Sometimes playwrights apply animal images to their characters, and the actor would be well-advised not to ignore these helpful clues. Tennessee Williams describes Blanche as a moth, Stanley as "feathered male bird among hens," and Mitch as a "dancing bear" ("A Streetcar Named Desire"); not only is Maggie a Cat on a "Hot Tin Roof" but Big Mama is described as a "an old bulldog" who comes onstage like a "charging rhino," Big Daddy smiles wolfishly and has a barking laugh, and one of the daughters enters like a mad monkey.
Shakespeare, too, imagined animals when he wrote. Iago refers to Othello as an "old black ram." In "King Lear," Goneril is described as a kite (bird of prey) and serpent, Goneril and Regan as pelicans. Lear describes himself and Cordelia as little birds in a cage, and Gloucester calls himself a bear tied to a stake. In "Henry VI" and Richard III, Richard is described variously as a toad, rooting hog, crab, boar, and bottled spider. When British actor Antony Sher played Richard, he used crutches, and with long tendrils of cloth hanging from his elbows, he looked like he had six legs when he bent over.
Humans are animals, too, so just as actors observe themselves and others when creating roles, so can they broaden their palettes by observing animals closely and absorbing what Southern California–based actor James Newcomb calls an animal's "essence."
Newcomb has been playing the humpbacked king for several years now at Oregon Shakespeare Festival, starting with "Henry VI Parts I and II" and proceeding to this season's "Richard III," in which I saw his stunning performance.
Like Sher, Newcomb uses crutches. "That automatically gives an insectlike look," he says. But unlike Sher, who was specifically going for the bottled-spider metaphor, and who scuttled across the stage like a bug before beginning his first speech, Newcomb wanted to incorporate as many of the textual animal images as he could. When he leans over his crutches and lowers his head, he feels like a boar. When he kneels with the crutches, he appears crablike. And there are times when he feels like a praying mantis, using his crutches to grab someone in the same way that a praying mantis grabs its mate and eats it. He also moves quickly, stops quickly, and appears to glide. "When you watch a centipede moving with all those legs, they're all moving in sequence like a conveyor belt that draws the animal forward," he says. "I try to keep my head as still as possible. With those insects I've observed that their heads stay still and their legs move independently."
Newcomb says his animal images evolved organically as he was preparing for the role. But he has made a steady habit of observing animals and filing away the images in his mind for future reference. He remembers seeing a dead potato bug on the sidewalk being consumed by ants. "I was struck by how alone the little bug was," he says. "I thought, 'It's kind of a metaphor for what Richard does--control, dominate, and devour.' I see him as a predator, someone who devours any obstacle in his way. That image [of ants devouring the lone bug] stuck with me in [preparing for] the role."
He recently observed a three-legged squirrel, noting that it didn't curl up and die or feel sorry for itself. It pulled itself along on its front legs "like a Civil War amputee on a sled...doing what it would do anyway to the best of its ability," creating another useful image for the deformed but determined Richard and perhaps some role in Newcomb's future.
"I'm not so much trying to specifically copy an animal's movement, but more to empathize with the essence of what it is to be that animal and incorporate that into a holistic dynamic," adds Newcomb. "I've been thinking a lot about the role of empathy in the process [of creating a character], whether in animal imagery or even the quality of light or water. If you have a kinetic sense of empathy...you can incorporate that into the texture of whatever role you're playing, to enhance the character. What is it to be a drop of water? I know it sounds New Age–y, but I've been thinking more and more about it." The more empathy we can generate--for people, animals, plants, objects--the more we can contextualize our characters as humans, not monsters or things. The ramifications of that mindset go well beyond the world of theatre.
In his book "Irreverent Acting" (Putnam, 1985), Los Angeles acting teacher Eric Morris writes about working on the role of Eben in "Desire Under the Elms" and having trouble accessing the animal quality of O'Neill's character. He ended up spending three hours a day, three days a week at the Los Angeles Zoo observing the gibbons and then the gorillas--their rhythms, their limitations, and more--for a year, until he practically mind-melded with the apes. "Achieving the 'spine' of that animal and translating it into human behavior fulfilled not only the physical character elements [of Eben] but the emotional ones also," he writes. "I felt close to the earth, and even my thought and speech patterns slowed and faltered."
In his classes at University of California, Irvine, professor Robert Cohen (who noted some of the animal images mentioned in the first two paragraphs of this article) occasionally uses animal exercises. But he also knows the danger of letting that aspect of the role--or any one aspect of any role--dominate too much. "If you say, 'This character's a bear,' and miss other things, you're playing it like a bear at a carnival or a costume party," he explains. He also observes that there can be repercussions: In a production of an Indian epic, one actor was directed to play his character like a monkey, which outraged the local South Asian Indian community. "[Animal images] are useful at getting to a certain kind of animalistic level," he says. "But if that's all you get, then you're playing a stereotype."
When I talked to him, Cohen had just returned from seeing Robert Wilson's production of "The Fables of La Fontaine" at the Comedie-Francaise in Paris. In that play, all the actors portray animals: lion, crow, frogs, birds. "It shows the anthropomorphic values you can convey through animals," says Cohen. Interestingly some French literary-types felt Wilson's show was too animalistic and failed to bring forth the human elements that La Fontaine intended.
In his book "Advanced Acting" (McGraw-Hill, 2002), Cohen writes, "Actors can make use of animal imagery...by discovering or creating animalistic metaphors (or residual traits) in their characters, which will help make those characters both highly specific (as to a given species) and archetypal."
Like Morris, acting teacher Larry Moss, in his book "The Intent to Live" (Bantam, 2005), describes how an animal exercise helped him. Preparing for a role in a Broadway musical--a character that is filled with rage--he chose to study the rattlesnake. "I found out that rattlesnakes are born blind and that their mother leaves them after three days," he writes. "I figured that would really piss you off.... I walked with my knees bent as low as I could possibly bend them, which gave my character, a predatory bondage-freak rapist, a slithery quality and a sensuality that I had never been able to reach in my work up till that point. The animal exercise freed me."
Moss recommends an exercise in his book: Pick an animal--mammal, reptile, bird, insect--and learn all about it. Study its "breathing patterns...musculature...how they eat, defecate, urinate, have sex, and what kind of alertness they have when not in captivity." He advises that you examine all the sensory perceptions the animal needs for survival, writing, "Remember that any animal you play is either prey or predator or both." He suggests living as that animal (in class, if possible) for five to 10 minutes, or videotaping yourself at home to see what elements of the animal you captured.
He also describes how several of his students worked on a scene in class using animals. They started "from a silly place," exaggerating their animals. One was a hawk; she said it affected her vision, the way she sat, her sense of her neck, her feeling about the space she inhabited. Another used the image of a prairie dog--the way that prairie dogs sit on their haunches and the way that they're curious. In his performance, the student retained the sense of posture and alertness, which no doubt enhanced the specificity and texture of the character.
In any case, exhorts Cohen, "Go to the zoo!" It's all happening there, right? BSW