Nifty and thrifty props and costumes

It is Siren's opening night tomorrow. I'm pleased to say that we are out of the lab and my character, Geoff, is ready for exposure - literally. Geoff will need to sit on a bed in the Etcetera Theatre in his pants.

I have identified a good pair of pants for Geoff - nothing too fashionable since he is a City Boy and would probably wear understated Calvin Kleins or Hugo Boss, not colourful Aussie Bums. 

Those I would not buy second hand (of course!) but yesterday, my wife and I found a fantastic suit shirt and two ties in a charity shop off the Twickenham high street for a fiver!

I would highly recommend scouring the charity shops for cheap costumes - you find some fairly exotic items in there and some that are suitably worn too if that is the desired effect. Buckled work boots. Battered satchels. Old spectacles.  Wrinkled leather gloves. Jeans so cheap you can pour fake blood all over them. The possibilities are endless in a good charity shop.

When I filmed Diego's Story, the directors Wayne Yip and Alex Garcia created the set in a flat by replacing the furniture with cheap household items off eBay that we could trash during filming. Even the widescreen TV was off eBay - it didn't work but it was there for the trashing - as we saw fit.

My co-star, Nicola Stuart-Hill, played my junkie girlfriend a great time pulling the contents off shelves while looking for stuff she could sell in the flat we were robbing. Marc Elliott had to watch 'his' flat being trashed while I got shot and sat on the couch with fake blood pouring out of my eBay jeans, soaking the upholstery on the eBay leather couch. I then flopped onto the floor like a wet fish making a right mess of the laminate in a pool of blood before dying with a manic stare and a gun in my hand.


And now Alex and Wayne have gone on to do great things - like make Would Like to Meet, which is being screened on Channel 4 on Thursday 12 August. Don't miss it; it's been nominated Critic's Choice for Thursday by The Sunday Times Magazine and The Observer has given it a great review too. It is incredibly moving.


So in terms of costume and props, with charity shops, eBay and a bit of imagination, even a low-budget production can have everything it needs for not very much money.

(And, if you're at a loss for something to do this week, come and see Siren starring me and Paula Gilbert, directed by Paul Blinkhorn and written by Peter Briffa...)