Submitted by Pat Price, Gwinnett County, Georgia
Idea posted January 24, 2005
We used black lights during "I Can Learn," from Music K-8, Vol. 14, No. 1, and had signers in front. We used five 24" tubes, three for overhead and two as footlights, and six round black bulb footlights. We had six kids out front signing with white gloves on. Our chorus uniform consists of black pants and a white uniform polo shirt. The signers wore all black, and the gloves showed up great! The white shirts on the chorus in the background showed up brightly, but nothing else did, so the effect was still good. The chorus had 24 signs with words on them to hold up during the song. I used orange fluorescent copy paper to die-cut the letters for the words and glued them onto black poster board. The kids held up the boards when the words were spoken in the song. It looked like bright orange words were popping out of nowhere! It was a great effect! We experimented with various types of paper and found that: white copy paper works ok but not great; white construction paper works well; lime green and hot pink fluorescent paper are also pretty good. The orange fluorescent copy paper was by far the best.
My stage holds six risers all hooked together. They stretch from edge to edge, with room to act or dance in front of them. The five lights worked well, but I would add a couple more if I wanted to really highlight the chorus in the back.