Performing Animality Also by Jennifer Parker-Starbuck CYBORG THEATRE: Corporeal/Technological Intersections in Multimedia Performance

Also by Lourdes Orozco THEATRE & ANIMALS Performing Animality Animals in Performance Practices

Edited by Lourdes Orozco University of Leeds, UK and Jennifer Parker-Starbuck University of Roehampton, UK Introduction, selection and editorial matter © Lourdes Orozco & Jennifer Parker-Starbuck 2015 Individual chapters © Contributors 2015 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2015 978-1-137-37312-0 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No portion of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, Saffron House, 6–10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The authors have asserted their rights to be identified as the authors of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published 2015 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Palgrave Macmillan in the UK is an imprint of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS Palgrave Macmillan in the US is a division of St Martin’s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010. Palgrave is a global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries.

ISBN 978-1-349-47646-6 ISBN 978-1-137-37313-7 (eBook) DOI 10.1057/9781137373137

This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.

Typeset by MPS Limited, Chennai, India. Contents

List of Figures vii Notes on Contributors viii Acknowledgements xii

Introduction 1 Lourdes Orozco and Jennifer Parker-Starbuck Part I Setting the Stage 1 From Homo Performans to Interspecies Collaboration: Expanding the Concept of Performance to Include Animals 19 Laura Cull Part II Bulls, Dogs, Pigs, Bears and Horses: Animals in Performance 2 The Art of Fierceness: The Performance of the Spanish Fighting Bull 39 Garry Marvin 3 ‘Genus Porcus Sophisticus’: The Learned Pig and the Theatrics of National Identity in Late Eighteenth-Century London 57 Monica Mattfeld 4 ‘A Very Good Act for an Unimportant Place’: Animals, Ambivalence and Abuse in Big-Time Vaudeville 77 Catherine Young 5 Acrobatic Circus Horses: Military Training to Natural Wildness 97 Peta Tait Part III ‘Performing’ Animals and ‘Theatres of Species’ 6 Massive Bodies in Mortal Performance: War Horse and the Staging of Anglo-American Equine Experience in Combat 117 Kim Marra 7 Embattled Animals in a Theatre of Species 135 Una Chaudhuri

v vi Contents

8 Animal Pasts and Presents: Taxidermied Time Travellers 150 Jennifer Parker-Starbuck 9 Effacing the Human: Rachel Rosenthal, Rats and Shared Creative Agency 168 Carrie Rohman Part IV Looking at/Loving with animals 10 There and Not There: Looking at Animals in Contemporary Theatre 189 Lourdes Orozco 11 It’s Hard to Spot the Queerness in this Image 204 Holly Hughes

Index 218 List of Figures

Cover: Loungta. Les chevaux de vent by Zingaro 1.1 How to play clarinet along with a singing humpback whale. Diagram by David Rothenberg, 2008 27 1.2 Sami Sälpäkivi and Bobi Girl in the first ever horse theatre in Finland, Hiano Mailma 31 3.1 A caricature illustrating the performing animals on the London stage charging personifications of the arts and virtues 61 4.1 A 1903 newspaper clipping promises animal novelty and nearly all ‘top-line’ entertainment at a Keith vaudeville theatre in Rhode Island 80 6.1 Interior of Astley’s Amphitheatre 120 7.1 Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo 143 8.1 Taxidermied dog heads at the Horniman Museum, London 154 8.2 Franko B and Fox heads in Because of Love, Volume 1 164 9.1 Illustration from Tatti Wattles: A Love Story, by Rachel Rosenthal 180 10.1 Loungta. Les chevaux de vent by Zingaro. Photo by Antoine Poupel 198 10.2 Inferno by Socìetas Raffaello Sanzio 198

vii Notes on Contributors

Una Chaudhuri is Collegiate Professor and Professor of English, Drama and Environmental Studies at . Her publications include Staging Place: The Geography of Modern Drama, Rachel’s Brain and Other Storms: The Performance Scripts of Rachel Rosenthal, Land/Scape/ Theater (co-edited Elinor Fuchs), Animal Acts: Performing Species Today (co-edited with Holly Hughes), and The Ecocide Project: Research Theatre and Climate Change (co-authored with Shonni Enelow). Her current research explores ‘zooësis’, the discourse of species in contemporary culture and performance, and ‘Anthropo-Scenes’, theatrical responses to the practical and philosophical challenges of climate change.

Laura Cull is Head of the Department of Theatre and Dance at the University of Surrey, UK. She is author of Theatres of Immanence: Deleuze and the Ethics of Performance (Palgrave, 2012), co-editor of Encounters in Performance Philosophy with Alice Lagaay (Palgrave, 2014), editor of Deleuze and Performance (2009) and co-editor with Will Daddario of Manifesto Now! Instructions for Performance, Philosophy, Politics (2013). Laura is a founding core convener of the professional association Performance Philosophy and a co-editor of the Performance Philosophy book series for Palgrave Macmillan.

Holly Hughes is a writer and performer whose work has been presented internationally at diverse venues from the ICA and the Drill Hall in London to museums such as the Walker Art Center, the Guggenheim Museum, the New Museum (NYC) and the Hammer (), to theatres including Victory Gardens, New York Theater Workshop, and the Red Cat (LA) as well as countless alternative arts spaces. Her first col- lection, Clit Notes: A Sapphic Sampler (Grove Press), was nominated for a Lambda Book Award. Hughes is co-editor of three other collections: O Solo Homo: The New Queer Performance (Grove Press), co-edited by David Roman Grove Press, the recent Animal Acts: Performing Species Today (University of Michigan Press), co-edited with Una Chaudhuri, and the forthcoming Memories of the Revolution (University of Michigan Press), co-edited with Carmelita Tropicana. She has taught at Northwestern University, Harvard, New York University, University of Colorado,

viii Notes on Contributors ix

Duke and Kalamazoo College, before being hired at the University of Michigan, where she holds appointments in the Penny W. Stamps School of Art and Design, Women’s Studies and Theatre and Drama, and directs the BFA in Interarts Performance. She lives in a state of com- mitted polyamory, involving one human, several dogs and a forgiving feline. Kim Marra is Professor of Theatre Arts and American Studies at the University of Iowa. Her publications include Strange Duets: Impresarios and Actresses in the American Theatre, 1865–1914 (2006); the co-edited volumes Passing Performances: Queer Readings of Leading Players in American Theater History (1998) and its sequel Staging Desire (2002); ‘Riding, Scarring, Knowing: A Queerly Embodied Performance Historiography’, Theatre Journal (2012); and ‘Horseback Views: A Queer Hippological Performance’, in Animal Acts: Performing Species Today (2014).

Garry Marvin is a social anthropologist and Professor of Human– Animal Studies at the University of Roehampton, London. He has conducted ethnographic research into, and published on, the Spanish bullfight; zoos; English foxhunting; the experiences of game hunters; hunting trophies and taxidermy; human–wildlife conflicts. Among his recent publications are Wolf (2012) and, co-edited with Susan McHugh, The Handbook of Human–Animal Studies (2014).

Monica Mattfeld is an Instructor at the University of Northern British Columbia and is interested in human–animal relationships and their influence on performances of gender during the eighteenth and nine- teenth centuries in Britain. Her current research examines the role of animals in political satire, their inclusion in the eighteenth-century illegitimate theatre, and the early nineteenth-century craze for grand equestrian extravaganzas, or hippodramas.

Lourdes Orozco is Lecturer in Theatre Studies at the Workshop Theatre, University of Leeds. Her research interests are in Contem- porary Theatre and Performance in Europe. Her most recent research focuses on the presence of animals and children in theatre and per- formance contexts. She is the author of Teatro y Politica. Barcelona 1980–2000 (2007) and she is the author of Theatre & Animals (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013). She has published articles on animals in contemporary theatre and is particularly interested in issues around x Notes on Contributors risk, performing animals’ behaviour, and rights and regulations of performing animals.

Jennifer Parker-Starbuck is a Professor of Theatre and Performance Studies in the Department of Drama, Theatre and Performance at the University of Roehampton, London. She is author of Cyborg Theatre: Corporeal/Technological Intersections in Multimedia Performance (Palgrave Macmillan, 2011) and her essays on bodies, animality and multimedia have appeared in a variety of books and journals including Theatre Journal, PAJ, Women and Performance Journal, and Theatre Topics. Her essay ‘Animal Ontologies and Media Representations: Robotics, Puppets, and the Real of War Horse’ received the ATHE 2014 Outstanding Article Award. She is an Assistant Editor of PAJ: A Journal of Performance and Art and an Associate Editor of the International Journal of Performance Arts and Digital Media. Carrie Rohman is Associate Professor of English at Lafayette College. Her interests include animal studies, modernism, posthumanism and performance. She is author of Stalking the Subject: Modernism and the Animal (Columbia, 2009) and her essays have appeared in journals such as Deleuze Studies, American Literature, Modern Fiction Studies, Hypatia, and Criticism. She is also a practicing dancer and choreog- rapher: her most recent performance (2014) explored memorializing the extinct passenger pigeon in collaboration with installation artist and musician Michael Pestel. She is currently working on a study of animality and aesthetics in twentieth-century literature, dance, and . Peta Tait is Professor of Theatre and Drama at La Trobe University, Australia and Visiting Professor at the University of Wollongong. She is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities. She publishes on the practice and theory of theatre, drama and body-based arts and performance, and in relation to cultural languages of emotion. She publishes articles and books on circus performance including con- temporary new circus. Her recent books are Wild and Dangerous Performances: Animals, Emotions, Circus (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), Circus Bodies: Cultural Identity in Aerial Performance (2005) and Performing Emotions (2002) and Fighting Nature: Travelling Menageries, Animal Acts and War Shows ( University Press, Forthcoming). She is also a playwright. Notes on Contributors xi

Catherine Young is a doctoral candidate in Theatre at The Graduate Center, City University of New York. Her dissertation examines animal performances and rhetorics of animality in big-time US vaudeville. Young’s writing can be found in Theatre Journal and Theatre Survey. She teaches in the Fine and Performing Arts Department at Baruch College, where she is also a Communication Fellow at the Bernard L. Schwartz Communication Institute. Acknowledgements

An edited volume is truly a collaborative act and we would like first to thank all of the contributors to the volume, whose responses, revi- sions and enthusiasm for this project have made it a pleasure to work on. Since we argue throughout for more expansive relations between humans and animals, we would also like to thank all of the animals out there who have inspired us enough to want to write a book about them. Our gratitude also goes to Paula Kennedy at Palgrave Macmillan for supporting this project from its very inception; and to Peter Cary at Palgrave for his support, patience and advice. Thanks also to Linda Auld for all of her help with the production process. The Animal Studies academic community has been an especially stimulating and productive space for us to be a part of. The regular meetings of the British Animal Studies Network (BASN) in London and later in Strathclyde, and of Minding Animals, Unruly Creatures, the White Rose Animal Series, and the Interdisciplinary Research Group for Human–Animal Studies at the University of Roehampton have provided us with food for thought and incredible interlocutors. We would like to thank especially Erica Fudge, Garry Marvin, Rod Bennison, Bob MacKay and Steve Baker for their ongoing encouragement about our individual research on animals and this project in particular from its early days. A special thanks goes to Giovanni Aloi, editor of Antennae: The Journal of Nature in Visual Culture (http://www.antennae.org.uk/) for his continu- ing friendship, support and endlessly fascinating conversations about animals. The panels that we organized at the Performance Studies international conferences (PSi) in 2009 and 2011 proved particularly fruitful in facili- tating a dialogue with other Theatre and Performance Studies scholars with an interest in animals. Our conversations over the years with Marla Carlson, Richard Gregory, Eve Katsouraki, Michelle Lindenblatt, Susan McHugh, Michael Peterson, Alan Read, Nick Ridout, Nigel Rothfels, Erika Rundle, Deke Weaver, Maurya Wickstrom and others have been particularly productive and inspirational. Jen also would like to thank her PhD students Austin McQuinn and Mariel Supka, whose conver- sations and incredible work interrogating Animal and Performance Studies continue to be an inspiration.

xii Acknowledgements xiii

Finally, we would like to dedicate this volume to our families, human and animal alike. Jen thanks especially Josh Abrams, Zeena Starbuck, and Rollo, the animal in our company. Lourdes dedicates the book to Hamilton, Laura and Zoey, for the many hours we spend think- ing, talking and reading about animals, and the many more that we spend looking at and living with them.