Alumna does a plum good job of making pies for 'Waitress'

Alumna does a plum good job of making pies for 'Waitress'

Assistant stage manager Marlee Shelton was one of 10 props artisans featured in national theater magazine this fall.

By Janel Shoun-Smith | 615-966-7078 | 12/02/2024

From blueberries to sawdust, Marlee Shelton (BFA '22) knows her way around a good pie.

Since graduating, Shelton, a local props designer and stage manager for Nashville theater productions, has been working steadily on shows and art installations, but this past fall she faced her biggest challenge yet: making 32 fake pies for the Nashville Repertory Theatre's production of Waitress.

When the Broadway musical Waitress began to hit regional theater stages across the nation this past fall, including at the Nashville Repertory Theatre, Shelton found herself deep into pie-making (and pie-buying) as well as creating and keeping track of hundreds of additional props and set adornments needed to bring the musical to life.

"This was by far the most challenging project I've gotten to work on. I've done props before many times, but never to this scale," said Shelton, who has worked for Studio Tenn, Nashville Shakespeare Festival and several Repertory productions before Waitress this past September.

She served as both assistant stage manager, coordinating all the backstage activity, and the prop designer, doing everything from creating a "photorealistic" three-tier wedding pie and creating fake egg yolks for ingredients usable on stage to framing 12 Little League team photos to hang on the walls of the diner set.

"A diner seems like a very simple setting, but you've got forks, plates, mugs and menus, and we're doing choreography with these things, so we're tracking all of it and making sure it lands in the same place every time. So the actual number of props in the show was enormous," said Shelton.

Various props included a patriotic Paul Revere pie-topper for the wedding, a notice board in the hallway of the diner with photos of missing pets and advertisements and, of course, lots of pies.

There was "My Husband's a Jerk Chicken Pot Pie," "Meet Your Dream Chocolate Pie," "Blueberry Deep Dish Bacon Pie," "Mermaid Marshmallow Pie" and that three-tiered pie is called "A Big Ol' Slice of Live Your Life Pie."

In addition to playing her role as "the person with all the stuff," Shelton also found herself mentioned in a September article in American Theatre magazine as one of 10 prop masters across the nation working on regional productions of Waitress.

Shelton and technical director/scenic designer Gary Hoff were quoted in the article about experimenting with insulation, air-dried clay and foam to capture the texture of the stage pies. Shelton also said she had been playing with shredded cork for savory pie filling and sawdust for coconut shavings.

"The pies were a really fun experiment in texture and sculpting," said Shelton. They often need to look wet, without being wet, and they need to be lightweight and "actor-proof" since props sometimes get dropped on stage, she said.

She used insulation foam to give some pies a domed look but the spongy, cheap material is also carvable for decorations. Fake fruit from the crafts store, party necklace beads of varying sizes and marbles were often used to simulate edible decor. Frosting and cream pies were made from plumber's caulk, which she discovered recreates the movement of toppings without cracking or breaking up when dropped.

The chicken pot pie was made of upholstery foam to add extra dome to the crust. Bacon in the blueberry bacon pie is hardened and painted hot glue. Clay, paint and glue round out the ingredients for Shelton's stage pies.

"If everything is too uniform, then it looks fake, and we want the audience to think it's a real pie on stage. I think that we accomplished that," she said.

In some cases, actors had to eat part of the pies, in which case that particular part of the pie had to be real. In other cases the entire pie had to be real, which kept crew members busy buying pies at local groceries.

"We probably ran all the Walmarts in Nashville dry of their fresh blueberry and apple pies over the course of September," said Shelton.

On top of that, sometimes the script called for characters to bake on stage, which required fake ingredients. Those fake egg yolks were actually peaches in corn syrup.

"I definitely will wait a while before I do another show with food again," laughed Shelton. "I left the theater very sticky every night because of how many consumables were in this show."

Shelton is used to such trials on the job. Since graduating, her first job was working on Smoke on the Mountain for Studio Tenn. Her entree into the Nashville Repertory Theatre was as a stage managing apprentice on the show Violet. She has worked as a carpenter, stage manager or props artisan with both theaters for several productions since then.

She has also worked building scenery for Nashville Shakespeare Festival's MacBeth and stage managing for the Kindling Arts Festival, among other jobs.

While at Lipscomb, Shelton worked on props and stage managed for Crazy for You, props and stage managed for Mamma Mia!, built sets for Songs for a New World and learned her trade from then-Lipscomb technical director Chelsea Flowers (BFA '13), who is now technical director for Nashville Repertory Theatre. In another turn of fate, Shelton's husband Hendrick Shelton (BFA '20) is now the technical director at Lipscomb.

"Chelsea taught me everything I needed to know in terms of carpentry and welding, and how you create what you're trying to create with very simple technology, because most theaters are always on a budget," said Shelton. "We have to be very mindful of how we're using our resources.

"I learned a lot in the scene shop at Lipscomb about technical drawings, how to read them and how to plan them. I need to be able to say, 'Here's how much material I will need for this,' so that I can go to my production manager and say 'Here's how much money I need to build this.'"

"The Lipscomb Theatre Department provides a lot of opportunities for you to become a well-rounded theater professional," said Shelton. "So I came out of college with the skills to take on a lot of different types of jobs, and that's part of why I've been able to work so much. They really set me up just right to be able to take on jobs, right after graduating."

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