Revisiting the history of the implementation of animal welfare policies in theater and film productionsan interview with William M. Berloni, leading animal trainer in Broadway shows

Abstract

William M. Berloni is the leading animal trainer in Broadway. With a career spanning more than thirty years, Berloni has trained animals for hit plays and musicals such as Annie, The Wizard of Oz, Awake and Sing!, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, Legally Blonde, Living on Love and The Crucible, among others, and has also worked in films such as Woody Allen’s A Midsummer Night’s Sex Comedy, Mike Nichols’s Charlie Wilson’s War, and Will Smith’s film production of Annie. A notable recent success in his career has been the production of Because of Winn-Dixie at the Delaware Theatre Company in 2015 and at the Alabama Shakespeare Theater in 2016. He has also prepared animals for numerous Off-Broadway productions and dozens of TV shows and commercials. Berloni received the 2011 Tony Honor for Excellence in the Theatre in recognition of his accomplished skills as a trainer for the stage and his humane advocacy, and in 2017 he received the Drama League Award for “Unique Contribution to American Theater.” He had the opportunity to discuss his methods and experience in Spain during the international conference “Four-footed Actors: Live Animals on the Stage,” hosted by the University of Valencia on December 12-14, 2012. Journeying through film and theatre production experiences, Mr. Berloni touches upon multiple issues on how animal welfare is/should be respected when animals perform roles in shows. In this interview, he reviews the progress that animal welfare has made from the 1970s to today, an evolution marked by an increasing awareness and knowledge of specificities relating to species, breeds, and individual animal traits and capabilities.