Meet Trey Blevins of New York

Today we’d like to introduce you to Trey Blevins.

Trey, we appreciate you taking the time to share your story with us today. Where does your story begin?
My sister did theater in high school so when I got there, I did theater too, but I wound up liking it a whole lot more than she did. In my junior year, the drama club took a trip from Dayton, Ohio to The Civic Theater in Grand Rapids, Michigan and I had such a good time in the prop workshop that the man leading it, Michael Wilson, offered me an internship the following summer. I worked with him for two weeks on “All Shook Up” and “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland”. I graduated from Carroll High School during the pandemic and I had no plans on going to college so I decided to move to Michigan in January of 2021. I sold my car and bought a van, which I lived in, while working with Michael Wilson at the Civic again, gaining as much experience as I could in prop fabrication. I also worked a number of other jobs (at the front desk at Planet Fitness, as a scare actor in a haunted house, as a farmhand at a small farm, etc.) until I saved up enough money to move to Los Angeles, which I did in January of 2022 after swapping the van for a more practical car. In LA I mostly worked as an audience coordinator on sitcoms, talk shows, and film premiers, but I also worked in the burlesque scene with Miss Tosh. I was her stage manager and talent manager, but my favorite part was being her prop master, and I even ran my own cabaret show on Hollywood Boulevard. When the WGA strike happened, my position as an audience coordinator was one of the few that didn’t continue to be paid. When the strike ended the work never really picked up the same so I decided to sell my car and move to New York, where I knew theater would be more accessible to me again. Since moving, I’ve spent two summers working as a prop designer at Stage Door Manor, a summer camp upstate, and I’ve done prop design, set design, and carpentry around the city. I’ve been the prop head on “Sweeney Todd” at Columbia, a number of original plays, and even Anne Washburn’s Off-Broadway show “The Burning Cauldron of Fiery Fire”.

Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
Graduating into the pandemic wasn’t the most convenient thing in the world, but I’m hardly the only person who had to deal with that. Living in two high cost-of-living cities has been a struggle, especially as an artist, though I knew what I was getting myself into. I am also a writer and while I do have a literary manager, I haven’t made any money off of my writing yet. I’ve finished two novels that I have not been able to find representation for, two screenplays that no studios are interested in yet, and several plays that remain unpublished and unproduced. Working in props also has not been supremely easy as the work, which is scarce, is often low-paying. But if I was in it for the money I would’ve been an engineer or something more sensible. I’d rather be a broke artist than a wealthy finance manager. Of course, I’d also rather be a wealthy artist than a broke artist, but beggars can’t be choosers.

Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
As far as props go, I specialize in non-traditional puppetry and prop food. One of my favorite challenges I’ve faced was putting together a production of “The Old Man and the Old Moon”— a show that uses a lot of shadow puppets— in-the-round, which is the only kind of stage where the use of shadow puppets becomes essentially impossible. I had to find ways to translate all of the shadow puppets three-dimensional puppets, including a few in a scene where a giant fish eats a man. And in terms of prop food, most productions try to use fake food whenever possible, but “Top Girls” requires the actors to order and eat a whole three course meal onstage. For this I had to put most of my prop-food knowledge aside and shift into more traditional culinary arts, especially for one vegan actor whose character orders “steak, rare, extra bloody.” For her, I cut slices of watermelon into steak shapes and painted them with a food-safe coloring. I heard later that the actor’s father, who had come to see the show, was surprised to see her eating meat, so I guess my fake steak looked quite convincing.

Where we are in life is often partly because of others. Who/what else deserves credit for how your story turned out?
Michael Wilson was the man who taught me most everything I know about props and much about life in general— a friend inside and outside of the theater. Once I got to New York, Reiley Duffy picked up right where Michael left off. They’re both active prop artists themselves and I wouldn’t be half the artist I am now without their experience and support. For my writing, it’s the people who read what I’m working on. Keelin Gaughan reads every version of everything I write over and over. I also owe a lot to Eloise Bennett, Kaylee Ruvalcaba, Harley Miniard, and whoever else I can convince to skim a rough draft. If nobody engaged with what I was doing, I wouldn’t have any reason to do it, and while I’m still waiting for the general public to get onboard with my stories, I am eternally grateful for the people close to me who are fans of my work already. And God knows I put my parents through a lot— passing up college and moving three times (across the country twice) to do art— but they’ve never wavered once in their support of me.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.propsandsuch.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/treyblevins_writing/

Image Credits
Carol Rosegg