1 hand, 2 liters of blood, 75 penises: Within the special effects at teeth the musical

Special features1 sliced ​​hand, 2 liters of blood, 75 penises: within the special effects at Teeth the musical

How the Backstage team brings the Gore to the Off-Broadway Horror Musical every night.

Beware of the bloody spat zone. At the off-broadway horror musical Teethaudiences in the first two rows get a very important item for free: a poncho. This is because someone sitting in the new world phase in the leading rows of the theater can expect it to be hit by blood. Lots of it. Actually, Teeth Go through two liters of stage blood per week.

‘The biggest difference between the first iteration of the show[earlierthisyearto[earlierthisyearatPlaywrights horizons]And this one is that we last spent so much time avoiding too much blood, ”says the supervisor of the props Matt Carlin. “This time we are like more blood, more blood! The audience wants to be covered in blood when they leave. ‘ Indeed by the end of Teeththere is red on the audience, but also the actors and the set. And this is the responsibility of the backstage team at Teeth To find out how to get so much blood on stage, and, most importantly, how to get it off.

This story contains spoiler -elements for TeethSo read at your own risk.

Teethwritten by Anna K. Jacobs and Tony winner Michael R. Jacksonhad an award-winning run at Playwrights Horizons earlier this year before being brought back for an open Encore track (the opening night is appropriate on Halloween). The musical is based on a 2007 horror film, which follows a teenage girl named Dawn, raised in an evangelical Christian community. But as soon as she discovered that her vagina contained some sharp dogs, which seems to be a lot to protect her from everyone who tries to violate her, the blood and attachments fly (literally). On the screen, such effects are simple and standard. But the rear stage team of Teeth Have a more complicated task: to create so much gore on stage at night after night. Not just do Teeth Needs two liters of stage blood every week, each show contains 75 false penises, a cut -off hand shooting blood, and fire.

“This is one of the most complicated shows I have been working on,” says Special Effects Designer Jeremy Cernickwhich has more than 25 years of experience in the industry (including in The outsiders And the 2023 Sweeney Todd Broadway Revival). “We had some crazy meetings during this process … meetings that you would never imagine in your life that you should have. What does a cut -off hand look like when cut by teeth? What do phalluses look like when they are cut by teeth every day?

The blood used for teeth is a sugar-based mixture called Reel Blood, made by the Los Angeles-based pulley creations. Because it is made of sugar, it becomes sticky instead of smooth – which is important if the actors have to walk around on stage. Before the show, the special effects technician Staci Jo Johnston diluted the pulley blood with water to create different fish cosities. For example, if the actors write on the wall with blood at some point, it needs a ‘as thick as possible’ consistency against the more diluted blood that spray from a cut off. As props supervisor Sean Frank Point out, “If it’s a lot of viscos, it’s not going to shoot very far.”

After the blood is mixed, Sean George, a cover crew, makes few blood packs (which looks like detergent pods) that are then hidden in costumes, placed in the out-of-the-view parts of the set or handed over to the actors before the start of a scene. Each package is carefully detected by the stage management team – this is a prop. In fact, the special effects team asked a ‘blood exercise’, where they trained the actors in a room covered in plastic to properly break the blood packs and practice the handing over of each blood pod into the show.

“It’s not just the blood, it’s also the penises – they are secretly detected by the show, so there is usually a big blood moment, there is often the unveiling of what is chopped. And so these two things go hand in hand, ‘Chernick says, smiling at his choice of words. “Some actors, they are comfortable to wear [the blood] with them for a long period of time. There are some actors who like, “I just want to get it right and push it and not handle it.” So there are only a million secret ways in which we hide blood in the show. “

But once the blood is on the set and the clothes, how does it come off? At the halfway mark of the show, when the action escalates, the wardrobe supervisor Liv Magaraci and her three-person team of buckets of cold water and dawn soap prepare. While the actors take off their bloodied clothes, in the bucket, the wardrobe goes out the stains with oxyclean, throws the clothes in the washing machine and hangs it dry. “The blood sits in the dust very quickly. And if you don’t take care of it as soon as it comes down, and before it dries, it stains the clothes pink,” Magaraci explains. Magaraci estimates that her crew only cleans 90 minutes after the show ended. “And we only have the washing machine that is going on all the time as soon as the show arrives.” Fortunately, there are two sets of costumes, so the wardrobe team does not scramble on two-displayed days to clean.

Dawn Dish soap is used to clean the blood of the sets, which are covered with a clear sealant to prevent the blood from staining the pink walls. There are also baby wipes so that the actors can clear themselves quickly between scenes.

Other objects that need to be cleaned: the different penises that are confused, which are branded. The penises are made with silicone that is not porous so that it can be easily cleaned. Frank explains that it requires a ‘trial and error’ to find the right kind of silicone that phalluses would create that, as he says with a straight face: ‘The limp nature we wanted. It couldn’t be too difficult. ‘ Frank by hand the ten phalluses handled by the cast during the show, and love Honey, adult toy maker Love Honey, donated the other 65 (which hangs above the audience during the show).

Seventy-five false phalluses may look like too much (or a fresh response to The musician‘s 76 trombone). But it was the modus operandi for this redistribution of Teeth: “More penises, more blood,” says Chernick.

Only days before the show was opened, the special effects and props team of Teeth was still hard at work to try to do the show bloodierto make the gory reveal more exciting. Just three days ago they figured out a way to make the blood coming out of a cut -off hand forceful. The hand, operated by actor Andy Karlwas depicted by special effects and makeup artist Adam Bailey. Previously, a drop of blood came out of the hand, via a syringe caused by Karl’s thumb. But now the syringe has been replaced by a pump, which could spray more blood in dramatic spurts. After all, you are not going to a beliefs to sit still on your seat; You’re going to jump on your seat and to ferment.

Or as Frank Rhetorically states: ‘It’s shocking, it’s funny. That is kind of the essence of what Teeth Is, right? “

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Photos: Teeth in New World Phases