Props, Scenery, Costumes and Makeup: Prop Cigarettes

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Prop Cigarettes

Printed From: Community Theater Green Room
Category: Producing Theater
Forum Name: Props, Scenery, Costumes and Makeup
Forum Discription: For how-to's and where-can-I-find
URL: http://www.communitytheater.org/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=5624
Printed Date: 12/04/24 at 2:09pm
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Topic: Prop Cigarettes

Posted By: khupp1
Subject: Prop Cigarettes
Date Posted: 3/14/17 at 1:37am

So our High School is putting on the musical "Guys and Dolls". This show like most 1940's has actors appearing to smoke cigarettes. We originally wanted to use E-Cigs but we were told that the ban on smoking in public buildings includes E-Cigs in theatrical productions.

Our local tobacco shop gave us 26 empty cigarette tubes.
They have a filter and a white empty tube. I had some fine saw dust in our dust bag from our chop saw.

Armed with a low temp glue gun and the small diameter sticks. is put a little saw dust into the tube and packed it in with a spare glue stick. Once filled and packed to about the last 2-3 mm from the end, I put a glob of hot glue on the top of the saw dust, and then pushed the end of the cigarette into the saw dust to give the end of the cigarette that tobacco.

I have photos but cant seem to attach them to this post

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I am never to old to learn something new

Replies:

Posted By: jdunfee12
Date Posted: 8/27/18 at 4:20pm

I know this is far too late for your production. But, I've been thinking about this topic lately.

In general, I don't think that there is a lot of time for the actors in a play, to take a lot of puffs and exhale. (though there might be a specific area of dialog where a slow drag and exhale is specifically a thing to do). This is because they are more likely to be involved with dialog or dancing, etc.

So, you might get away with just pre-filling the area from a theatrical fog machine. To really sell the image, you might put burning incense in some ash trays. But, even the incense would likely be a problem for a school.

-Joe

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Joe Dunfee