Sheep Pig Goat

2017 - 2020

A creative research project that brings together dancers, singers, musicians, sheep, pigs, goats and other animals, to explore communication and empathy between species.

Goat leaping in front of other goats and dancer on the floor

Sheep Pig Goat by Fevered Sleep 2017.
Photo courtesy of Wellcome Collection.

We tell ourselves all sorts of stories about animals. Animals fly through our mythology, our unconscious, our cultural history and our literature; they run through our folk tales; they crawl through our dreams.

We tell ourselves stories about real animals too; about dogs and cats, about pigs and cows; about rats and flies and lobsters and hens and worms and horses. These stories are the stories we tell ourselves when we decide what to do with animals. Where to keep them, how to treat them, when to eat them.

But in the whirl of all these stories, can we ever see animals as they really are, or only as we want them to be? And what do animals see, when they see us? What do they experience, what do they sense, what do they want, what are their desires, what do they have to say?

Sheep Pig Goat is a ‘creative research studio’ that explores these questions through a series of improvised encounters between human performers and sheep, pigs, goats and other livestock animals.

By paying careful attention to the body language, vocalisations, attentiveness and gaze of a series of animal observers, the project raises questions about the extent to which we human animals really pay careful attention to animals from other species; and what we might learn about ourselves if we more carefully try to learn about them.

Sheep Pig Goat, 2020

Sheep Pig Goat took place between 3-8 February 2020 at the University of Surrey School of Veterinary Medicine. This version of the project included a series of encounters between human performers and cows, sheep and chickens, through which we investigate all the ways that humans - and other animals - see, observe, watch and attend to one another.

The residency was commissioned by Laura Cull Ó Maoilearca, director of the Centre for Performance Philosophy at the University of Surrey. On Wednesday 5 February, Laura hosted a contextual conversation with our artistic directors Sam Butler and David Harradine, writer Filipa Ramos and Professor of Animal Behaviour and Welfare at Scotland’s Rural College, Francoise Wemelsfelder. Visitors to the project during the residency included school children, drama students, veterinary medicine students, and academics .

two people look at one word statement cards stuck on a wooden board

Sheep Pig Goat by Fevered Sleep 2017.
Photo courtesy of Wellcome Collection.

Can we ever see animals as they really are?

Meet the Team

Artistic Directors: David Harradine and Sam Butler
Dancers: Akshay Sharma, Petra Söör and Kip Johnson
Musicians: Tom Jackson, David Leahy, Sterre Maier and Fra Rustumji
Production Management: Ali Beale
Researcher: Beth McEvoy

We’re still working out how to thank and acknowledge the participation of the individual non-human animals who are part of the project.

SPEAKERS

Host: Ruth Little
Dr. Alan McElligott
Dr. Antone Martinho
Professor Erica Fudge
Daisy Hildyard
Filipa Ramos
Professor Francoise Wemelsfelder
Professor Garry Marvin
Dr. Laura Cull Ó Maoilearca
Professor Robert Garner
Thomas Thwaites