Friday, March 29, 2024

A slice of Heaven

Posted

Gaylene Carpenter’s pies are literally Great Stuff.

They’re made with the insulating spray foam sealant that bears that name.

Carpenter, a Granbury school teacher and prop mistress for the Granbury Theatre Company, stayed up all night on Easter making a dozen assorted fake pies, all of which appear in a scene of “Seven Brides for Seven Brothers.”

The romantic comedy is on stage through May 27 at the Granbury Opera House.

Since there was no school the next day, Carpenter was able to sleep in. She teaches the Preschool Program for Children with Disabilities (PPCD) at Mambrino School.

The wife and mother of four grown kids (including a set of triplets) has a reputation among the GTC crew for having an amazing ability to find just the right props, even pieces from different time periods. But she also has a talent for figuring out how to make things, such as realistic-looking, mouth-watering pies.

“The most frustrating thing is they smell like cinnamon, and it’s like, man!” said costume designer Drenda Lewis.

The pies smell that way because they have real cinnamon on them, Carpenter said, though she covered the aromatic spice in sealant so that it won’t get on actors’ costumes.

Carpenter said there is “no recipe” for how to make fake pies that look real.

“Not to be funny,” she said, referring to the pun, “but, really, I just think of stuff in my head.”

She figured out that Gorilla Glue might be just the thing to give a pretend pecan pie the right “caramelly” look, and it was.

“The pecans are real,” said Carpenter, who lives with her husband Dan in Pecan Plantation. “They’re from my yard.”

Carpenter said that Great Stuff expands and that “you have to play with it but you can get it to look different ways.”

She said she used a serrated knife to make carvings that made the chess pie look real.

HISTORICALLY ACCURATE

Carpenter didn’t just write down a list of different kinds of pies and then make replicas. She researched what kinds of pies were made back in the mid-1800s.

“Seven Brides for Seven Brothers” is set on the Oregon frontier.

To Carpenter’s surprise, lemon meringue pie had been invented by that time period, so she made a look-alike for the stage.

For the blueberry pie, she used fake blueberries that were already among the GTC’s many props but gave them a fresh coat of paint.

All of the pie crusts are either modeling clay or Great Stuff, she said.

When it comes to props, there are things to consider besides the props themselves. For instance, Carpenter said that she was careful to use dull pie pans rather than shiny silver ones to avoid annoying reflections under the stage lights.

Lewis said that the trouble Carpenter went to with the pies is the same type of quality she inserts into everything she does at the historic Opera House.

“Each (pie) is individual, and a work of art,” Lewis said. “She does stuff that good for every single show. She goes out of the way to make things special.”

GOD AND GRANDMA

Carpenter, who has been managing props for the GTC since its production of “Hello, Dolly!” in May of 2016, feels that she has invisible helpers who always make sure she finds exactly what is needed for every show.

“It’s crazy because even in ‘Forever Plaid,’ God just plants things in places,” she said. “I know He’s helping me.”

She said she feels that her deceased grandmother is helping as well.

The “Forever Plaid” incident happened just weeks ago.

Carpenter, frugal to a fault, rescued from the trash bin tubes that had been used as dock posts in the sell-out “Mama Mia!”

When she put the tubes on a shelf in the recently reorganized prop room, one of the tubes rolled and bumped a record rack.

That was how Carpenter discovered the very album covers she needed for “Forever Plaid,” which was next in line in the GTC’s “Broadway on the Brazos” season.

TIRELESS PASSION

Carpenter said she received some help that Sunday night of the pie marathon from her son Josh’s girlfriend, Cessany Ford. The two had been at the family home for Easter dinner.

“She’s a sweet girl,” Carpenter said. “She helped with the raspberry pie.”

Most of the work, though, was done by Carpenter because “I kind of have a hard time sharing that stuff.”

Carpenter said she loves creating things. She also enjoys working through the night with just the radio and one of her cats as company.

“Once you get in the groove time isn’t anything,” she said. “You don’t even think about it. And when you love what you do it, it doesn’t matter. You don’t get tired.”