The goals of this book are to open anthropocentric thinking towards the animality that the scene can provoke as a laboratory of embodied ideas and the dialogue between theater theory and performance, philosophy and the newer interdisciplinary field of animal studies, setting as individual fields of study the scenes of animal appearance mainly in theater, performances and philosophical texts, but often also in literature, cinema, visual arts and the social scenes of popular culture and urban spectacles.

Theatrical Bestiaries undertake a distant journey from the Chauvet cave and the legacy of the Minotaur to the performances of Romeo Castellucci, including ancient Athenian theater, the Roman arena, medieval equestrian tradition, animal fights, carnivalesque and grotesque zoology, Elizabethan scenes, animal rights, as well as the harshness of modern times, zoos, circuses, museums, racetracks, dog drama, 19th and 20th century theme parks, performances by Joseph Beuys and Hermann Nitsch, Jan Fabre and Kira O'Reilly, Magazzini Criminali, Rodrigo Garcia and Marco Evaristti, Rafael Ortiz and Kim Jones, Marina Abramovic, Rachel Rosenthal, and others. In addition, some theatrical texts of Greek drama with zoological scenes are analyzed: The Comedy of Pseudo-Doctors by Savoyia Roussmeli, The Road Passes Through and The Gorilla and the Orangutan by Jacobo Campanella, Towards Eleusis by Pavlos Matesis, Bella Benezia by Giorgos Dialegmenos, and The Lions by Vasilis Mavrogeorgiou and Kostas Gakis.

At the same time, a journey is undertaken through the history of philosophical thought that raises the question of animality and humanity from Aristotle and Plutarch to Bonifacio and Montaigne, and from Descartes and Bentham to Horkheimer and Adorno, with special emphasis on Rousseau and Voltaire, Kant, Buber and Levinas, Deleuze and Guattari, Derrida and Agamben.