When the show budget is limited and you have to either go without or make do, sometimes you need to think outside the box and come up with an innovative idea. I gave prop man, Dan Martinkus a real challenge to create six street lamps (three on each side) that would be self standing and easily set in place and removed. I hoped that they could be made in forced perspective so the one in front was largest, and the two in back would each look progressively smaller. What he brought in was a "Hoot" ...one of his favorite expressions. He took a small piece of plywood for the base and attached bathroom plungers to them, and found three sizes of carpet tubes which were attached to the plungers. He then taped flashlights to three sizes of beach balls, painted them white and stuck them on top of the tubes. They were perfect and could even be turned off and on by hand.
I also wanted white stage lights to line the perimeter of the Kit Kat Klub stage and the "Devils Mouth" stage entrance, but real ones were much too expensive, so I needed a way to make something that would represent them. First I took strands of twinkle lights and poked them through the muslin flats at regular intervals, and went to every sporting goods store in a thirty mile radius to buy every ping pong ball they had. I then poked a hole in each ball and glued them over the twinkle lights. We were very pleased and proud of our inexpensive lighting ideas and they worked like a charm.