Wyrd Sisters: Magic/Explosions on Stage

Hello! I am new to this thread and very new to special effects. I am working at high school that is putting on a production of Wyrd Sisters in a limited space. There are a few times where the witches cast spells that cause mini explosions and/or sparks on stage. The little explosions can either happen on stage in the direction of the spell or come directly from the witches' fingers. Does anyone have any advice for how to accomplish this in a safe, relatively simple way? We have a limited budget ($200 for all props). Apologies if a thread answering this question already exists! I have read through a lot of the special effects threads but did not see anything that answered this specific question.
 
This is one of those situations where you need a licensed pro to even think about using real pyro, including just a few sparks. Unfortunately, your budget is not going to stretch that far. Your best bets for accomplishing this may be to use some combination of fog machine/other particulate, strobe lighting, and/or confetti.
 
For the "sparks", you could hide an inexpensive strobe light in the set, and have light from that bounce in to some aluminum foil or mylar to throw the light around in all sorts of weird ways. Depending on how you place the aluminum foil or mylar you can also be somewhat directional with the light output.
 

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