Titus Andronicus
...and Zombies

Special effects Blood & Gore Design

Titus Andronicus ...and Zombies was an adaptation of Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus written and directed by Cary Sasso. There are 17 atrocities within the play which I designed including: throat slashing, hand chopping, eye gouging, tongue cutting, mouth stabbing, heart ripping, vomit, femoral artery wound, and zombie bites

Lavinia Death

Femoral Artery Slash

Titus Zombie Bite

Lavinia Death

1/16

Prosthetic Hands & The Box

The biggest achievement of this show's design was the hyper realistic prosthetic silicone hands which I cast and painted basing them off of the hands of the actors.

IN THE SHOW: Titus Andronicus gets her hand cut off on stage by Aaron when making a deal with him.

THE CHALLENGE: Show a hand getting brutally chopped off on an alley stage (audience on both sides) at the end of a scene after the character whose hand gets cut is on stage for an extended period (aka they cannot have a fake hand on for the duration of the scene).

A box that appears as a storage container but has a a secret panel on the top surface. This panel gets flipped by the character playing Aaron as the two characters gather around the box for the chop. As the hand appears, Titus grabs a blood pack from her pocket and pulls her real hand into her sleeve, lining the end of the sleeve up with the now visible fake hand. The actor sit back to show the audience the hand on the table and then Aaron brings down a knife on the wrist while Titus pops the blood pack. Additionally, the box is rigged with an internal supply of blood and bloop pump that can be turned on by a hidden switch that Titus hits. This allows an excess of blood to pour out from the now severed hand. Finally, the freshly severed hand is lifted from he surface of the box, an effect that is possible because the hand has several magnets embedded within that line up with magnets on the panel so they it can be attached while the panel is upside down but lifted off to continue the scene after the trick happens.