A few months back, two men walked into the Spotlight Playhouse with a pitch that sounded almost too good to be true. They wanted to build our props. Not sell them to us. Build them, and let us rent them, so a community theater could have real, character driven pieces without the kind of budget that usually keeps those pieces out of reach.
That is how I met Ken Koshman and Albert Lindsay. They are brothers in law, and they run a family maker venture they call Camp Creations. What started as a hobby has quietly become one of the most useful things happening behind our curtains.
Albert has been a maker his whole life. He grew up with a single mom and not much money. When Star Wars hit in the late 1970s, he wanted the toys the other kids had. He could not have them, so he built his own. The AT AT walker became a Kleenex box for the body, cereal boxes for legs, a toilet paper tube for the neck, and toothpicks for guns. The Walkman he could not afford became foam, a coat hanger, and string. If he could not buy it, he figured out how to make it.
For years that instinct went to work in other places. Albert spent close to twenty five years in security and did construction and woodworking on the side. Then health got in the way. He lives with conversion disorder and PTSD, and a regular job is no longer on the table. What he found instead was a 3D printer.
He first saw them on YouTube while visiting family in California. He bought a Bambu Lab A1, printed a small gift for Ken, and the spark caught. Ken got one. Albert’s sister wanted one. Their mom, not to be left out, got a little A1 mini for her desk. A family that makes things together had a new tool.
Both men are movie people. Albert built his own lightsaber and a replica of the hero pistol from the 1982 film Blade Runner, the kind of deep cut that takes real research. He will tell you about Adam Savage and the rule that every prop has a backstory. That rule shows up in everything they build for us.
They came to Spotlight the way a lot of good things here start. Albert saw a show, thought the props could be better, got my number, and came by the theater to pitch the idea. I introduced them to our directors. Luke Madden brought them onto Wolves of Sherwood for the Bluegrass Players.
What they built for that show is something else. Every weapon is built for the character holding it. One broken sword was designed as if a character had found it snapped and filed the stub sharp. The Sheriff’s gear carries a snake motif pulled straight from the script, right down to a serpent headed pommel on the sword. They even shaped a working hickory longbow for Robin, then agreed it stays decorative because somebody would absolutely put an eye out. There are severed fingers and darker effects for a play that earns its grown up rating.
At the same time, they were building for the Spotlight Acting School’s Seussical the Musical. That workshop produced a baby grand piano and stool, a judge’s stand, a television, and a helicopter that was still taking shape when we talked. Two shows, two troupes, one workbench, all in the same season.
Here is the part I did not see coming. When an actor had to step away from Wolves of Sherwood, Ken stepped in and took the role of Guy of Gisborne. The man building the swords ended up swinging one of them on stage. We have the production still to prove it.
I will be honest. I did not know much about Ken and Albert when they showed up. They just kind of popped in, nice as could be, and started doing the work. That is the real story of community theater. It runs on people who show up, figure out how to make the thing, and ask if you want it rented or built.
If you sit in that audience this season, look close at the props. A good number of them started as an idea in a Madison County workshop, built by two guys who simply refused to let ‘we can’t afford it’ be the end of the story.