An Incomplete History of the KCST Bagel Slicer

When one of your traditions is to provide orange juice and bagels at each Sunday rehearsal, a problem arises: there are dozens of bagels, dozens of people, a need for cream cheese, and… plastic knives?

Plastic knives, while a useful tool, do not make a particularly efficient job of slicing bagels (although they do an excellent job of spreading cream cheese), and so, in 2014 KCST came up with a solution.

The solution seemed simple, really. Just as the French invented the guillotine in 1794, the King’s Crown Shakespeare Troupe also turned to the device in 2014—except our targets were more glutenous than gory: The KCST Bagel Guillotine was born.

Since 2014, KCST has owned no fewer than three bagel guillotines, the most recent of which (and the guillotine currently in use) features Shakespeare quotes about bagels. Some notable quotes include: “Uneasy lies the head that wears the bagel” from 2 Henry IV and “A bagel, a bagel! My kingdom for a bagel!” from Richard III.