Thoughts

So I've been assigned a scene from a play about a couple who are having some marital problems, largely because she finds out in the course of the play that he is in love and sleeping with a goat. The play is The Goat, or Who is Silvia? by Edward Albee, appropriately enough. Because if there were multiple plays about men sleeping with goats, we might have to stop and take a look at things. And I love this play. It is raw and gritty and real and torturous and so far out there bizarre. I think it is really going to push me as a performer to play this woman who has been so horrifically betrayed, but who still loves her husband so deeply. And it's going to be hard to not just be snide through the whole thing, but that's another issue.

My question is this: As we were discussing the play as a class, it was decided that the man playing the husband (any man cast as this husband) has to love that goat. He has to cast that goat and imagine making love to her and imagine liking it. He has to imagine staring into the goat's eyes and being completely swept away. Which, as you imagine, might be hard for some actors to do. My question is this: in the context of the play, the husband doesn't think what he is doing is wrong. He truly believes that he is in love with his wife and with the goat and that his love for the goat came from somewhere innocent and pure and beautiful, not some sordid thing that happened in his past that turned him into a deviant. He talks about going to therapy and realizing that he has nothing in common with the other people there because his love for the goat is true, whereas they sleep with geese and dogs and pigs out of some psychological trauma. So I have to ask any actor who is cast as this man, in order to prepare for this role, do you have to be in love with a goat, or do you just need to be in love with someone (something) that isn't your wife?

The character knows he is hurting his wife and he knows that infidelity is wrong. He doesn't think loving this goat is wrong, and he defends his love of this goat to the end of the play. So does the actor playing him need to imagine making love to a goat? Or does he need to imagine making love to someone other than his spouse who makes him ridiculously happy? Does the husband's guilt come from the infidelity or from the fact that it is a goat or both?

Honestly, I don't know. I think the answer would be different for every actor who plays the husband. But I would think that if, for the actor, the thought of making love to a goat is repulsive, that kind of goes against how the character feels about his relationship with the goat and may give him a self-hatred that I'm not sure he has. Whereas if he does his preparation around his wife, and then does some preparation around meeting the fantasy partner of his dreams (who is not his wife), I think that might get closer. I don't know. I could be full of crap myself. It's just a thought.