FEB
25

Now You See Her, Now You Don’t

By Christina Hamlett 

Former actress and director Christina Hamlett is an award-winning author whose credits to date include 52 books, 276 stage plays and squillions of articles on the performing arts.  www.authorhamlett.com. 

Special effects had not yet been invented during the time of William Shakespeare and yet a very simple device allowed actors to appear and disappear onstage as if by magic.  “Suspension of belief” is the underpinning of everything theatrical; specifically, audiences can be led to believe anything they are told.  For Shakespearean plays, this meant an actor could be standing in plain sight just six feet away from other actors in conversation but would be rendered totally invisible if he was never referred to.

Suspension of belief still governs everything we do when we produce a play, yet modern audiences have come to expect more bells and whistles from us when it comes to otherworldly effects.  Even though most school and community theatres weren’t constructed on Broadway budgets (i.e., fly-space, trapdoors, turntables, hydraulic lifts, etc.), there are still inexpensive ways to conjure disappearing acts in your show.

Dry ice

Carbon dioxide in solid form is my favorite go-to effect for spookiness.  When coupled with fog machines, the intensity of the “smoke” is a clever screen for actors to come and go out of thin air.  The warmer the water added to it, the thicker the effect.  Just make sure your stagehands know to wear oven mitts or use tongs and not handle directly.  Dry ice also has a short shelf-life and needs to be purchased the same day it will be used.

Walking through walls

Upstage walls can be rendered to look like one continuous section when, in fact, the downstage segment is actually angled and overlaps with just enough space for an actor to walk between.  The most effective way to carry this off is with a busy wallpaper pattern and lighting to mask the gap between the two panels.  Another effective trick using a supposedly solid wall is to incorporate narrow sliding doors through which actors can make surprise entrances and exits.  Whether you use dry ice or lighting as a distraction, audiences shouldn’t be able to tell there was a door in the middle of the wallpaper.

Creating excitement, frenzy, and confusion

Strobes constitute an instant mood-changer, amping up the energy onstage with fast flashing lights that speed up the action, emulate chaos, and create “holes” through which actors can easily vanish.  It should be strictly noted, however, that strobe lights can trigger seizures in actors, crew, or audience members who have epilepsy.  If you decide to incorporate them in a scene, be sure to include a warning of this in your program.

Pop-ups

In the absence of a trap door beneath the stage, take advantage of furniture which actors can crouch behind and emerge as a surprise.  Pretty simple, right?  Yet it embraces something which every successful magician practices; specifically, if the audience is looking in expectation in the opposite direction, you can pull off amazing tricks right in front of them.

Laser light show

What do cats and humans have in common?  If either of them sees a laser light playfully dancing across the floor or up the walls, their curiosity kicks in as to what it means and whether it can be caught.  In theatre, this provides a distraction in the darkness so that you can bring on characters to “materialize” in the space where audience members aren’t looking.

Don’t scrimp on scrim

When lit from the front, a painted piece of cheesecloth looks like an opaque wall.  When lit from behind, however, all manner of objects — and people — will magically appear as if in a different, ghostly dimension.  An especially spooky effect involves scrim stretched over a “mirror” frame mounted on the wall.

Blending in with your background

One of my favorite scenes in Sherlock Holmes:  A Game of Shadows is at the end when Robert Downey, Jr. has donned a body suit which perfectly matches the patterned upholstery in Watson’s office.  While you don’t have to go to those lengths to hide a character in plain sight, consider a hooded, floor-length black cape and have your actor face upstage against a black curtain in the same material.  At the crucial time — and with the add-ons of lighting and dry-ice — the actor need only shrug off the cape as he turns around.

Lights out

A lot can happen in the space of time that you go to blackout.  Murder mysteries use this a lot when, during a storm, someone in the group suddenly vanishes.  I also recommend working with your lighting crew to only illuminate portions of the stage where action is taking place.  As long as the actors who are seated or standing in the dark stay perfectly still, it will be a surprise to the audience when a spotlight comes up on them.

Body doubles

Last but not least is the addition of an extra actor in a crowd scene.  Back in my melodrama days, I once played a heroine who was shot by the villain and collapsed to the floor.  The horrified townsfolk rushed in to save me.  The audience completely missed that one of the female onlookers was wearing my same costume and took my place on the floor.  During a distraction on the other side of the stage, I slipped off stage right, ran across backstage, and emerged stage left just in time to see “me” being carried off.  Everyone in the audience did a double-take and had no idea how we orchestrated this.  As long as your two actors look enough alike and the double isn’t onstage long enough to invite scrutiny, it’s a fun way to create the illusion of being in two places at once!