Prop Build • Giant Lite Brite

JOY was the theme for our show in May 2017, and we wanted to end the show with an interactive way of showcasing joy with the audience. Our creative team came up with the idea of building a life-size Lite Brite. Everyone in the audience would be given one of the “pegs” and told to write all over it with ideas, things, or people that bring them joy. They didn’t know why they were doing this until the very end of the show when we collected the pegs and made this masterpiece in front of them.

The Live Production Team was excited for the challenge and began brainstorming immediately. After LOADS of testing and days of R&D, we built Lite Brites that made a huge impact on the show.

Building the Lite Brites

Our challenge was to build three sets of giant Lite Brites (since there were three shows happening simultaneously), with pegs that were cheap, easily reproducible for the nine shows, and illuminated well.

The Pegs

Use water bottles with the labels removed, and color the water using a very small amount of neon food coloring (the liquid kind, not the gel)

The Lite Brite

Use 1x4’s and 2x4’s for the frames, legs, and supports
Attach a coroplast sheet to the back wall of the frame
Attach aluminum foil to the back coroplast using spray adhesive in order to better reflect the light
Use 1/8” plywood for the front with a hole saw the same diameter as the bottles
Paint the front, frame, and legs black avoiding the aluminum foil
Purchase LED strip lights to attach to the inside of the frame (the more lights you use, the better the result)
Attach black butcher paper across the front of the frames in order to hide the holes until they’re punctured