Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects
Date of Degree
9-2025
Document Type
Doctoral Dissertation
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy
Program
Theatre and Performance
Advisor
Erika T. Lin
Committee Members
Peter Eckersall
Jean Graham-Jones
Karen Raber
Subject Categories
Comparative Literature | Dramatic Literature, Criticism and Theory | English Language and Literature | European Languages and Societies | French and Francophone Literature | Literature in English, British Isles | Performance Studies | Renaissance Studies | Spanish Literature | Theatre History
Keywords
Renaissance, Early Modern Drama, Theatre and Performance, Animal Entertainments, Animal Studies, Environmental Humanities
Abstract
This dissertation proposes an expansive, interspecies definition of performance that uses behavior rather than cognition as the decisive feature and illustrates how such a definition can reshape our approach to theatre and performance history. Using the concept of responsivity, which refers to the embodied and affective ways that humans and non-human animals acknowledge and react to one another, I trace human–animal interactions across a variety of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century performance genres, from the aristocratic stag hunt and entertainments involving trained animals to the plays of Molière and Shakespeare. Drawing on my experience training animals, I offer a new perspective on historical animal entertainments by framing them through the lens of action, rather than intention, and by considering species-specific sensory experiences. Constructing probable learning histories from a variety of archival images and texts, I parse how performance events and their surrounding practices were shaped by the perceptive abilities and behavior of non-human animals. This project foregrounds animals as beings that can and do communicate and respond to the world around them, even as their communication is often disregarded or subsumed in human narratives. I demonstrate how tiny, fleeting interspecies interactions connect to broader trends and changes in early modern cultural narratives and practices and consider questions such as: How did humans interpret the behavior of performing animals through historically specific portrayals and understandings of those animals? How did humans understand the intentionality with which animals performed? How did the actions of animals in performance resist or reshape these interpretations and the performance culture itself? Intervening in theatre and performance studies, early modern studies, and animal studies in the humanities, this project illuminates how engaging with responsive interspecies interactions can reshape our ideas about the time, space, and concept of performance.
Recommended Citation
Culbert, Taylor C., "Interspecies Responsivity in Early Modern Drama and Animal Performances" (2025). CUNY Academic Works.
https://academicworks.cuny.edu/gc_etds/6349
Included in
Comparative Literature Commons, Dramatic Literature, Criticism and Theory Commons, European Languages and Societies Commons, French and Francophone Literature Commons, Literature in English, British Isles Commons, Performance Studies Commons, Renaissance Studies Commons, Spanish Literature Commons, Theatre History Commons
