Buying props and costumes for your drama team can and does happen for one of two reasons, reasons that are not unlike shopping for certain other things in life:
1. You need them for a certain drama coming up;
2. They're really cool/amazing/cute/cheap.
It may seem the wiser course to only buy props and costumes using the first reason. The only problem with that strategy is you're likely to accumulate a number of props that only have one use for that one scene.
When you buy for the second reason, you end up looking for excuses to use that cool/amazing/cheap/cute item as often as possible in order to justify your purchase. When you're on a budget (and we all are, right?), it's wise not only to apply this thinking to the items you don't really need, but the ones that you needed just that one time.
The drama closet at the church where I served for seven years accumulated a number of strange props. Some fell to the bottom of the closet. Many of them saw repeated use. We wrote as many scripts as we could to use and re-use the things we had on hand, and only went out to buy when we absolutely had to. Thus the two lab coats, the Snow White dress, the prom gowns, the monks robe (which we split down the front to turn into a Jedi robe), and even the make-shift gorilla costume were used as often as possible.
When I first saw Clive the Zombie online, I didn't even think about buying him. As cool as he was, I didn't have anything for a zombie puppet. Over the following weeks, I began to get ideas. I started talking to friends about doctoring up a normal puppet into a zombie. Once I knew he was worth the investment, I went back and bought him. He's been featured in 5 shorts, with two more on the way, and he's been a hit at film festivals. He was the right find at the right time, as I had just wrapped the Fluffy series and wanted to find something new to use in producing films for the festival circuit.
It's our responsibility to use the resources we have wisely. Using the heck out of the props and costumes we need and want is not only a good way to stretch your budget, it will challenge you creatively. And who knows what might come of that!
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