Feature Article
CORPUS DELICTI: JUST DESSERTS

About the Body

It takes about twenty hours, pouring gelatin into a life-sized mold, to make our cadaver for the show. Our corpse is made out of ballistic gelatin, which has longer protein strands and is sturdier than the gelatin you buy to eat in the grocery store. Ballistic gelatin is used by the FBI to simulate human flesh in ballistics testing and forensic pathology.

The cadaver's organs are made from fruits and vegetables: a cauliflower brain, a pomegranate heart, bones made from gnarled parsnips. We chose to work with organic materials because it simulates the decay of the body over its natural lifecycle.

Although we sometimes have to replace body parts, we go through about one body per weekend of performances.

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