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Fire in the House

By Christina Hamlett 

Former actress and director Christina Hamlett is an award-winning author whose credits to date include 52 books, 278 stage plays and squillions of articles on the performing arts.  www.authorhamlett.com. 

During the 19^th century, public safety measures such as smoke detectors, sprinkler systems, and well-labeled fire exits didn’t exist in vaudeville houses and theatres.  Thus, it’s understandable that if patrons noticed a freak spark, saw a tipped candle, or believed an optical illusion was an actual flame, their first impulse was to yell, “Fire!”  Ultimately the panic, which ensued in a stampede, often led to more deaths than if a real fire had been present.

Now and again a script will call for flames in a fireplace, flickering tapers, or even a red-hot inferno outside a window.  Fortunately, you have some easy and budget-friendly materials and effects at your disposal — none of which will set off alarms, singe your actors’ fake beards, or even melt ice cream.  Theatre, after all, is an adventure in both illusion and suspension of belief.  If your audience believes it’s a real fire, it most certainly is.

Into the woods

What’s a campground setting without songs and s’mores around a DIY fire with branches and twigs?  At the center of this prop is nothing complicated — just red LED lightbulbs, which give off a cozy warm glow.  To emulate warm embers, paint the pieces of wood (which can be cardboard tubes) with orange, red, and yellow fluorescent paint.  Fill in the gaps with crinkles of colored cellophane and flame cut-outs from tissue or construction paper.

Dancing flames

Whether it’s a camp scene or a roaring blaze in the fireplace of a manor house, all you need are narrow and various-sized strips of yellow, red, and orange silk, a light source and a simple fan.  Tie each end of the silk strips to a wire grill and position a fan directly underneath and out of sight of the audience.  Project red light on the interior walls of the fireplace.  The speed of the fan will affect the intensity of the “flames,” but just be aware it will also make things nosier and may need to be covered up with music or other sound effects.  The addition of a mirror on the back wall of the fireplace will intensify the look of the burning fire.  At the upper end of the budget but not unrealistic, you might consider investing in an electric fireplace from venues such as TouchStone Home Products, Lowes, or Home Depot.  Easy and inexpensive to operate, they can yield years of use for future productions and add an authentic touch to any indoor scene.

Candlelight and lanterns

Battery-operated candles are very inexpensive, and many have a “flicker” option.  (Note:  Halloween is a good time to stock up on these for future productions.)  For lanterns, battery-operated pillar candles are a smart choice.  Peasants storming the castle with pitchforks and big torches?  The latter can be fashioned from mesh and papier mâché and streaked with fluorescent paint and glitter.

Where there’s fire, there’s...  water!

This technique calls for an ultrasonic humidifier which uses distilled water to produce a fine mist.  When attached to a piece of capped PVC piping with drilled holes of varying sizes and lit from behind with yellow or orange lights, the shimmer creates a convincing fire effect.

Don’t forget the smoke

Flicker flames and dry ice can be combined for both fireplace effects and conflagrations outside a window.  Specifically, a motorized disc with cut-out triangles and cone shapes spins in front of a section of pebbled glass.  Dry ice is introduced and the effect is such that the fake smoke is perceived to be rising from the flames.  This, of course, requires a fan to continuously direct the dry ice upwards since it would ordinarily hover at ground level or summarily sink.  Ensure your tech crew wears gloves so as to handle dry ice safely.  Smoke can also be emulated with a fog machine which heats water and glycol-based fluid to a vapor ranging from wisps to billows.

Inferno backdrops

If a faux fire is blazing through a window or open door, the least expensive option is a red glittered backdrop and a flickering effect created with a rotating gobo or strobe light.  Add the sound effects of a crackling fire.  Blow menacing “tongues” of red silk through an open window to herald the fire’s approach.  At the pricier end of the illusion, you can download HD fire wallpapers, enlarge them and place them behind a scrim curtain with flickering lights.  Another option is a myriad of 4K animated fire videos from online resources such as Adobe Stock.  It just depends on the resources your theatre department has available to incorporate them into your tech budget.

The power of suggestion

Lastly, make full use of the power of suggestion on your audience.  If a character runs onstage and tells others they need to get out right away because of a fire, you need only go to a flickering strobe, red lights, the sound of sirens and then a complete blackout.  When the actors tentatively return to the scene, it’s to the discovery of “blackened” furniture and charred props which were moved on when the stage was in darkness.