Headless Body: Completed

Severed Neck Detailing

And for the final touches: make it gross. Cloton's head was cut off so, it needed to look like such. I built up the neck with various blocks and coils of upholstery foam. The esophagus was a bit of carved down pipe foam. The bit of spine was simply a piece of white felt cut to shape and given some dimension and sheen with hot melt glue. More hot melt glue was generously.

The painting got a little tricky since one type of paint would stick to the latex but not the glue and the other type of paint would stick to the glue and not the latex. I found that I could apply the first paint and wipe it off wherever it wasn't going to stick and repeat the process with the second paint. This seamed to work alright. In any case everything got tinted and didn't seem to rub off excessively anywhere. I knew that more paint and reel blood was going to be added later anyhow.

Oh yes, the neck also needed to have a hollow in it which I built into the esophagus. In the production of Cymbeline, grief stricken Imogen marks herself with blood from the body, thinking it's the body of Posthumus. Therefore we tucked a little squeezey-toy full of reel blood into the neck of the body so it would be easy for the actor to access without leaking fake blood all over stage.

In the end the fake body still looked like a fake body, BUT it was a pretty darn good fake body with a pretty darn gross severed neck. Hopefully it will see some stage time again in the future.