On Human Ground
The puppets in ‘War Horse’ ground Seth Numrich in reality By Mark Blankenship
too young, actually, and my directors got on me and said, ‘He’s not 10. He’s not 8. He’s an early teenager.’ So I had to keep that in mind.” He continued, “I have to remember that I’m playing the actions. I have to connect to Seth Numrich and the Joey puppet in War Horse. what Albert wants and what he needs as He noted, too, that when Albert goes a young man, rather than playing the age. to war, many of his scenes are “lower to It should be about playing intentions—I the ground,” meaning he has to crouch or need to save Joey, I need to confront my lie down so he can have a conversation father—instead of playing a caricature of without getting shot. “That affected the a young teenager.” physicality as we moved through that Albert changes, of course, when he part of the play.” runs away to fight and discovers the hellish Albert changes emotionally, too. “He reality of trenches, tanks and machine guns. is forced to grow up fast and figure out “We worked a lot on the sense of how to deal with life and death situations walking in mud because that was the and hold on to hope,” Numrich said. “I try reality of their lives throughout the war,” to give it a cumulative effect throughout Numrich said. “The fields of France that the play to show how Albert grows up.” were once green and full of flowers were just ripped apart, and walking in that Mark Blankenship is the editor of TDF landscape is different than walking down Stages, Theatre Development Fund’s the streets of New York City.” online performing arts magazine. Paul KolnicK
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eth Numrich stars in War Horse, the theatrical fable now at Lincoln Center, as Albert Narracott, a young British boy whose life changes when his beloved horse Joey is sold as an officer’s mount in World War I. Albert joins the army to look for his animal friend, and we see both of them maneuver the horror of French battlefields. The play, which is based on a young adult novel by Michael Morpurgo, can’t work unless Joey and several other animals feel like flesh-and-blood characters. To bring them to life, the creative team has devised remarkable, life-size puppets. Operated by small teams of puppeteers, the creatures seem strikingly real. They don’t just walk around: They breathe and sigh and occasionally shake their heads, just like actual horses. Numrich loves those tiny gestures. “For us human actors in the play, breathing is not a conscious activity; it just happens,” he said. “But if you’re aware of your breathing, it can bring you
into the present moment, which is what we’re always striving to do. And because [the puppeteers] always have to be thinking about breathing and physically making that animal breathe, there’s a presence they attain in their performance that’s awe-inspiring. “There are times in the play when I see Joey breathing and I remember that I’m breathing, and it brings me right back into the moment. I thought it would take a lot of imagination to pretend these puppets are horses, and in fact, it takes none at all.” Instead, Numrich’s biggest acting challenge is totally human. Over the course of the show, Albert ages from his early teens to his early twenties, and it takes delicate work to crystallize the phases of his adolescence. For instance, Numrich doesn’t want young Albert to seem like a child, and that’s not always easy. “Once we started performing in front of an audience, I started to get self-conscious as a 24-yearold actor that people weren’t going to buy that I was 14 years old at the beginning of the play,” he recalled. “I started playing him
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