PROPS: Break a wine glass with voice effect

[Afiddlechick]

Doing a production of Ain't Misbehavin where an actor breaks a wine glass with her voice. We have sugar glass wine glasses but can't figure out how to make the glass break without anyone touching it. The glass will be sitting on a bar table (covered with a table cloth) with another actor seated behind it.  Any ideas would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

[Mac Calder]

Can the glass be sitting up against a solid surface? You can build a device to break the glass by springing out a nail using a fast firing actuator with a nail on the end - or a spring-loaded system works as well. Basically, you need to fire something at the glass at high speed, safely and in a way that can be easily concealed.

[Lizzie]

At Opera Holland Park in London last summer, props maestro Carter Eastis set up a mechanism whereby a sugar-glass beer tankard was shattered in a performer's hand, as if it had been shot by another performer. He modified an old-fashioned mousetrap which could be held in the hand to break the glass - I don't know if this would work for your situation ?

His website with a picture is at http://cartereastis.carbonmade.com/projects/3960898#2 - maybe give him a call and see what he can devise you for ?

Lizzie

[tdsmith]

+1 for mousetraps. You should be able to easily build it into the table top and the actor sitting behind the table could trigger it quite easily. The beauty of a mousetrap is they're designed to swing a full 180 degrees, so the wire will spring up, shatter the glass and keep on going to become hidden in the table again. A simple slit in the tablecloth should help to hide the gimmick if you've got a balcony.

One thing to keep in mind though is that some mousetraps fire with a fair bit of force. You might need to experiment a bit to get one that doesn't end up spraying sugar glass everywhere or knocking the glass sideways, which would ruin the effect. Securing the stem of the glass to the table could help mitigate the second of these possibilities.