I was asked to sit in on a rehearsal for Something's Afoot last night. The tech was really very clever except for the poison gas that comes out of the phone.  They have a tube that is rigged to the phone with a hand operated air pump. The problem is when they used a colored smoke it didn't dissipate and hung in the room. They have tried flour and cornstarch but both don't read very well. Does anyone have any suggestions?

Thank you.

Linda

Does it have to be gas?

I saw a production of "Something's Afoot" where either they attempted substituting baby powder for gas, or they rigged it up wrong.

When the poor victim held the phone to his face, he got sprayed with a mouthful of fluffy white powder.  He gagged and choked (rather convincingly, I thought) and then died dramatically.  It was still surprise and delight to the audience, who certainly weren't expecting it.

The other actors continued the scene, instead of detecting poison gas, they referred to it as "powdered poison." 

Like I said, I don't know if it was intentional or not, but it served it purpose.

In our last production of this show I was assigned the job of making all the effects work.  The phone was fun.  We used an old fashioned crank phone where the hand set is held to the ear and the user speaks into the wall unit.  This worked great for this gag.  we just filled the had piece with baby powder and ran a hose from the hand piece through the wall.  When the Dr. picked up the hand piece to listed we sent a burst of air from our air compressor through the line sending a puff of powder that covered his entire face.  Be careful that too much powder isn't used as it might be a slip hazzard later in the show.