Introduction: real animals on the stage

Abstract

This special issue explores the role particularly of live animals on the stage, from the early modern era to the present time. The contributions deal with visual and textual representations of performing animals, typologies of animals in the theatre, the hybridization of the drama with the circus, the zoo and the cinema, as well as the semiotic transfer of animal roles from the text to the stage. We seek here to focus on the changing historical fortunes of the four-footed actor and explore the ways that attitudes to the animal affect their dramatic representations and uses. In attempting to relate snapshots of acting animals from their earliest manifestation on the early modern stage, we contextualize and theorize the uses of the animal actor which the essays explore. The collection keys into current debates in the cutting-edge of animal performance studies while seeking to consider how these theoretical perspectives were formed.