Ask LaBricoleuse: Troubleshooting a pregnancy pad rigged for "water breaking"

lasergirl69 asked me for some brainstorming help, and i thought i'd answer in the form of an "Ask LaBricoleuse," because this isn't the first time i've had an issue of this sort come up, so clearly it might help more than just one reader. Here's what lasergirl69 had to say:

...I've got a weird question and I'm not sure where to start.

I have to build a pregnancy belly with a water rig on it to 'break' onstage. I think the capacity of at least a litre or two of water, and it has to be actor-activated. Except it has to be *subtly* actor-activated. Have you come across any info/advice about this sort of thing, or know anyone I could ask?

One place you could ask to get more opinions than just mine is to post the question to the USITT Costumer's Info List, which is an international email list for professional costumers. There are currently around 530 subscribers, and you don't have to be a member of USITT to join. It's easy to join via the Yahoo! homepage, and you can sign up for web access or digest format if you don't want to get individual emails from it. I have a digest subscription--posting varies but it's never terribly high-traffic. People frequently ask how to make or where to rent/buy trick pieces--"I need a hat with a spring loaded bird that flies off of it for Annie Get Your Gun. Anybody built this hat before? How?" That sort of thing. Someone may have built a water-breaking pregnancy belly on there and either be able to sell it to you, or tell you how they did it!

But, here's my advice on the problem:

The first thing i always do when i have a weird costume issue like this is to reconcile what the options are for the primary action, which in this case is the breaking water. You want to see what sorts of things are out there that can do what you need--dump a liter or two of water fairly fast, with a simple release motion--then figure out how you plan to hide them in a pregnancy pad.

I would start by going to the hardware store and checking out the plumbing section and the pet store and checking out the aquarium section. Look at stopcocks, valves, hand pumps, siphons, all that sort of stuff, and see what might be available.

Plumbing and aquarium vendors are the obvious starting points, but you also will probably want to check out pool supply places and water toys, maybe a cooking equipment store or somewhere that sells home-brewing supplies; you never know where the answer will be found. Anywhere that sells anything related to storing and dispensing quantities of liquid is fair game! Once i had to build a bra for an actress that could "lactate" on cue, for the Adam Rapp play Animals and Plants--i went through several experimental versions for this--nursing bras for mastectomy survivors, random tube/bladder set-ups, a remote-controlled squirting toy. Think wildly, because sometimes that's where the answer is found!

You may wind up buying 5-6 different possibilities, then just trying them out, talking to the director and actor about what sorts of release motions are concealable with the action of the scene, and which are not going to work. Once you decide on what the right water-releaser is going to be, then it shouldn't be that big of a deal to hide it in something as bulky and concealing as a pregnancy pad.

I do think that the pad will have to be rigged kind of like a snare-drum marching rig--with shoulder and waist support, rather than just waist, in order to support the weight of 1-2L of water without injuring the actor wearing it. It might be something you need to build onto a singlet or unitard, with some reinforced shoulder strapping. Of course that can be troubleshot easily once you know what your water reservoir is going to be like.

My readership hopefully will chime in down in the comments too--if anyone has any flashes of inspiration for this, please do share!