Animal Acts: Performing Species Today PDF
Preview Animal Acts: Performing Species Today
Animal Acts Animal Acts Performing Species Today Edited by Una Chaudhuri and Holly Hughes The University of Michigan Press A n n Arbor Copyright © by the University of Michigan 2014 All rights reserved This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, including illustrations, in any form (beyond that copying permitted by Sections 107 and 108 of the U.S. Copyright Law and except by reviewers for the public press), without written permission from the publisher. Published in the United States of America by The University of Michigan Press Manufactured in the United States of America c Printed on acid-f ree paper 2017 2016 2015 2014 4 3 2 1 A CIP catalog record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data Animal acts : performing species today / edited by Una Chaudhuri and Holly Hughes. pages cm.— (Critical performances) ISBN 978- 0- 472- 07199- 9 (hardback)— ISBN 978- 0- 472- 05199- 1 (paper) — ISBN 978- 0- 472- 02953- 2 (e- book) 1. Animals in the performing arts. 2. Animal behavior. I. Chaudhuri, Una, 1951– editor of compi- lation. II. Hughes, Holly, 1955 March 10– editor of compilation. PN1590.A54A55 2013 791.8'023— dc23 2013040292 Ah, whom can we ever turn to in our need? Not angels, not humans, and already the knowing animals are aware that we are not really at home in our interpreted world. . . . Fling the emptiness out of your arms into the spaces we breathe; perhaps the birds will feel the expanded air with more passionate flying. — Rainer Maria Rilke, Duino Elegies For my father, Wazirzada Sardar Baljit Singh, and for my friend Fritz Ertl: birder brothers across continents and centuries. —U na Chaudhuri and For the many canines and felines with whom I’ve shared my life, and for the humans who’ve helped our multispecies household thrive. Thank you, Frankie Joiris, Raissa Hinman, Denise Tarby, and of course Esther Newton. —H olly Hughes Contents Animal Acts for Changing Times, 2.0: A Field Guide to Interspecies Performance Introduction by Una Chaudhuri 1 The Dog and Pony Show (bring your own pony) by Holly Hughes 13 Commentary by Donna Haraway: Agility Is Performance Art Stay! by Vicky Ryder, Lisa Asagi, and Stacy Makishi 37 Commentary by Marla Carlson: What Happened to the Black Dog? Cat Lady by Joseph Keckler 55 Commentary by Erika Rundle: Theatre of the Cat Lady Who Is Not With What Ass Does the Cockroach Sit? / ¿Con Qué Culo Se Sienta la Cucaracha? by Carmelita Tropicana (aka Alina Troyano) 69 Commentary by Lawrence La Fountain- Stokes: Martina, Catalina, Elián, and the Old Man: Queer Tales of a Transnational Cuban Cockroach No Bees for Bridgeport: A Fable from the Age of Daley by Kestutis Nakas 93 Commentary by Joshua Takano Chambers- Letson: A New Fable of the Bees Horseback Views: A Queer Hippological Performance by Kim Marra 111 Commentary by Jane C. Desmond: Kinesthetic Intimacies MONKEY by Deke Weaver 141 Commentary by Cary Wolfe: Apes like Us Excerpts from ELEPHANT by Deke Weaver 163 Commentary by Nigel Rothfels: A Hero’s Death Excerpt from Everything I’ve Got by Jess Dobkin 189 Commentary by Jill Dolan: The Great Refusal and the Greater Hope viii contents Excerpts from As the Globe Warms: An American Soap Opera in Twelve Acts by Heather Woodbury 197 Commentary by Ann Pellegrini: Zooglossia: The Unknown Tongues of Heather Woodbury The Others by Rachel Rosenthal 217 Contributors 239 by Una Chaudhuri Introduction: Animal Acts for Changing Times, 2.0: A Field Guide to Interspecies Performance Things are moving fast in the human- animal world. So much so that an upgrade seems warranted on my earlier take on it, or rather my take on that part of it that intersects with the world of performance, theatre, and performance studies. Version 1.0 of this bulletin appeared in American The- atre magazine a few years ago,1 and the double meaning lurking in its title has proved to be prophetic. The interspecies performances that are going on in our changing times, both onstage and off, are also good for producing change, not only in the ways we live with animals and the ways we think about them but also by transforming our values more broadly, resetting our priorities, rebooting our sense of what it might mean to be human: “animal acts,” in short, are a powerful way to change the world. In the past few years, a spate of conferences, scholarly monographs, criti- cal anthologies, book series, college courses, new journals, and special issues of journals have variously registered “the animal turn” in the humanities and social sciences.2 This academic burgeoning reflects a rapidly dawning “animal consciousness” in the culture at large, recorded in countless re- cent works of fiction, art, film, and popular culture. The impetus for this heightened attention to animals (or, as we’ve now learned to say: to the other animals) is, of course, varied and complex, but its link to both the animal rights movement and to the accelerating environmental crisis of our times is undeniable. The former, a centuries-o ld discourse whose current and ex- tremely forceful phase was launched by the publication, in 1975, of Peter Singer’s Animal Liberation, has reached deep into both social and legal prac- tice, transforming the fields of scientific animal experimentation and animal farming. Numerous horrifying exposés of the latter have resulted not only
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