Professionals and Cons: Meals and Drink Onstage

Consuming and ingesting are mandatory for existence on this planet. A lot of our life is centred round meals: making it collectively, serving it for an important day, making an attempt new dishes, challenges buying it, not having sufficient of it, and extra. Meals and drinks nourish and maintain us, so it’s solely pure that playwrights would create scenes and songs that function meals, snacks, and drinks. From Mrs. Tottendale doing a spit-take with “ice water” in The Drowsy Chaperone to Bruce Bogtrotter consuming Miss Trunchbull’s chocolate cake in Matilda, foods and drinks scenes abound in performs and musicals.

Relating to staging scenes with meals and drinks, the query is whether or not you’ll use actual, faux, or “invisible” (mimed) foods and drinks onstage. Begin by studying the textual content and figuring out what the aim of the meals or drink is. Are actors truly consuming the meals, or is it used as set décor or props? Does the meals or drink should be used by some means? For instance, is somebody carving a turkey for Thanksgiving or Christmas dinner, pouring drinks for a toast, or beginning a meals combat? (Don’t overlook the well-known “pie within the face” gag that’s present in tons of exhibits, together with Singin’ within the Rain and Disney’s Excessive Faculty Musical.) Get tremendous clear about what kind of meals or drink is required and the exact function of it.

Then, contemplate the next:

• The clearest professional to utilizing actual meals onstage is, effectively, realism. Everybody is aware of the best way to eat foods and drinks a beverage. It seems to be actual to the viewers, feels actual to the actors, and leaves no confusion anyplace: these characters are consuming and ingesting. Straightforward peasy.
• A bonus professional is that actors get to eat slightly snack onstage, which is at all times enjoyable, and helps to maintain their vitality ranges up.
• A significant con for utilizing actual meals onstage is the mess potential. Crumbs left behind can invite undesirable critters like bugs or mice into your backstage space. Meals and drinks can simply be spilled on a dressing up and create a stain, or dropped on the ground, which creates a slipping hazard. Which leads us to…
• Security issues: Actual meals and drinks can pose choking hazards, particularly if a scholar is making an attempt to do one thing else whereas they’re consuming, akin to strolling or talking. As effectively, you will want to be thoughtful of scholars with meals allergic reactions, sensitivities, and restrictions. Relying on the principles of your faculty, you might also have to have somebody with a secure meals dealing with designation help with the meals to make sure that it’s ready and/or saved hygienically.
• Actual foods and drinks props are referred to as “consumable” props, as a result of they’re used up every present. (There are different consumable props (hyperlink: www.theatrefolk.com/weblog/how-to-create-a-master-props-list) that don’t have anything to do with meals, akin to letters that get ripped up, blood packets, and cap weapons.) Should you’re utilizing actual meals, you’ll have to make sure that there may be sufficient provide to get you thru every efficiency, which may imply extra manufacturing prices.
• One professional of utilizing “faux” or prop meals is that it gives an excellent alternative to your college students to be taught the ins and outs of prop creation. There are many implausible tutorials on-line, demonstrating artistic strategies for making realistic-looking prop meals. For instance, college students may learn to paint the within of plastic glasses with various kinds of supplies to create full-looking drinks, or construct and embellish a prop marriage ceremony cake utilizing hat bins and trim. (You may even add a “chopping slice” — a skinny slot at the back of the cake — to insert a knife into to make it appear like the newlyweds are chopping a bit of cake!)
• Utilizing faux or invisible (mimed) meals and drinks is a superb performing problem to your college students. You should use empty plastic cups for a wide range of performing challenges — how can college students maintain the cups to point that the contents are sizzling, chilly, or stuffed to the brim? How can college students gesture with out trying like they’re flinging liquid throughout themselves? Have them attempt to slowly elevate the cup to their mouth, take a “sip” of the drink, swallow, and decrease the cup, all with out “pouring” the drink down their fronts. Strive having college students fake to take a chew of invisible meals, or chew invisible gum realistically. It’s more durable than you assume.
• Relying on the scene, you might be able to get away with utilizing a mixture of faux and actual meals onstage. Let’s say you’re staging the “Be Our Visitor” tune from Disney’s* Magnificence and the Beast*, and also you need Belle to pattern a few of the desserts. You might have an ensemble member convey a plate of faux cookies onstage, with one actual cookie positioned strategically within the pile for Belle to select up and take a chew of.

Whether or not you find yourself utilizing actual, faux, or invisible meals and drinks onstage will even rely in your distinctive group of scholars. It’s possible you’ll discover that one class advantages from utilizing actual meals whereas one other class finds actual meals too distracting and easily mimes the meals. There aren’t any proper or mistaken solutions; use no matter works finest for you and your college students.