Actors Jacob Caltrider and David McBean are working together to bring an inanimate object to life on the Cygnet stage.
“Do I look inanimate to you, punk? If I can talk and I can move, who’s to say I can’t do anything I want,” says their character at the end of Act I.
Caltrider and McBean play Audrey II, the blood-hungry, sassy plant from outer space come to take over the world in Little Shop of Horrors.
Yes, a plant.
McBean lends his voice to allow Audrey II to talk and sing, and Caltrider is the puppeteer that allows their “big gurl” to move and dance.
Little Shop of Horrors tells how Mr. Mushnik’s skid row flower shop goes from near-bankruptcy to instant acclaim with the help of a mean, green flytrap with a lust for blood. Seymour, the shop’s green-thumbed nerd, makes a Faustian bargain with the plant from outer space – which he names Audrey II – in exchange for money, fame and to gain the love of his co-worker, Audrey – whom the plant is named after.
Caltrider and McBean work in unison to perform as the show’s star, from a small seedling in a coffee can, through perennial puberty, up to a carnivorous weed the size of a small car. Caltrider maneuvers all five different plant puppets used throughout Audrey II’s growth spurts. But for the pair of actors, it’s not just mastering the mechanisms that allow Audrey II to move; they also have to give the shrub some personality.
“I think most of the performance comes from David and then being translated into what can we do to make his performance come alive,” Caltrider said. “That’s how I see it.”
“What’s great for me is that Jacob, as the puppeteer, is also an actor,” McBean said, “so he is embodying and enlivening the plant, playing off of and matching what I am doing as an actor. He is really doing a great job interpreting and matching all of those things. That’s great for me.”
That partnership started early during rehearsal. Caltrider watched and studied McBean when he was singing so he could recreate his performance with the various puppets. The process was even more challenging since the puppets arrived later in their schedule.
“During rehearsal, he would be as though he was holding the plant and I would sit in a place where he could see me or hear me – and I would sort of act with the other actors,” McBean explained, adding, “and he was matching what I was doing with his body and his movement.”
“Sean (Murray, the show’s director) would say, ‘Make sure you watch all of David’s little subtle movements’ – I mean the subconscious head movements and little body movements, because all of those tiny things get blown up exponentially in the plant,” Caltrider continued. “We had to find different ways to present those little movements because the plant has a different body type.”
“And you don’t get to see my face,” McBean added.
During the show, McBean is performing off stage and Caltrider is inside the plant – practically blind – on stage. Even as friends outside the theater, they had to create a special connection during those rehearsals because they would be completely separated once the performances started.
McBean said, “It was really kind of interesting. During the rehearsal process we noticed that we all started to watch him (Caltrider), and it felt like he was the plant and I was just kind of there. It was weird.”
“It took me a little while to settle into the fact that I can trust myself in (the puppets),” Caltrider said. “Sean and James (Vasquez, the shows’ choreographer) kept saying, ‘It’s working … all the little subtle movements are working.’ It has become a lot easier than I thought it was going to be, because the little tiny movements are reading well.”
As the show prepares to open this weekend, does McBean see himself in Caltrider’s performance?
“Yeesssss!” he answered with a big laugh. “It is a sassy, sassy plant.”
McBean said the plant is almost a caricature of himself, exaggerating parts of his performance and parts of his personality.
“Things were not revealed that I didn’t know,” McBean said, but he did say, “Things were revealed that I feared.”
Both actors agree that their performances are not complete without the other.
“I’m only doing a small part of it. I’m only doing the physical part of it,” Caltrider said. “David is bringing the other half of the character to life. Separately, there is something just completely missing and I don’t feel it’s a full performance.”
Together, McBean and Caltrider may offer you fortune and fame, love and money and instant acclaim, to borrow another lyric from the show. “But whatever they offer you, don’t feed the plants.”
Little Shop of Horrors opens Aug. 6 at the Cygnet Theatre (4040 Twiggs St. in Old Town). For tickets, log on to cygnettheatre.com or call the box office at 619-337-1525.
