William Berloni began his animal training career in 1976 by rescuing a dog from an animal shelter. That dog was the original Sandy in the Broadway musical "Annie" who performed for seven years — the longest for any animal in Broadway history. Since that time, he and his trainers have provided animals for hundreds of films, commercials, television shows and printwork as well as theatre all around North America. The current national tour of "Annie" features animals trained by Mr. Berloni. Ben Pesner spoke with him recently by phone. Ben Pesner: How many Sandys are there? William Berloni: At present, I own 4 dogs that play the role of Sandy. For the 30 th anniversary tour, Sandy is played by a dog named Lola, and the understudy is Mikey. At home, I have a dog named Buster who has been playing Sandy all around the country for the last eight years who's now semi-retired, and his semi-retired understudy named Bard, who was just in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang . Are you suggesting that Lola is girl dog playing a boy-dog role? We believe in non-traditional casting. If the audience is looking between the dog's legs while she's on-stage, we know there's something wrong with the scene. Lola's actually the third female Sandy we've had in the 30-year history. What makes a great Sandy? The first thing obviously is the look. When the creators of the show wrote the show they said to me, “We need a dog of undeterminable breed,” which really means a mutt, because in the original comic strip Harold Gray drew this dog that had no resemblance to any breed. They don't ever want dogs that makes audience members say, “Oh, that's a golden retriever mix,” or “Oh, that's a shepherd mix.” And of course they have to be sandy colored or beige colored. Second is temperament. You have to have a dog who is well rounded, who will ignore the sounds and sights that might otherwise affect its ability to follow commands. What's the most important thing you do for a Broadway show? Three things. I train the animals for the show, but I also act as a consultant with the creators. I get a script and the author has written what they think an animal can do. I translate that into reality. Can you give me an example? Currently I'm working on the new musical version of Legally Blonde , and in it Elle Woods has a dog-named Bruiser, a little Chihuahua. He plays a very important part in the film. When you're filming something you can cheat camera angles, you can get animals to do all sorts of things that you can't get them to do on stage. I'm now working with the writers to say, all right, this is Elle's constant companion; we know that from the film. How do we show that in the stage version without compromising the dog's performance? In the film, the dog barks at the bad guys. He can't do that in the show unless you set it up so the dog is facing the wings and the dog can see me [to get its cue]. You train the animals and consult for a show's creators. What's the third thing? Teaching the actors to be trainers. In a film, I'm standing behind the camera and I point my finger and the dog sits, or I nod my head and the dog barks. On stage it has to be handled with the same proficiency by the actor who's acting with the animal, because the dog can't look in the wings, get the command from me, and execute it. On every show, I take the actors and turn them into trainers. I started my career doing that with 11-year-old little girls, and I actually find the children are easier to train than the adults. Annie played a special role in your career, right? The show actually changed my life. I was 19 years old, I had graduated from high school, and wanted to be an actor. I lived near the Goodspeed Opera house up in East Haddam, Connecticut. I applied to their summer apprenticeship program, building scenery for free. My second year there is when they did Annie , and they couldn't afford a professional dog trainer. All the paid crewmembers threatened to quit if they had to do the dog. Michael Price, who was the executive director, basically needed a sucker. He said, “Bill, how would you like to get your Equity card?” I was thinking, Great!--he recognized my acting talents by the way I moved scenery backstage. He said, “All you have to do is find and train a dog for us, for the new show.” And that's how the deal was struck. We couldn't spend money, so I went to the pound and I paid $7 for the original Sandy, and trained him as best as I knew how. I was an only child, so I had only had animals as companions. I trained it like I did my own pet. But the show bombed [in Connecticut]. Then I moved to New York to go to NYU. One day Mike Nichols' office called and said, “We're producing Annie for Broadway, would you be interested in it?” Any way to work with Mike Nichols is to get another foot in the door, so I agreed to work on that production. We went to Washington, came back in the spring of 1977, the show was a huge hit and I was a famous animal trainer at 20 years old. I realized very quickly that I was much more talented at that then I was at acting. Thirty years later I'm still doing what I love: I'm still in theatre, I'm still rescuing animals, and making a living from it. All of the animals you train are rescued, right? All of them. When I first went looking for Sandy, I had never been in an animal shelter. This was back in 1976, when shelters were in horrid condition. I made a promise to myself as a young man, if I ever got a dog, I would adopt it. When the show became a hit, I thought, this has given me a career; I need to keep that promise up. I've had something like 30 different dogs who've played Sandy, and animals in 15 other Broadway shows. We've had hundreds of dogs and cats, all rescues. Even the rats in The Woman in White are from a rescue agency. Animals sometimes “misbehave” in live theatre – what's the wildest thing that happened with one of your animals? You mean besides the scratching, yawning, sleeping? Knock on wood, we've never had an animal go to the bathroom on stage. Although, for some reason, Michael Ball [in The Woman in White ] is the only one who can make the mice pee in his hand. It doesn't pee in his understudy's hand, but it pees in his hand. What's interesting is that the animals get into a pattern, and when the pattern is broken for whatever reason, they don't have cognitive thought process and can go, “Oh, Annie forgot to give me the cue, I'll cover for her.” When they get a miscue or something goes wrong, they immediately look in wings to us to see, “What do I do now?” And if an actor's not paying attention, the animal will come to us [in the wings] in the middle of a scene. Is there always a trainer in the wings when an animal is performing? Absolutely. In as much as there's always a mother with a child on tour. Someone has to be ultimately responsible for their health, welfare, and being. I'm licensed by the United States Department of Agriculture. You have to have a federal license to exhibit animals and you have to have insurance. It's all regulated. During the show, we're watching what's going on and then giving notes to the actors, as opposed to giving commands to the animals. The only time in Annie we give a command is when Sandy comes out on stage all by himself, sits center stage, looks around for Annie, and walks off – the trainer is doing that. But every time Sandy is on stage with Annie, we're in the wings just watching. Later we may give the actor notes as to what he or she needs to do to [with the animal]. What kind of special considerations go into a touring production? In 30 years I've never flown my dogs. My trainers are part trainers, part truckers. The theory is that if the scenery can make it by truck, the dog trainer can make it. We've already put on 90,000 miles on the current Annie tour alone in only one year. And housing: if you want us in your show, you have to find a clean and decent hotel in every city that will take pets. You have made animals a part of your professional life for more than 30 years. Anything you want to add? What I make a personal commitment to is human education: educating children as to the fact that animals are sentient beings, and just because they're in a shelter they're not disposable. All the animals that I've trained were either close to being euthanized or in a shelter. If you're looking for a pet, a shelter is a good place to go because that's where Bill Berloni goes to get his Broadway stars. I love talking to kids, because you can't build enough shelters to house the animals--but if you can sway one kid to adopt one animal, that's one less animal that's going to end up in a shelter. |
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