Wayne Smith, longtime prop master at the Theatre School at DePaul University, dead at 65
Wayne Smith once bought a goat, fed it by bottle, let it live in his office and took it for walks around Lincoln Park late at night to avoid passersby who invariably would want to talk about him walking a goat around Lincoln Park.
Such was his devotion to his craft as the prop master for the Theatre School at DePaul University.
Students had needed a goat for a play — "Curse of the Starving Class." So he made it happen.
"There were a couple of nights he stayed at the office just to keep the animal company," said Gerry Reynolds, a former colleague and his best friend.
The goat was purchased from a suburban farm and later donated back to the same farm. But, for a time, it lived in a pen that had a plywood floor covered in blankets that were covered in hay.
Mr. Smith died April 17 from cancer. He was 65.
The goat and its pen might not have been the most interesting thing in his office, where he'd constantly tinker to get things just right for performances.
Like getting the proper consistency of fake blood. It had to ooze into clothing at the site of the fake gunshot wound on stage. But it also had to splatter onto nearby objects.
Too watery? Then, it wouldn't appear properly red. Too thick? It would clog the nozzle of a carefully concealed blood cannon that, with the push of a button and a spurt of pressurized air, would launch a stream of fake blood. There also was the matter of being able to easily clean the costumes and scenery so as not to interfere with putting on the same production the following night.
Mr. Smith curated a bursting-at-the-seems collection of objects that filled all available space in his office, plus a warehouse. He kept thick binders he could consult to determine the precise storage location of a certain set of dishes that one might find in an Irish cottage or a particular type of old-style rotary phone. But the most complete guide existed for years in his head before ending up on any database.
He knew whether a couch or dishwasher that seemed old actually was old enough to fit a certain era. And he didn't hesitate to call out anachronistic objects.
"He had the tendency to appreciate the history of objects, and he would get frustrated if directors and designers did not adhere to the time period," said Jen Leahy, the theater school's technical director.
"As part of his job, he was a professional hoarder," said Reynolds, who worked with Mr. Smith as foreman of the scenery shop. "His office was a miracle of organized clutter."
Model airplanes hung from his ceiling. His shelves were stuffed with a variety of glues, tools and fabric.
If a show was about flowers, his office might look like a garden. If there was a show centering on origami, his space became a zoo of colored paper.
His workshop contained about 160 clamps of all sizes. He used machines, some that he researched and built himself, to mold and cast plastic and other materials into things like light fixtures and breakables — theater-speak for items meant to be safely smashed on stage, like bottles or plates.
Mr. Smith went to work for DePaul in 1982, operating out of several spaces over the years, including the converted gymnasium of an old Catholic school in Lincoln Park, until the theater school's facility at Fullerton and Racine avenues opened in 2013. He helped with that big move, then retired the next year.
If he couldn't build, buy or rehab a needed prop, he tapped fellow prop masters who'd share their inventory.
"He loved working with his hands and figuring things out, and he was very proud of what he could pull together on a budget," said his sister Leslie Fishel. "He would not take trips for himself and use vacation to sit back and relax. He'd rather be going to flea markets and finding things he could use for props."
His yearly getaway was to the United States Institute for Theatre Technology conference, where he'd take part in panel discussions and stop by the booth run by the Society of Prop Masters, of which he was a member.
"Where his personal and professional life started and ended was debatable because he was so devoted to the job," Leahy said.
Tim Combs, the theater school's scenic designer, said, "He worked long hours, regularly covered in paint and sawdust, and sometimes I would have to tell him to go home."
That would be to Mr. Smith's condo in Lake View a couple of blocks from Lake Michigan.
"What we did at DePaul for the theater school was to take the dreams of young playwrights and directors and attempt to turn them into reality, and Wayne was a miracle worker at that," Reynolds said.
"When I first met Wayne, he was perched over a barber's chair in the process of covering a student's head in plaster, with two straws sticking out of this kids nose, in order to make a casting for a show that required the head of the character to be displayed after his death."
He said he and Mr. Smith soon found they operated on the same wavelength. At the end of a week, they'd invariably catch each other's eye and gleefully scream, "It's Friday!" Which could be terrifying if they were in the presence of the uninitiated.
For Halloween in 1992, Mr. Smith and Reynolds dressed as Laurel and Hardy, the comedic duo whose partnership began in the silent film era.
"He insisted we do research, so we got a hold of movies and interviews and studied mannerisms, and we practiced skit after skit after skit just so we weren't two guys standing on a corner," Reynolds said.
"We'd walk in to a bar with sheets with holes cut in them over our costumes, and we'd take off the sheets and get ourselves all tangled up and sit at the bar. And Wayne would take out a tiny squeeze coin purse to buy one beer with two straws and one shot with two smaller straws."
They resurrected the costumes 10 years later, and hardly anyone knew who they were supposed to be, according to Reynolds, "But we impressed some old people."
Mr. Smith was born Sept. 22, 1958, to David and Sylvia Smith. His mother was a lab technician who assisted in breast cancer research at the University of Chicago. His father was a salesman for a company that sold printing equipment.
Raised in Hyde Park, he developed a love for theater and set furnishing while attending the University of Chicago Lab Schools and as a college student at the University of Illinois.
"He just loved working with his hands, and he was quite smart, but he'd rather be making or doing something instead of sitting behind a desk thinking about it," his sister said.
Mr. Smith wasn't a DePaul faculty member, but he was constantly teaching his tricks of the trade to theater students, among them actor John C. Reilly.
Mr. Smith, who was over 6-feet-4-inches tall, ran marathons and competed in triathlons in his younger days and loved baseball and football.
A memorial is being planned.