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On creating the role of Caligula
written by Dave Gangler

For a recent article on minnpost.com, reporter Ed Huyck asked actor Dave Gangler, who plays Caligula, "What does it take to get inside a character like this?" Dave composed a revealing essay in response, excerpts of which appear in the article. For those of you who want the enhanced "HD Caligula" experience, read on to learn more about what makes Caligula tick for Dave:

I couldn’t come close to paring it down to a few sentences. Below are my thoughts about what it takes to get inside of a character like Caligula. If you want it in brief summarized format, I guess it would be: It takes a lot of thought, imagination, and writing about events in Caligula’s life that precede this play and specificity about who Caligula feels close to and what things happened to make him feel close to these people. It also takes a lot of analysis to break down Caligula’s thought process that leads him to commit such acts of depravity and how the guilt of committing these necessary acts haunts him and undermines his goal.
 
But that statement is so vague and useless. Here’s the long form:

I found it quite difficult to get inside the character of Caligula. He is so tortured and disillusioned with the nature of existence. I’m actually a quite happy person who finds a great deal of joy in many many aspects of existence. So this guy is very outside of me. Here’s a person who has decided that there is no meaning in life. For him there is no benevolent higher power with a grand purpose that our actions serve. And there is no such thing as love. I had trouble with nailing down for myself exactly what it means for life to not have any meaning. I found two very basic places that Caligula alludes to people finding meaning in life: Religion and Love.
 
It wasn’t hard for me to understand the notion of rejecting a higher power as a source of meaning in life. You only need to look at all the cruel things that life does to people. That’s a strong argument for rejecting the existence of a benevolent deity. A benevolent deity would not allow such cruelty to occur.  I was able to use the strength of that argument to get in touch with Caligula’s rejection of a benevolent god. But I did have trouble with this notion: I find meaning in my life by the connections I feel with other people (let’s say that fits under the umbrella of Love). I do something to make them happy. They do something to make me happy. For me, the idea of people doing things to make each other happy promotes happiness in general and I find meaning in that. It’s about enjoying the time that we have and making the world as good as it can be while we’re here. And I found that notion difficult to refute. But what I realized was that there are a lot of things that shaped Caligula that are not described in detail in this play. And in order to have a shot at finding a connection to Caligula’s thought process, I knew I needed to nail down a lot of that history. It is because of what happened to Caligula that he was able to refute the idea of love giving meaning to life. I made a list of important questions for me to answer as Caligula:
 
 
I decided that prior to Drusilla’s death, Caligula found meaning in his life from love. This is alluded to in the script and since love is where I find meaning in my life, I thought that was a good “in” for getting at Caligula in a way that I could relate to him. His realization after Drusilla’s death that grief doesn’t last proves to him that love is not the meaningful force that he thought. He is then awakened to the fact that love is a lie. And therefore meaning in life is a lie. He realizes that people make up lies about things that don’t exist (like love and a benevolent god) so that they don’t have to face the truth about human existence: we die and we are unhappy.
 
Clearly this is not a good existence. Caligula decides that the only way to change the nature of existence is to do something that is impossible within the confines of the current existence. So he decides he must get the moon. Ridiculous? Insane? Yes. But if he can accomplish this, he will prove that he has become more powerful that the confines of existence and perhaps then he will reshape the miserable state of human existence into something much more rewarding. (he later talks about Happiness and Immortality as other insane goals to achieve.) In other words, he must become more powerful than “god”. (I put god in quotes because I don’t believe Caligula necessarily believes there is an all-powerful deity. There is merely the random cruelty of existence. Whether that random cruelty was instituted by some actual deity or not is immaterial.) The important thing is that Caligula is the only person with absolute power, so he is the only one who has a chance of becoming more powerful than “god” and reshaping existence.
 
He then decides that the first two steps in becoming more powerful than “god” are: 1) to put on the blank, moronic mask of god and become as randomly cruel as god. This way he’ll be on the same level as “god” and only need to take one more step to move beyond. 2) To sever himself from the lies that mask the meaninglessness of life. This means cutting out all feelings of love for other people.
 
Therefore he needs to start with those closest to him. This is why I needed to come up with tender memories that Caligula has with each patrician. Caligula’s struggle throughout the play is trying to reject the feelings of “love” that he has built up over many years so that he can reshape the miserable nature of existence into something better. He knows that these feelings aren’t real, but finds them very difficult to ignore. The way he tries to defeat the feelings is to combat them with actions that will be indicative of heartless cruelty. It is through these actions that he hopes to sever his feelings of love. It’s a way to force himself to move beyond the lies of meaning. And yet he is tortured within himself because he has trouble letting go of the guilt of doing such awful things to those he has spent a lifetime learning to love. So by creating tender memories with each patrician, I gave myself images to think about that will produce these feelings of guilt and conflict about what I’ve done.
 
In the end, I don’t think Camus is advocating that people should go out and follow Caligula’s lead. I think the point of Caligula in this play is to give the audience a window into the notion that life has no meaning. I don’t think it is necessary for the character to be particularly sympathetic. He’s not the hero of this play. And I believe some of his actions are intended to sicken the audience. But I do think it’s vital that he be compelling to watch. If the audience stays with Caligula, hopefully they will soak up some of the philosophy that he teaches. And by having Caligula do things that sicken the audience, Camus is attempting to get a strong reaction from them so that they will stay engaged. I think Camus presents a thesis and then attacks the thesis with other characters later on, so that in the end the audience will leave thinking for themselves about whether life has any intrinsic meaning or whether they create their own meaning in life. I believe that people walking away from this play will be forced to face the fact that they create their own meaning in life. And they will be forced to consider whether they lie to themselves to make themselves feel better about the nature of existence.

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