Animal Farm – A Group Piece IRS on the Character of Napoleon

After a good while of wait and constant anxious wonder over a month, we learnt of what our
end of year production would be, an adaptation of George Orwell’s classic 1945 novel
Animal Farm by Nick Scubij and the Shake and Stir Theatre Company. Animal Farm tells the
story of common, ordinary farm animals on an abusive and negligent farmer known as Mr.
Jones’ farm. They are sparked to rise up and revolt against Mr. Jones from a heavy
revelation-brewed speech given by the soon-late boar Old Major. This leads the animals to
finally charging Jones out of the farm, and the story follows the trials and tribulations of the
animals attempting independence from Jones, with the pigs taking leadership. As the story
unfolds we are shown the true strength of power and corruption that soon would lead to one
of the leading pigs of the revolt, Napoleon, to taking total control, turning slowly from
following the once all-accepted rules of “Animalism” laid out by the freshly freed animals to
becoming a sort of unruly dictator, being consumed and held by this unfaltering sense of
power. As the story comes to a near end, the leading force of Napoleon seems to never falter,
with an incredible line being told by the narrators at the story’s close, dictating how Napoleon
had fallen from following the free and plentiful ways laid out by those animals liberated now
years ago and had become the thing he once fought to free himself from, “Clover looked
from pig to man, from man to pig and from pig to man again, but already it was impossible to
say which was which.”.

For our production of Shake and Stir’s Animal Farm, I was cast into the role of Napoleon
along with Julia Brodzinski (who later was struck with an illness which lead her to resig from
the show), which quickly brought on my own realization of playing this widely feared and
incredibly power-driven character along with another, meaning myself and Julia were to
come together and collaborate our methods in playing this essentially crucial character, after
examining reports and analytics on Napoleon himself based off of the novel I had quickly
learnt of how corrupted and manipulative this pig truly was. Throughout the initial section of
the story we see Napoleon in an immediate leadership role along with one of the primary pigs
who acted as a figurehead for the revolution against Mr. Jones, the boar named Snowball.
Although Napoleon sits in this leadership role during the rebellion he keeps himself held back
and simply following along with Snowball’s plans, but we are quick to see that once the
animals have successfully revolted and gained their freedom from Mr. Jones, Napoleon
seems to have his own vision for the Farm and its operation. Frequent and heated debates

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between Snowball and Napoleon soon emerge and Napoleon begins to openly reveal his true
intentions. He is a treacherous and cruel leader, even to the point of establishing a private
army for his own use early in the rebellion by taking away the litter of puppies from the dogs
on the farm for reasons unknown to the other animals of the farm until they are finally
released one day to attack Snowball and secure Napoleon an easily attained victory to fully
reign over the Farm as an abhorrent dictator, running the farm for his own personal gain with
little care to those residing on the farm that were not of his groups, being the favoured and
privileged pigs and the pseudo-soldiers that became of all dogs that were born on the farm.

All these aspects lead to a complex fusion of traits and attributes which were an absolute blast
to be able to portray. I was almost able to mentally compare him to that well-known image of
a military general of an authoritarian country, standing there atop the balcony looking down
on those he could destroy the lives of at a split second’s decision which had generously
assisted my decisions on his character portrayal from the first week of learning the script.

Vocally, Napoleon has been interpreted in a multitude of ways, from some seeing him as
what I referenced previously to some imaging his tone to be more akin to the conniving evil
villain type. Personally, when workshopping how I would portray Napoleon’s voice I had
decided on using a combination of the two mentioned above that would intersect depending
on the situation at hand. This is prominent in two scenes in particular:

- A pseudo-emotional draw in the voice when speaking to the animals regarding the
death of their close friend, the cart horse Boxer, sporting a still low and uncaring tone
yet I had decided to use more open and over expressive shapes in the mouth in an
attempt to falsely show care in my motives for the deceased animal towards the
others.
- The windmill that served as the pride of the animal’s achievements on the farm as a
close and free group is destroyed by a violent storm during the night. Napoleon is
smart enough to realize this but is able to spin the situation to put the blame onto the
most-likely deceased Snowball. During this scene Napoleon truly shows his power of
manipulation over the other animals, thus while using an already agitated volume and
tone, I emphasize specific words that connect with how Napoleon attempts to
manipulate the animals: You, Award, Traitor, Snuck, Our Work.

I keep Napoleon’s speech slowly paced throughout most scenes, in a way that is meant to
show that every word is said for a reason, I want him to be seen as this feared, cunning and

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manipulative device and want to be able to express that to the audience through his voice
with this slow but methodical speech pattern he consistently keeps throughout his time
controlling and leading the farm he built up to be his empire from nothing.

When developing the physical characteristics and mannerisms of a character as well

structured as Napoleon I had an especially tough time. This was due to the fact of Napoleon
being such an already defined characteristic that it was challenging to try and completely
rebuild/interpret his movement patterns, physical habits and repetitive responses to certain
situations or actions. When working with Julia on producing these things for Napoleon, we
quickly came to the agreement that this powerful and overbearing boar would be quite similar
in how we saw his posture to be, a straight back, a chin held high and a puffed out chest at
almost all times when addressing the animals publicly was to be common for him due to how
he felt with the gain of power that he so heavily fed off of and the respect he felt among the
farm animals. He was highly overconfident in his efforts and seemed the type to show it at
any given moment had he the chance.

I had proposed the idea of forming his physical actions to be much more militaristic, the idea
of the left arm held tightly behind the back becoming a major character identifier for
Napoleon and his overconfidence, to which Julia had quickly agreed and adopted the idea
into our shared portrayal, this idea of him growing into this role of power with holding his
left trotter behind his back quickly became a symbol of someone that was above the hours of
laborious work on the farm that he constantly subjected the others to, above all others as a
sort of military figurehead standing above the bodies of his enemies, head held high as his
stance is unphased by anything else. When working through scenes, I had decided that he was
only to remove this symbol of his confidence from behind his back when attempting to sway
the other animals back towards his side of the pitch. He uses it to directly address the other
animals when necessary with a strong snapping movement in their direction. Napoleon wants
every animal to know that he is the one in control, that he is the only thing that stands
between them and their old, enslaved and abusive lives at the hands of Mr. Jones he
constantly reminds them of this anytime they are feeling doubt. The movements and control
of this normally held back hand is what I choose to use to assert complete and utter
dominance over the others as Napoleon and he is never afraid to use it.

“The animals cowered in their places seeming to know in advance that something terrible was
about to happen.” I think this line perfectly represents how Napoleon is seen by the other

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animals on the farm as time progresses, I chose to reference this line of script as I decided to
use it very specifically when choosing how I would interact with others during the final parts
of the show and even partially during the mid-section as Napoleon takes over the farm for
good. He couldn’t care less for them. They fear him and he relishes in it. When choosing the
reactions and general interactions with the other animals, I decided to continue down the
direction I decided on from the beginning with Napoleon, uncaring for those he saw as less
than him and seeing those closer to him (i.e. the other pigs and the dogs) as tools for his
personal use. Multiple times during the show I as Napoleon am confronted by a conflicting
query from another pig and sticking with the aspect of Napoleon’s cruelty I almost lunge at
the querying pig, wanting to emphasise Napoleon’s hatred towards those that oppose him and
his knowledge of the power that a rumour or differing opinion can make.

Napoleon is seconded by a pig named Squealer (Played by Siobhan Brown) who is seen as
his talking head, his primary propagandist on the farm during his reign of control. Squealer is
a master of foolery and what I feel Napoleon sees as his most useful tool that he could have
and although I see him as trusting of Squealer, he is not there to be his friend. He is there to
use him for all his abilities. When around him and covered by his incredible power of word, I
keep my head held high and hold the overconfident stance that Napoleon commonly wields,
barely looking at the other animals while Squealer speaks, knowing that he will always be
able to win the favour of the upset animals better than Napoleon could in a much longer
timeframe.

During the earlier scenes of the show, I am able to interact quite personally with Snowball
(Played by Cyan Peace) and have actually had quite a challenge in workshopping how
Napoleon would act around his co-leader and now rival due to attempting to portray his
already complex mindset in a time where he is not yet this supreme leader he wants to be, but
this aggressive and non-political dynamo that just wants Snowball dealt with and gone so he
can take control. I solved this by thinking over the situation constantly to myself. I feel
personally as if Napoleon would be feigning his own actions and intentions and instead
basing them on how he observed Snowball’s tactics in controlling and gaining the favour of
the other animals, bending those tactics and thus creating this majorly conflicting power
dynamic between the two of them. During these scenes where Napoleon and Snowball
debate, I wanted to almost mimic Snowball’s actions, yet corrupt them partially in a way that
reveals partially how Napoleon would truly feel and act. I showed this by acting as if I
personally had a heavy grudge against Cyan as she acted her part, smiling as I desecrate the

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blueprints Snowball had created and acting quite childish in some ways during these
interactions.

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 The Glass Menagerie – A Monologue IRS on the Character of
Tom
While working on our group production of Animal Farm, we had finally received our choices
for our end-of-year monologue performances and out of the two quite interesting monologues
I received for choice, I had decided on the piece taken from the 1944 play The Glass
Menagerie written by American playwright Thomas “Tennessee” Williams, which was
actually the play that had been his golden goose and drove him from an obscure playwright to
famed and well known name in those times. The Glass Menagerie is a play based heavily on
the concept of ‘flashbacks’ in memory as a majority of the scenes are both narrated and
performed by the character named Tom Wingfield, who serves as the main protagonist of the
story. The play is performed solely in an apartment in St. Louis in the state of Missouri in the
US. Yhis apartment is owned by the mother of Tom, Amanda Wingfield, and centres around
the stories of the three main family members being Tom, Amanda and Tom’s sister, Laura.
The memories that tell these stories show a few lines of plot:

- Tom’s struggle with the repetitiveness and banality of his life, working in a shoe
warehouse so he is able to support his family but finding it self-afflicting against his
wellbeing, constantly being deprived of sleep and generally miserable with how he
has turned out, attempting to escape his gritty life by taking trips out to town at night,
be it at a theatre or local bar.
- Amanda is constantly struggling to be able to live her life the way she is, feeling
guilty for not being able to raise her children the way she wanted to be able to,
wishing to go back to her youth and almost self-destructively wants her children to
have the same.
- Laura was left with a constant limp from a childhood bout of polio and is incredibly
introverted with a weak mental state, feeling inferior to everything around her, she
tries to comfort herself with a collection of glass figurines and feels they are what can
sympathise with her the most.

In the scene I was given, Tom has finally pushed against her mother’s wishes for him and is
finally ‘snapping’ to the pressure on him by his life, speaking his true feelings to his mother
on how he really feels about how his life has turned out. Due to this I have produced the
scene with a very shaky pattern in my voice. I have chosen to follow that “finally broken”
feel with a very open and expressive tone, almost shaking from nervousness but slowly

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overcoming it with a confident voice closer to the end expressed as I tend to increase my
volume slightly, decreasing the amount of shaking and stuttering I have littered throughout
the text. I would imagine Tom goes through these words in a scattered and random manner,
all these words jumping out of his mind and finally in the open.

While developing the voice for this character, I had to research the accent spoken in
Missouri/St. Louis by watching over a small series of videos that tag themselves as the
“Accent Challenge” and speak in their regional dialect. As St. Louis is in the mid-western
area of the United States the accent sounds quite similar to a generalised eastern/upper
western accent (areas of Chicago, Ohio) but has small hints and variations of words that are
heard much more commonly in the Southern parts of the US and lower-western areas
(Tennessee, Mississippi, Louisiana.). This left me having to develop this quite unique
variation of accent based on single words alone, which was quite a challenge.

After looking over all the characteristics Tom seemed to have, I decided to portray him with a
uneven/off-centre posture, as he tirelessly works day by day in the Continental Shoemakers
Warehouse with quite straining manual labour. Over time I feel as if he would develop a
slightly unbalanced spinal stance. As Tom moves around throughout the scene he is quite
sporadic in his movements. He is fed up and highly agitated and isn’t going to be in any real
care of where he’s moving or going. With this in mind I portray him in the scene as acting in
quite an overexaggerated manner, with large hand movements and gestures that he is using to
try and get his “fed up” self recognised and understood by his mother.

When playing out this scene, I want to make sure that the audience will understand how Tom
feels in this situation. Even without the context of the rest of the play, using these overzealous
movements and speech I try to portray the true anguish and boredom that Tom feels in his
life, that feeling that he just wants something, be it anything more than the relentless assault
on his mental state that is his banal everyday life.

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