Slice-able Cheese and Sausage

For Miracle on South Division Street, the characters were supposed to be preparing a small lunch of pepperoni and cheese, and fruit salad. The actors ended up eating parts of the fruit salad, which I will explain in another post, but the cheese and sausage just needed to be sliced up and look real.

To achieve this effect, without the giant cost of providing a new block of  cheese and a new pepperoni nightly, we used clay

. I purchased nice, plastalina modeling clay from Blick for the project. Plastilina brand plasticine is advertised as never drying out. I wanted to make sure that our clay was in no danger of drying out or getting crusty during a 40 performance run.
  I took two colors of yellow and two colors of brown.

I ripped the clay into small pieces and then pressed the pieces back together to get a mottled more natural color/texture

Of course, the packaging is what sells so many pieces of fake food.
We wrapped the clay in plastic wrap, and secured it with sticker labels that we printed to be used nightly. We had enough labels to use one per performance, so the actor did not have to worry about ripping them, and the stickers were able to hide and secure the loose ends of the plastic wrap, making the wrap look much more professional.

On stage, the actors were able to unwrap both pieces easily, place them on their respective trays, and slice into them with standard kitchen knives. 

After the show each night, the run crew can just press the clay back together and smooth out the seams before adding more plastic wrap and another sticker.