"The chapters in this book were originally published in Studies in theatre and performance, volume 38, issue 2 (June2018)."

1. Introduction : real animals on the stage / Teresa Grant, Ignacio Ramos Gay, and Claudia Alonso Recarte -- 2. ‘A pleasant tragicomedy, the cat being scap’t’? : William Sampson’s The Vow Breaker (1636) and the instability of genre / Teresa Grant -- 3. ‘Des singes, c’était le narcisse’ : class, imitation and performing monkeys in late-eighteenth century Paris / Ignacio Ramos-Gay -- 4. Replacing injured horses, cross-dressing and dust : modernist circus technologies in Asia / Peta Tait -- 5. There is a whale in the room : Pina Bausch’s animals on stage / Jennifer Parker-Starbuck -- 6. Animals in socially engaged performance practice : becomings on the edges of extinction / Lourdes Orozco -- 7. ‘When the animal cannot keep up a good appearance it had better go out of the room’ : vivisection and theatricality in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries / Claudia Alonso Recarte.