I am not familiar with the play, Dana. What size do the eggs needs to be, and how many? I have one half/egg prop that we used to make the elephant bird pop out at the end of Seussical, but it is only large enough for a puppet.
-Tim

Did you find the eggs you are looking for or did you make some. We just finished our show and have 5 four ft tall eggs that that actors broke out of

I am with a group in south georgia~struggling to make these eggs (mommies) and would love to use your eggs for our May 21 and May 22 production of HONK!

The eggs I built for my production are already out on loan for a production in the first week of June.  Sorry.

Edited by Mr. Lowell - 4/15/10 at 11:32am

OK, here is how I designed my production of HONK!

First of all, keep in mind that this was a low budget school play with a 5th and 6th grade cast and crew, so I had to keep it a rather "bare stage" design. You may have much more time or money, so you might want to go a totally different route.

The "egg shells" are critical to HONK, (much like the car in GREASE or the big plant in LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS). As you may have read above, at first I had hoped to simply rent some good ones, but none were available.

Then I wanted to build some high-tech fiberglass eggs at my brother's boat shop, but I wasted too much time looking for rentals to get into that. So about a week before Tech Rehearsal, a parent volunteer and I rigged together some eggs with "old school" theatrical techniques.   These eggs were not nearly as fancy as I had originally dreamed, but they were the expedient thing to do in a pinch. (And besides, this was a just little "kiddie show", right?)


OK, above is my snapshot of the finished product. The musical called for five eggs...four for ducklings and a large one for "Ugly" the swan.


As you can see, the egg shells needed to be large enough to hide the kids, yet lightweight enough for the kids to easily open during a scene.

(By the way, I don't think an adult cast could fit into my eggs).


The fifth egg was purposely larger, and painted to look different than the others. Here the boy playing "Ugly" pops out of his shell. (Of course you will notice the ultra-minimalistic costuming style used in this production).

Like I said, we used a super-simple and low-tech way of constructing the eggs. The cost for all five eggs was under $100.00 total.


First we bought two large rolls of 3/4" diameter PVC lawn irrigation tubing and cut it into lengths. As you can see in this top-view photo, these lengths are quickly and cheaply connected into egg shapes using 1" drywall screws.


At the intersections, the lengths of PVC tubing were joined with the plastic couplers intended for such plumbing.   What you see here are the two horizontal rings that will help create the "crack" between the upper shell and the lower shell.


Here, my parent volunteer cuts out the household window screen material that we used to cover the eggs. This formed the curved egg shape over the skeleton of tubing and this screen will later be the foundation for attaching the fabric skin of the eggs.


As you can plainly see on the right-hand egg, the top and bottom of the eggs were separated by a 5" tall ring of flexible 1/16" thick "Masonite" fiberboard panelling. This section is needed to create the zig-zag cracks between the broken egg shells. The next step in the process is also illustrated in the photo above. Notice that the left-hand egg has the window screen already stapled on, plus the middle ring has a fresh coating of "Great Stuff" spray foam insulation applied to it. This foam will give the zig-zag "cracks" the necessary thickness needed for each top shell to rest securely on its bottom shell.


Then I covered all the eggs with torn scraps of theatrical muslin fabric using Sculpt-or-Coat theatrical glue. This is the same process as doing a "paper mache" project. I got the kids on the Tech Crew to help me with this part, and they really enjoyed getting all messy.   

NO PICS: I don't have photos of the next steps, but after the muslin dried, we used a reciprocating saw to cut out the zig-zag teeth in along the cracks. That was a fun and creative part of the project. I sealed the exposed styrofoam along the zig-zag cracks with a good coating of Sculpt-or-Coat. Then we painted the eggs inside and out with several coats of donated latex paint, (which doubled as a flame retardant).


Here the crew shows how the shell tops rest on the bottoms, (much like how the lid of a jack-o-lantern sits on the top of a pumpkin).

Since the zig-zag "cracks" on each shell are unique, I had to mark a reference point on the inside of each top and each bottom using spray paint. I also sprayed a number inside the two sections of each shell so the crew would not get the parts mixed up. The bottoms of my eggs were wide-open so the actors were always standing firmly on the stage floor. They had an opportunity to climb inside and put their lid on just before the scene began.


I was not concerned about making the bottoms of the eggs "rounded" like real eggs, because the eggs needed to sit flat on the stage floor. Besides, as you can see in the photo above, the flat bottoms of the shells were hidden from view behind a ground-row "chicken pen" anyway.

Our eggs were simple and cheap.  More details about the other props to come...

It was a fun and easy show for all. -Dana

Edited by Mr. Lowell - 8/20/10 at 9:44am