In this month’s Society of Properties Artisan Managers’ S*P*A*Minar, S*P*A*M welcomed Eimer Murphy all the way from Dublin. In this S*P*A*Minar, you will hear all about her experiences as the Prop Master at the Abbey Theatre, the National Theatre of Ireland and speak about the Abbey Prop Rooms as ‘material culture’ of the Abbey Theatre. She shows documents from the Abbey archive such as prop lists and scripts, and gave an introduction to the Dublin tenements, the 1916 Rising and the ‘Rising play’: The Plough and the Stars. In case you missed it or would like to rewatch it, here is a video replay of this S*P*A*Minar with Eimer Murphy:
Murphy is the current Prop Master of the Abbey Theatre, Ireland’s National Theatre. Her theatre career began in 1995, when, as a stage manager on her first fringe show, she was handed twenty pounds to get all the show props and was told to ‘bring back the change’. In this sink or swim situation, Murphy stayed afloat by begging, borrowing, bartering, and making all of the props herself, and was thus bitten by the prop bug.
In 2007, Murphy joined the Abbey Theatre as a full-time prop maker/set dresser, working alongside legendary Abbey Prop Master, Stephen Molloy.
As a member of both the Irish Society for Theatre Research, and the European Federation of Associations and Centres of Irish Studies, Murphy has presented original research papers on prop-related topics and is author of a chapter entitled Props to the Abbey Prop Man, a tribute to Stephen Molloy who retired in early 2019 after 41 years at the Abbey. The chapter appears in the recently published Palgrave Handbook of Contemporary Irish Theatre.
S*P*A*M is requesting pay-what-you-can donations to support the S*P*A*Minar programming. All money collected will be used to offset webinar operation costs with additional funds going to our annual grant program for early career prop people. Suggested donation amount is $3. Donations can be made via PayPal Money Pool here: https://bit.ly/SPAMinarMoneyPool
Eimer Murphy appears by kind permission of the Abbey Theatre.
