Food on stage

When actors eat food on stage is it prepared at the theater or is it prepared off-site by a catering company and delivered to the theater?

Also, if it is a hot meal (say a dinner scene) is it served hot/warm to the actors or do they have to eat it cold?

Is he gluten-free?

I worked with a show once where the cast had to eat fried chicken during a scene. Half the cast members were vegetarians so the props department created little ceramic chicken bones and they would then take canned Pillsbury biscuits and wrap them around the bones and bake them until golden brown. They looked good from the audience.

And wasn't there always talk that the mashed potatoes Channing ate in Hello Dolly were actually just cotton candy?

On the SUNDAY IN THE PARK video you can see that Bernadette is eating a store bought Twinkie that's been cut in half while she sings "Everybody Loves Louis".

Random question, buit have there ever been any (in)famous examples of characters drinking real booze on stage? I know inthe soaps, actors have complained about getting sick of drinking weak iced tea all the times they're meant to be drinking something stronger.

As far as I know most drinks can be replicated to look realistic except for Guinness. This can make pub set Irish classics like The Weir and Conversations on a Homecoming tough going for the cast.

N2N had some significant food onstage. How many loaves of bread did they go through a week when Diana made the sandwiches on the floor?

Updated On: 9/27/12 at 05:24 PM

Considering that the bread in Next To Normal wasn't being eaten and was more of a prop, couldn't they reuse it? I know that it would be a different situation if the scene called for her to make sandwiches and then have everyone eat them, but clearly that wasn't the case.


Also, it's important to take allergies into account when making food. Regardless of if you believe the allergy to be true or not. I was working crew on a community production of Charlie Brown. During the lunchtime scene, Charlie Brown eats a PB&J. However, the actor playing the role had a known peanut allergy so we were using cashew butter instead. The main prop guy who made the sandwich was out one performance and the person replacing him never got the message about the allergy and used peanut butter by mistake. All I can say is that I wish I had known and that I still feel bad for the young children in that audience. Most of whom were at their first theatre performance.

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Some actors will indeed do that, allery. When I did Cabaret in undergrad both of the actresses playing Sally (the role was double cast) drank those raw eggs for the prairie oysters with no problem.

Having Our Say has the two main characters (elderly Southern sisters) prepare and cook an actual entire Sunday dinner throughout the play. They intentionally did things that would carry food aromas into the audience like sauteing onions or peeling oranges while a ham baked in the oven. Would drive the audience nuts! Us too. But we did get to eat a nice ham dinner after the show every night.

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I know all the food for the big dinner in "August: Osage County" was all Boston Market every day and they ate it. Most of them ate light dinners. When there was a theater-wide pot luck party on the sign up in bold letters someone wrote "NOT CHICKEN!!!"

Carol Channing went through two types of dumplings in HELLO, DOLLY! The first was the spun sugar, or cotton candy substance, which gave the "lighter than air" line meaning. However, after consuming so many of these sugar laden delights eight times a week, Carol's blood glucose level rose to rather dangerous levels and they devised the tissue paper version that was used from that point on.

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In JERSEY BOYS, isn't there a scene where Franki goes into a rant on Tommy and they all have a glass of wine? I'm sure they wouldn't have real wine on stage, so is it grape juice or something?

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Yeah, that's grape juice. I think it's the only scene in the show where they have cups that aren't covered by plastic. (When Mary is drunk and fighting with Frankie in Act 1 and has a cup of booze to wave around, it's all fake and sealed. Though at least once it's broken and she's splashed Frankie in the face on accident.)

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