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Details December
2000 Hunter Nesbitt Spence is about as close as you can come at Yale to a magician. Spence, a lecturer in technical design and production at the School of Drama, creates props for Yale plays, and over a University career that has spanned more than 30 years, he has created theatrical illusions that range from masks and fake fish to Shakespearian dream scenes and Yiddish folktale shtetls. In an entertainment world increasingly dominated by high-tech special effects, Spence uses and teaches techniques that are as old as the theater itself. "I weave baskets, do upholstery, make dragonfly wings out of wicker, and I'm pretty deadly at needlework," he explains, the soft drawl of his Southern childhood still present after three decades in Connecticut. Spence, who is in his mid-60s and formally "retired" last winter, grew up in Virginia, the son of parents who were adept at crafts. (His mother was a seamstress, his father a carpenter.) An aspiring musician as a teenager, he also became skilled at taxidermy, which he learned via a correspondence course. His facility at turning the dead waterfowl he was brought by neighborhood hunters into realistic specimens would later prove extremely useful. "Much of my inspiration comes from nature," he says, explaining the procedure that went into making the seagull for the Chekhov play of the same name. "You can't simply use a real gull, but because I knew birds, I could create a believable one out of millinery feathers and those of Peking ducks." Restless and realizing he didn't have the training to succeed at a music conservatory, Spence joined the Navy and, among other things, learned macrame. After the service, he completed a bachelor of fine arts degree in theater at Virginia Commonwealth University, and in 1969, he settled at Yale as propmaster of the Repertory Theatre. In the thick of Vietnam turmoil, one of Spence's first jobs was to develop the props for a particularly gory production of King Lear. Director Edward Bond's concept for the play called for an eyeball-extracting machine, a gruesome illusion the propmaster achieved with fake blood and grapes. "Dozens of people walked out, and several actually fainted," he recalled, chuckling about one of the more controversial nights at the theater. Spence is perhaps best known for the detailed masks he's made for numerous shows, as well as for a pair of nautical-inspired masks he created for a society fundraiser. "When you put on a mask, you enter another world," he says. "You can become another person, or another species." One of his favorite
projects, however, involved non-facial anatomy. With considerable
glee, Spence described how he cast penises for a variety of shows,
most recently the Sam Shepard play, The Curse of the Starving
Class. In his search for a source from which he could sculpt
a clay model, a trip to a local adult bookstore proved unfruitful,
so he turned instead to Playgirl magazine. "I can tell you
that all men definitely weren't created equal," he quips. "If you
can't laugh, you'll never exist in the theater."
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Yale
Alumni Magazine, PO Box 1905, New Haven, CT 06509-1905. USA.
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