Technical Design Solutions for Theatre

Building Distorting Mirrors

Colin Young

Sometimes we’re so attracted to one of a material’s uses that we’re blinded to its other possibilities. We commonly use sheet Plexiglas® as a safe substitute for panes of glass because it’s transparent and shatter-resistant. Most of the time, we want it to remain rigid, planar, and transparent — just like glass. Perhaps that’s why, when the Yale Summer Cabaret needed a distorting fun-house mirror, it took us so long to realize that mirrored Plexiglas® is exactly the right material.

Mirrored Plexiglas® comes in 4×8 sheets costing about $200, but smaller low-cost/no-cost scraps can be found at large-volume glass or plastic shops that have no use for small pieces. Experimenting with some cost-free scraps ...