As the title suggests,
Beasts and Beauties is full of
beastly characters . Many of the stories feature animals, but as actor Howard Coggins tells us, when playing a cow he is not attempting to impersonate the animal itself, but to capture
the essence of an animal . In the production the actors do not wear animal costumes but instead try to embody key features of the animal and use props (Howard uses a pair of rubber gloves to represent the cow's udder) that are relevant to the animal's nature. As the cow, Howard Coggins walks slowly and deliberately, wears very long false eyelashes, and always looks as if he might run away at any moment. Kelly Williams, who plays a
horse and a goat , tells us that the actors had a lot of playtime in rehearsals and that she went to watch goats in the countryside to help her prepare for her character.
In 'Toby and the Wolf ', the story with the most animal characters, actor Elliot Levy, who plays
the wolf , tells us that his character is very human: a man, but a man with wolfish qualities. Similarly, Howard Coggins, who plays Toby the dog, talks about how
the dog and the wolf characters are created and how the actors think about the way these animals would react in different situations to develop their personality. The
music and staging in this play also help create the animal characters, through Terje's animal-like sounds and
music .
