would solve the dilemma of where to find a printing press… to the tune of $600. Instead, they find one on Facebook Marketplace (a lot like Craig’s List) out on Long Island. “That guy was a real creeper, but he left the printing press outside for us, and we left the money in his mailbox,” says Bracha. The price? $25.

“We spend a lot of our own personal money getting ‘free’ props,” Bracha admits. Among other things, “We pay gas and tolls and parking tickets and moving violations.”

“We’ll jump through hoops to get things for free and almost free. And if it’s too expensive, we make it ourselves,” Chanie explains. She’s been doing props since she was a teen in summer camp 40+ years ago, when she found something she was good at. Take the Victrola record player from the show “English to a T.” The authentic ones were prohibitively expensive, so they took a wooden silverware box, a lampshade, about 900 glue sticks, made it themselves, and spray-painted it the perfect shades of dark-brown and gold.

Complications and Adventures

Some props require more than a thrift shop run.

There was the couch Bracha’s daughter discovered on Block Island. To get to Block Island, you need to drive two hours to the furthest point of Long Island, then take a ferry, which they did.

“And then we had to convince somebody nice to help us get the couch into the car because it never quite fits. It’s always an inch off,” Mirie, who joined the team when she was recruited by Bracha in a Costco parking lot (“I have an amazing job for you, Mirie!”) 13 years ago, says.

And when they needed Styrofoam for tombstones, they weren’t going to order it on Amazon. On a night out in Manhattan, the four women discovered a treasure trove of Styrofoam boxes… outside a fish market. Perfect, except for the fact that the boxes were splattered with fish juice, and they stank. That didn’t stop the delighted discoverers.

For props that are heavier than Styrofoam, there’s usually one day when the team hires a truck with drivers to help with the schlepping. “We used to do it ourselves, but it’s getting a little too much for us,” Bracha says. Her daughter-in-law once got a call: “Did I just see your mother-in-law and her friend (Mirie) driving a truck?” Yes, the caller definitely did.

One year, they had to pick up a metal staircase that weighed over a thousand pounds. It was during carpool/pickup time in Boro Park, and the slow-moving truck was blocking traffic. There was a cacophony of honking, and a woman driving behind them was visibly upset.

Bracha got out of the truck and went over to her.

“I’m really sorry for the traffic, but did you ever hear of Rachel’s Place?”

“Yeah.”

“Look in the truck. You’re going to see all the props!”

The woman was thrilled at the sneak peek.

This past year, they found themselves trying to get what Chanie describes as a “five-million-pound table” out of a U-Haul truck with no help (and little success). Chanie had to stop a random guy on the street, give him $20, and ask him to help.

“It was insane,” she says. “But there was lots and lots of laughing!”

Mirie shares an important fact about renting a U-Haul: You need to download an app called Truck Maps when driving a U-Haul, because you’re not allowed to drive in certain areas with a truck (like the Belt Parkway).

“How many other grandmothers have that app?” Bracha wonders.

Bracha still keeps ratchet straps in her car. If there’s no U-Haul handy, they use their cars and Bracha’s straps for the pieces that refuse to squeeze inside.

Communal Collaboration

The props team doesn’t just shop in seedy stores and drive U-Hauls. They borrow, they post on chats, they call in favors… and they dumpster dive.

And they do it every year.

They used to store props at Chanie’s husband’s factory. But that wasn’t going to work indefinitely, so now they only have a small storage place. After every show, they need to give away or sell most of the props, which means hunting for everything next year… again.

Chanie once called her son’s rebbi. “Hi, can I borrow one of your birds for a few weeks?” He explained that she needed both birds, since one bird would be lonely. The birds lived with her for three weeks, and it wasn’t always easy, “…but the live birds were in an authentic cage on stage. It was really cool,” she says.

For the show “Encore,” Mirie called a friend who owns a body shop. “Do you have an extra steering wheel that I could have? And then maybe a muffler?” They used those when the Germans arrive and the Von Trapp family has to disable their car to escape.

This year, they needed a table runner, and Bracha found one in a thrift shop for $8. Mirie does needlepoint, and when she saw the runner, she was amazed by the workmanship. She put a picture of it on her needlepoint chat. The lady who designed it was on the chat and responded that she’d created it for Mrs. So-and-So.

“When this lady died, her son gave it away. It probably cost her a few thousand dollars! And we got it for eight!” Mirie says.

Then there was the sheep’s head from Isa’s niece, which came in handy for this year’s performance. “Her family had a retreat where they taught their kids about shechitah,” Isa explains. “They shechted a sheep, barbecued it on my grill, and took the head to a taxidermist.”

“So they’re weirder than we are,” Chanie concludes.

But they’ve also learned that borrowing can go wrong.

The first year Bracha worked on the show, someone put them in contact with an antique dealer who gave them a chandelier. When the show ended, a hired man was supposed to pack up and return everything. Bracha got an urgent call and had to leave; she expected him to finish things himself.

He did. And he dropped the chandelier.

“That was when I found out the chandelier was $10,000. And I’m like, why did we borrow a $10,000 chandelier?” Bracha says. They repaired the chandelier as best as they could, but, “It was a disaster. We don’t do that anymore. We never take things from people who  need them back in pristine condition.”

This is where Bracha’s thrifting and Chanie’s dumpster diving habits come in handy. After all, someone else’s throwaways don’t usually cost much. “I’ve gotten a lot of amazing props out of dumpsters,” Chanie says. She keeps them in her garage for a few months, and cleans each find thoroughly before using it.

One of her funnier tales is when her son picked up a table with a sewing machine for them. When Rachel’s Place didn’t need it, Chanie (needing garage space for more treasures) told her son to get rid of it. He didn’t throw it out; he donated it to The Big Reuse in Brooklyn. When Chanie found out the directors had changed their minds and did want a sewing table after all, she and the team went shopping. They ended up at The Big Reuse and found the perfect table.

When Chanie brought it home, her son asked, “How did that get here?”

“I bought it at the Big Reuse.”

“But I took it there yesterday, because you told me to get rid of it!” he said.

But the best thing Bracha found in a thrift shop? Her 98-year-old mother’s aide. Unhappy with the current aide, she spotted a pleasant-looking foreign woman browsing in the store, and struck up a friendly conversation. Within 20 minutes, the woman agreed to work for her.

“That’s the best thing I ever found,” Bracha says.

When Scenery Goes Sideways

Not everything works out.

“It happens all the time,” Mirie says.

One dance needed a rolling tray. They found a phenomenal two-tiered table, drilled the bottom, and installed wheels.

“And then it just didn’t work,” Mirie explains. “It wasn’t moving quickly enough.”

But the couch saga last year was the real test.

There’s a lot of overlap between the set and props departments. Since the set people design and build the “bones” of where activity will take place on stage, they have the last word on whether pieces of furniture will work. The team runs furniture finds by the set people who know exactly how big a bench has to be, or how much room the old-fashioned desk needs. (“The sets have become legendary,” says Isa. “From concept to execution, Chaya Tietelbaum and Pella Tietelbaum have used their endless talents and strengths to ‘set the stage’ for one masterpiece after another.”)

The Year of the Couch, they went through three or four couches, and the set people didn’t like any of them. The day of the first show, on opening night, Bracha went into the thrift shop near her house and found the perfect couch.

The problem? Getting the couch to the theater. Bracha called one actress who was coming later. Could they put a couch in her car? No problem, the actress said.

Bracha picked up the actress’s car and brought it to the thrift shop. The couch didn’t fit. The workers at the thrift shop offered to ratchet-strap it to the top, but Bracha realized that not everybody would be willing to drive on the highway by themselves (in the middle of winter) with a couch strapped to the top of their car.

“We know that we’re crazy, but not everyone is,” she explains. Somehow, she got that couch to the theater, 45 minutes before curtain call. “And it was perfect.”

Sometimes they need to modify props to make them work. They’ve discovered that, “You can paint a couch. Don’t try this at home because it’s really not a good idea! It’ll suck up about three gallons of paint, make the couch weigh a million pounds, and feel ‘crunchy,’ but it will change color.”

The job doesn’t end when they find the perfect prop. The team sits in the audience during rehearsals, watching every prop to make sure it works. They climb onto the set to hang and adjust things. When one actress had trouble remembering her lines, they found authentic newspapers to hide the script in.

Hand props — “the little things” — go on a table backstage. Every year, there’s food or drinks involved. “We’re always yelling at the cast, don’t eat the props!” says Bracha. And while sometimes they can get away with shellacking a loaf of bread, the trays of treats for the girls in “The Attic” kept mysteriously disappearing. And because the food can sit around for three weeks in the theater, some unpleasant incidents happen… like the time the pickles got moldy.

Things can get a lot more complicated than moldy pickles.

Like when the team needed a gun. In New York City, it’s illegal to sell realistic-looking fake guns, so fake guns are usually neon orange or green plastic… and don’t look like they would have done the job in the 1930s.

On one of their hunts, they saw a fabulous, embellished gun that was exactly what they needed. After begging the reluctant proprietor, he agreed to loan it to them. When the play was over, Bracha was charged with returning the gun, and it rattled around in her car for a while. She stuffed it into her glove compartment, and forgot about it… “Until I was pulled over by a cop,” she says. “When I opened the glove compartment to retrieve my documents, I had a lot of explaining to do.”

The Real Treasure

By the time the last showing is done, “…every part of our body is aching. Our fingers are burnt. Our backs are broken,” Chanie says.

But one of the perks of working on the play is the souvenirs.

Of course, as Bracha emphasizes, “We don’t just take things. We try to sell or give away props first. But because we have so little storage space, if we’re going to throw out something anyway, we might as well see if we want it.”

From this year’s props, Isa acquired a little gray-white dog, Chanie took home reindeer wearing sparkly ballerina costumes (which currently grace her daughter’s bedroom), and Bracha kept the embroidered table runner.

But the real treasure they find isn’t the ornaments (or lack thereof).

As Bracha puts it, “After you’re forty, you’re done with high school, you’re not really so involved in PTA. Where do you have this opportunity to make really close friends?” By being on the props team for Rachel’s Place, of course.

Mirie’s kids tell her, “Ma, I hope I’m going to have such good friends when I’m your age.”

The team’s been through difficult times together, too. When one of them went through cancer treatment and recovered, they had a goodbye trip for the cancer. Their husbands have become friends “because they had to be,” Bracha says. They have “little shabbatons all the time.”

They tell their husbands, “Got to go do some chesed now.” They call it playtime. Their kids call it playgroup.

“The talent in our community is not to be believed,” Chanie adds. “And there’s no outlet for that talent except for this. Even our… interesting talent. What else would Bracha be doing every day in the thrift shop if she kept collecting and then there was no place to do this?”

These four women have discovered that the journey is more important than the destination. That the real magic isn’t turning junk into theater sets, staying wildly under budget, or creating worlds on stage that make audiences gasp (although they do all those things with brilliant panache).

It’s having the time of your life.

(Originally featured in Family First, Issue 983)