Trevor

Trevor is a chimpanzee who once performed with the likes of Morgan Fairchild. Now, he’s approaching puberty and can’t even get a callback. Is it because he’s big and strong and potentially dangerous? Or does he just need better costumes? Trevor lives alone with a Sandra, a middle aged widow. Sandra knows Trevor would never hurt anyone, at least not on purpose. And just because he’s not “cute” like he used to be, she won’t send him to some dirty sanctuary, at least not to appease her paranoid neighbor Ashley and her precious newborn baby.

“Sweet, clever and weirdly touching…Trevor’s absurdist admixture of showbiz satire and real-life poignancy is so continually delightful, in fact, that you may not notice, as it flows by, how resonant the story actually is: about child actors, and actors in general; about animal individuality and animal rights; about flawed communication between loved ones; about the complex elements that enter into “acting like a man.” Funny though it often is, Trevor is good for much more than a laugh.” –Adam Feldman, Time Out (Critic’s Pick)

Please join us on Friday, November 21 at 7:30pm in the Black Box Theater for a preshow discussion featuring director Christopher Niess, the Center for Great Apes, and UCF Anthropology Lecturer Sandra Wheeler. This preshow talk is free and open to the public.

A Note from the Director

In 1995, a three-day-old chimpanzee named Travis, was adopted by Sandra and Jerome Herold. Raising him in Stamford Connecticut, the Herold’s made Travis their constant companion. Travis would ‘advertise’ and promote the Herold’s towing business as he rode with them during the day, and would greet police officers they encountered when towing cars. Travis learned to open doors using keys, dress himself, water plants, feed hay to his owners’ horses, eat at a table with the rest of the family, and drink wine from a stemmed glass. He logged onto the computer to look at pictures, watched television using a remote control, and brushed his teeth using a Water Pik. He enjoyed watching baseball on television. Travis had also driven a car on several occasions.

As an animal actor, Travis had appeared in several television commercials, including spots for Coca-Cola and Old Navy. He had also appeared on The Maury Povich Show, The Man Show, and a television pilot that featured Sheryl Crow and Michael Moore. When Jerome died from cancer in 2004, and the Herolds’ only child died in a car accident, Sandra Herold began to regard Travis almost as a son; sleeping and bathing him, pampering and treating him as such. Though Travis managed several ‘escapes’ over his life with the Herold’s, Sandra still viewed the chimp as rational, and believed in being able to reason with him.

But in February of 2009, the then-14-year-old, 200-pound chimpanzee viciously attacked neighbor Charla Nash (as she was attempting to help Sandra coax Travis indoors after an escape), biting and tearing at her face, blinding her, severing her nose, ears and both hands and severely lacerating her face.

This dark comedy examines the personification of animals for our own benefit; bending the imagined relationship toward our desires. When assuming their actions to be attempts to communicate and bond with us in a deeply meaningful way, it is possible to construct a kinship with animals with all the amiability and simplicity of a child with his or her stuffed bear—ignoring the animal within. This examination is for anyone who has looked into the eyes of an animal and thought “I wonder what they would say if they could speak”. I wonder if we would listen….

—Christopher Niess, Director

Special Thanks

We’d like to give a special thank you to Diane Beatty and the Center for Great Apes. Please consider supporting this organization, which provides permanent sanctuary for orangutans and chimpanzees who have been rescued or retired from the entertainment industry, from research, or who are no longer wanted.