At Brevard, since our stage was so small and in a blackbox, fake food was really hard to pull off so I did a ton of stuff with real food. I'm really good at faking alcoholic drinks that are edible and can be used onstage. Most sodas look like alcoholic drinks, and can be used as a substitute. I don't like to add food coloring to edible drinks because of the risk factor in it dying fabrics in the inevitable case that it will get on costumes or set dressings. Also, food coloring adds a taste that most actors do not prefer (including myself). The best remedy for this is either combing drinks, or watering down them.
One of the tough things about using real food is the actor's diet restrictions. For Eat Your Heart Out, the actress who had the most food to be consumed onstage was a vegetarian. I had to make oysters and snails that looked like the real thing, but wasn't. I ended up using different varieties of canned mushrooms. The actress, thankfully, wasn't opposed to having the mushrooms touch a well cleaned oyster shell. I went to the local fish market, and arranged a deal with the guy and ended up getting the shells for free because he was going to toss them out anyways.
The one thing I have found that I make the most is fruit trays. I think it's because of the easiness of it, and also because of how well it can be translated to different time periods and still fit the scene. During BMC's production of The Magic Flute, I had to make an extremely big fruit dish that the lead was supposed to pretend he was gorging himself on. Since it was done on a proscenium stage, and with a full orchestra pit separating him and the audience I was able to cheat and use some foam to help build up the structure, using less fruit and vegetables. The back was completely uncovered with any fruit, but because I covered the other three sides of the foam building blocks you could not see it.
I also did a tray for ATL's production of A Christmas Carol along with some other savory dishes. Most of the dishes I pulled fake food from the back and rearranged them, but others I had to make from scratch.
Mark had some research of food that he liked and we used that as a basis for some of the creations. I recreated a pudding dish by painting cordial glasses on the inside and filling it with tissue paper. This not only made it look like there was pudding in the dish, but also helped out the fact that I was not using glass paint, but rather acrylics. Because it was acrylics it was see-through and the tissue paper blocked the light from escaping. After it was assembled I dressed it with doilies and various plants from the back.
Normally the creation of fake food is done with foam. Using blue foam is one of the best materials because of it's availability (if you have a Home Depot or Lowes, you have some and won't need to get it ordered) and ease of use. It also comes in a wide variety of thicknesses, and are pretty firm so it won't cave in and will hold up well to wear and tear of multiple shows. Here is the creation of a pie (a very weird pudding/meat/we had no clue pie) from start to finish:
As you can see in the first picture, I am cutting out the base on the band saw. In the second picture I am adhering multiple layers of foam using green glue because we did not have the desired thickness. After I had sculpted and sanded the entire thing, I added a layer of foam coat over top of it to smooth out some of the holes in the foam. After that it got it's paint treatments. I think it came out looking pretty decent to what my research picture looked like. It took me about half a day to finish the entire thing, and much of that was drying time.
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