Richard Skipper Celebrates Bill Berloni to Benefit The Theatrical Animals Fund, Monday Afternoon August 17

Richard Skipper Celebrates Bill Berloni to benefit The Theatrical Animals Fund on Monday, August 17 at 5 PM ET/2PM PT, streaming LIVE at Richard Skipper Celebrates on Facebook and YouTube.

Bill is a published author known for his book Broadway Tail and has been featured on many news shows including The Today Show, CBS Sunday Morning, CBS News and Arise Entertainment 360 TV, among others.From dogs to donkeys, pigs to parrots, llamas to lizards, scores of Theatrical Animals have comfortably lived and been trained by Bill Berloni over the past 40 years at their farm in Connecticut.  There are currently 25 dogs, 3 cats, 2 horses, 2 pigs, 2 geese, 1 donkey, 1 Macaw and 1 dwarf bunny at the farm. To contribute to the fund, go to https://www.gofundme.com/f/animal-actors-fund. 

William “Bill” Berloni is an animal behaviorist, humanitarian and author, known for his training of rescue animals for stage, film and television. Bill Berloni was a 20-year-old apprentice at the Goodspeed Opera House when Martin Charnin offered him his big break: a chance to act professionally and gain his Equity Card. In return, all Bill had to do was find and train a dog to play Sandy in the original production of Annie.

What Berloni didn’t know was that this was a bigger challenge than it seemed. Animal performances in movies or television can be stitched together using different takes, different camera angles, even different animals. To perform in a featured role, an animal actor would have to be trained to ignore the distraction of the audience and respond to the same cues the same way night-after-night, just like his human counterparts. It had never been done before.

Berloni found his dog at a local animal shelter—beginning his career-long commitment to using rescued animals. Through a combination of persistence, patience and trial-and-error, he developed his revolutionary humane training techniques  to teach actor and animal alike to create a successful performance. Annie became a huge hit and Sandy became “the longest running dog on Broadway,” never missing a performance in more than seven years.

Since then, Berloni and his handlers have provided animals of all species and sizes, found in shelters, humane societies or rescue leagues, for Broadway, Off-Broadway, national tours, regional theatres, special events, the New York City Ballet, motion pictures, television and commercials. When their careers are over, the animals return to Berloni’s Connecticut farm.