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The gut-wrenching wait to see if his guns will fire makes Jim Bussolati break into a marathon sweat. “I can’t do anything about it from the audience, just cross my fingers and hope it goes off,” the LSU Department of Theatre props master says of his stage firearms.

A native of Gulfport, Miss., Bussolati grew up an Army brat and enlisted himself in the 1980s. Before he enrolled in a props graduate program at North Carolina School for the Arts, Bussolati worked offshore and several years as a nurse in Winston-Salem, N.C.

“Being a jack-of-all-trades has helped,” he says. “You have to know a lot about a little and a little about a lot.”

Going on his fifth year at LSU, Bussolati has strong relationships with local antique dealers and thrift stores, and a network of acquaintances send their junk to him instead of throwing it out.

This fall, two future props specialists will work under him as his department’s first graduate students. Until now he has largely worked alone. “I’ll have help, which will be good,” he says. “Props are becoming more specialized and professional, instead of being treated as an afterthought thrown on stage.”