VIDEO: Take a dive into Aladdin's cave - Chichester Festival Theatre prop store

​Katie Hennessy, prop store co-ordinator for Chichester Festival Theatre, presides over the most remarkable collection of thousands and thousands of items – all grist to a theatrical mill somewhere. Housed in a huge warehouse facility on the Terminus Road industrial estate since August 2021, it’s a mind-boggling treasure trove featuring everything from vintage telephones and suitcases to period tables and chairs, from artificial foodstuffs to chandeliers, from crockery to garden tools, and from sports equipment to coffins. Yes, coffins…

Katie’s role is to serve the CFT’s productions working closely with the props supervisors for the various shows, but she also oversees hiring out the items to a broad range of customers – a wide range of amdram groups, the University of Chichester, Chichester College and a whole host of parties and weddings requiring that extra special something as part of their celebrations. “I've been doing it for about ten years,” Katie says. “I trained as a stage manager and then I worked all over the country and I finished up in London at Shakespeare's Globe as a senior stage manager. And then I had my first child and the hours of stage management and childcare didn't really mix! My husband is a production manager and he was working down here. We had a second child and we decided to move down. But I really missed working in the theatre, and basically I made them give me this job!”

Initially it was just a store, in the building which was once Chichester's electric cinema on the Northgate roundabout: “But I persuaded them to start hiring things out and I grew the business and luckily we moved to this new store about 18 months ago because the old store was very leaky and didn't have any facilities. You couldn't really see what we had to its full advantage and it was quite hard to hire things out when you were having to look in dark corners. We made the decision to move and we packed up the whole store throughout the lockdown. It was like moving house x100!” The move has meant a complete transformation: “I have got an office and I've got Wi-Fi and I have got running water! But the main thing is that we can see our stock much better. It is brilliant to show people what we have much more easily.” And it’s a collection that runs into thousands and thousands of items: “We have got hundreds of glasses. We've got compact mirrors and binoculars. We've got teapots and silver coffee pots and loads of different types of glasses and sheets and pillow cases. It's divided into two halves – props and the big furniture.” And it is a growing collection: “We had some stock but each show has a prop supervisor who is a freelancer and works really closely with the designer and they source what they need. They might hire it or they might buy it or they might use what we have got and when the show ends it comes back to me unless it's going on somewhere with a show. I've just got the South Pacific props back.” So essentially it’s a store which grows with every show: “But we also get donations from people that have passed away or from people who are going into a home.” Anyone wishing to use the prop hire can get in touch via www.cft.org.uk/prop-hire

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