Taco!

This blog post is dedicated to the mayor of East Haven, CT. Oh, I'm kidding, calm down. Wait, you're not riled up? You don't follow the news in Connecticut? Oh, well, um....carry on then, never mind.

TACO!

There are people who go into theater with great ambitions.  There are actors who dream of moving an audience to tears with an emotional performance, designers who contribute to the elegance of a well told story, and directors who aspire to shed light on the human condition and pay homage to our common experience.  And then there's me, and I dream about making fake tacos...

....and my dream came true.

This taco is for 'The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Abridged" which just opened this weekend.  It was a quickie, given a bit more time, I might have worked on the shell texture a bit longer, but I think it does the job.

The delicious meaty filling of this taco is made out of good old bead foam. I like the bead foam because of its texture.  I carved the rough shape of the taco filling, and then broke off bits of the foam, leaving the lumpy shape and texture of ground beef.  I gave this a coating of flex glue to prime it for painting, and then used acrylic paints to make it beef- colored.

Taco blanco.

The shell of the taco is made of Fosshape, a felt-like thermoplastic material. (You can buy it at Dazian.) I cut out the shape of the shell, pressed the Fosshape, steamed it into shape, and painted it with Design Master sprays.  Once dry, I used hot glue to attach the filling to the shell.

The shredded lettuce in the taco is fake lettuce that I cut up with scissors, and the fake cheese is made of scraps from the acrylic caulk cheese in the last post.  I sparingly used fabri-tac to glue the lettuce and cheese into place, doing my best to place it securely and convincingly.  Then, I found a stage management intern on which to test the believability of the taco.

It passed.

Happy Propping, y'all.