Fine art of Bloodletting Lets Theaters Operate in the Red

Squirt! Splat! Gush! Glop!

The pleasures of stage blood are endless. Swords plunge, knives twist, arrows find their mark--all in glorious Technicolor, and all before your very eyes . While television and film have the luxury of editing, stage actors have to carry their blood with them: in their mouths, under their coats. And as technical director Keith Bangs stresses: “You want people to believe it’s real.” Pale pink stains on white T-shirts won’t cut it. Blood-and-gore effects have to be good.

The product itself is not particularly complicated. A number of sources agree that a mixture of Karo syrup, red food coloring, peanut butter and water--whipped up in a blender--is the best all-purpose product. (It’s also considered edible blood, meaning it can safely trickle from mouths and eyes.) The other most popular homemade brew is a combination of blue liquid dishwasher soap and red food coloring--desirable because its soap base stains the least.

Toothpaste is another stain-fighting ingredient. To make the blood for “Good,” last summer at Pacific Conservatory of the Performing Arts, wardrobe mistress Bonnie Bowers combined tubes of red and green toothpaste with Karo syrup and Kool-Aid. The stains washed out of cotton clothes in warm water, but Bowers cautioned that anyone using this recipe should avoid metal mixing bowls. Something in the toothpaste reacts to the metal and can sting the skin.

In the pursuit of theatrical spectacle, such stings are rare. Stains are not. Nor are messes. Peter Sellars’ 1986 staging of “Ajax” at the La Jolla Playhouse included a scene in which the title character soaked in a 7-by-2-foot glass box filled with “blood”--while the sponge “heads” of his victims bobbed around him.

“The main problem was controlling the ‘blood’ from spilling all over everyone else,” recalled prop mistress Esperanza Gallardo. “In that case, it was special blood made in New York and shipped to us in gallons. But there are a lot of ways to do blood. Sometimes in a war scene you can use fabric paints or Marks-a-Lot. For controlled bleeding, you can carry little plastic ‘blood bags’ in your mouth or vest. There are also ‘blood capsules’: You buy gelatin capsules and fill them with the blood mixture. Then when you bite down. . . .”

Sometimes the bloodletting requires a fine touch. “When Jesus was being whipped, we wanted to leave strips of blood,” said Keith Bangs about UC Irvine’s “Corpus Christi” cycle. “So we took reeds and put in plastic IV (intravenous) tubing, cut them lengthwise and filled them with Rosco (brand) blood. The pressure of the switch hitting Jesus’ back opened the piping and left a strip of blood. For the crown of thorns we had tiny sponges inside; when pressed, little drops of ‘blood’ would run down his forehead.”

Bangs also designed an effect for last year’s “Christi” staging to enable Mary to become instantly pregnant--and unpregnant. A compressed air tank carried on the inside of the actress’ thigh connected an air tube to a hot water bottle on her stomach--and a switch controlled by battery.

“When she’d hit the button, (the bag/belly) swelled; she’d hit another button and it would go down. We did a similar thing with the stigmata scene in ‘Agnes of God’: An air tank forced the blood through a tube on each wrist.”

Sometimes not-bloody is just as complicated as bloody. Daryn-Reid Goodall is the prop designer/hair and makeup coordinator for the Los Angeles Theatre Center’s production of Vladimir Gubaryev’s “Sarcophagus,” which focuses on a group of victims of the nuclear accident at Chernobyl.

“We’ve got nuclear radiation and fire burns--and a lot of scars,” Goodall said enthusiastically. “Gregory Wagrowski, who plays the most seriously injured, has three kinds. The one on his forehead is made of rigid collodion--you brush on three layers, pinch it, then run a sharp object through to make it look like an incision. On his stomach we use scar-making material, which was originally created for ‘Platoon.’ You squeeze it out of a tube; it looks like a wound that’s healed, a puckered scar. And for the back of his head we have two nodule-like scars made of latex.”

Depending on the project, Goodall also utilizes gel blood, Reel Blood (from Reel Creations) and A/B Blood: “You put ‘A’ on the actor, ‘B’ on the sword--and when they touch, it turns red.”

Most of the blood repertoire will be on hand for LATC’s staging of “King Lear,” opening Friday. “That’s going to be a real mess,” he sighed. “Vats and vats of blood. When we poke Gloucester’s eye out, it’s pretty ugly.”

For Halloween, non-pros can create their own bloodfests, of course. At Hollywood Magic, manager Michael David offers a 2-ounce container of stage blood for $1.98--and for kids, 1-ounce tubes of “horror blood” for $1.

“Not as realistic, but it doesn’t stain,” David noted. “We’ve also got scars, pimples, warts. But the hottest item this year is the burn scar, because everyone wants to be Freddy Krueger from ‘Nightmare on Elm Street.’ ”

At Olesen’s Theatrical Supply (which also stocks heavy rigging, curtains, lighting equipment, stage makeup and breakaway props) a two-ounce pack of Rosco blood goes for $1.50, a pint for $9. “It’s non-toxic, non-irritating,” manager Margie Romans emphasized. “And it doesn’t change colors; it stays bright and shiny. Along with theaters and schools, we also sell to the Sheriff’s Department and paramedics--to make their first-aid demonstrations more realistic.”

Ironically, though stage blood is used as a teaching aid, instruction/reference books on stage blood are scarce.

“There really isn’t any authoritative text about it,” Bangs acknowledged. “Some tell you about Karo syrup, but that’s about it. You really do have to reinvent for each new effect--try, and test, till you come up with what you want.”

That goes for the product, too. “We’re always searching for better blood,” Gallardo said, “something that doesn’t stain--or poison.”