Our theatre prohibits all flame and smoke, which leaves me in a bit of a pickle, since Paul and DePinna are supposed to be working on fireworks in the basement, and they bring up their "red fire" to show off.  Does anyone know something we can use that will produce a cool effect without flame or smoke?  I know we can fake it with lighting, but I'd like something a bit niftier than that.

 

TIA!

 

I would try to find a red strobing bicycle light that can fit into a pan or bowl- that would create light on actor's faces.  Smoke for the effect is a different matter- there are small smoke/vapor devices available, maybe you can find one of the smaller ones that an actor can have on their body, and then have a tube go from the smoker, down a sleeve, to have smoke coming from close to the pan.  I believe the scene calls for the effect to come on stage while burning, then be put down on a table.  For the suggestion of the fact that the family deals with this all the time, have metal trivets around for the pan toland on. 

 

I wonder if a similar idea could launch and retract the silk from a sleeve?  I know that magicians have tubes up sleeves for silks scarves.  If not silk, then mylar. 

 

The launch could be a variation on the party noisemaker that rolls and unrolls quickly.  Perhaps the actor thrusts his arm down and out flicking the wrist, so that the silk/mylar unrolls and then palms the device when it rolls up.  Perhaps you take a real party noisemaker --remove the noise maker itself--and put a red silk sleeve over the rolled up tube

 

One of those Halloween  flaming silk cauldrons might work as well with red gels and most of the other lights off.

 

For the conflagration in the basement I fed a separate substantial sound system backstage with a sub-woofer the sounds of a bunch of explosions and pops with a little reverb that I complied in an audio editing program. The same sound was fed to a disco lighting machine in "color organ mode" with 4 different colors (reds and oranges) just outside the door to the basement. To ad a little sparkle to the effect I made up a bar of four single use cameras and rewired them to a "nail board" so that I could randomly flash them, and they got gels as well. Just after the effect started, I let out a fairly short burst of smoke that sort-of billowed into the room toward the end. It was pretty effective.

 

I have not tried it, but yo may be able to fill a trash bag from a smoke machine outside and then squeeze the bag to release the smoke. That may be controlled enough that it won't set off the alarms in the management or the theater.

 

Good luck