Animal Presence in Contemporary British Theatre

The first comprehensive study of the representation of animals and their intersections with the human in contemporary British drama.

This book offers the first comprehensive study of the presence of animals in contemporary British drama and theatre, and their thought-provoking intersections with the human characters and actors with whom they have increasingly come to share the stage.

Why have animals become so ubiquitous on the contemporary stage? What are theatre-makers trying to achieve by increasingly populating their landscapes with nonhuman figures and, indeed, actors? Taking stock of the expanding presence, role and agency of animals in British theatre and drama over recent decades, the author investigates the payoffs – conceptual, cognitive, aesthetic and political – of an art practice that purposefully relocates the animal within a culturally powerful anthropocentric stronghold. In their simultaneous engagement with the boundaries of subjectivity and the boundaries of theatre, the plays considered in this volume provide a larger framework for thinking humanity beyond the human.

Playwrights discussed include Caryl Churchill, Sarah Kane, Martin McDonagh, Philip Ridley, Harold Pinter, Stef Smith and Naomi Wallace.