BECOMING ANIMAL

This off-site course took place at Shoushan Zoo [壽山動物園] in Kaohsiung.

The course explored the zoo as a unique site for performative storytelling. Students engaged with the zoo’s environment, considering its ethics, audience, and purpose. Their final project involved devising and presenting intergenerational performances for the general public.

The course emerged from the belief that the zoo offers a rich and dynamic setting for exploration, providing students with the opportunity to create meaningful and engaging narratives that highlight the zoo’s features and mission. We collaborated with the zoo’s team to ensure that our activities aligned with the zoo’s operational needs and ethical standards.

The student group experimented with different ways of performing in the zoo. The final performances were devised by the students with teacher support. We explored some of the following strategies:

• Sensory Tour: Focussing on smell, colour, texture and sound to defamiliarize common sense assumptions about the animals we think we know.
• Cultural Tour: Rethinking our perceptions of the animals through the lens of different cultures and their significance in various traditions. Thinking about the lives of the animals in and outside the zoo environment.
• Storytelling Tour: Creating narratives or stories about the animals and exhibits to engage visitors in a unique way. Developing choreographed performances using costume and mask to highlight the lives of animals.

Course Objectives:
• Innovative Artistic Exploration
• Ethical Awareness and Application
• Intergenerational Engagement
• Collaborative Creation
• Critical Reflection and Evaluation
• Bilingual Presentation Skills
• Conservation and Biodiversity Awareness

Useful reference text:
‘On Animals’ ed. by Alan Read. Performance Research: A journal of the Performing Arts 5:2, 2000
ISSN: 1352-8165 (Print) 1469-9990 (Online) Journal DOI: 10.1080/13528165.2000.10871724

The performances students made were playful, strange and easy to engage with: a game, a voice in the ear, a costumed figure, a small ritual, an encounter on a zoo path. Through those simple forms, they dealt with some difficult subjects: humans as animals, the objectification of animals, anthropomorphism, shit, pollution, captivity, grief and death. Created for an audience that included children, young people and families, the works used humour, curiosity, live encounter and storytelling to make these questions feel open and thinkable. In this way, performance became an approachable way of engaging with ethics.

PERFORMANCES FROM 2026

《Trop Mignon》 2026 Ambrine BIANCHI-TERGOU, 邱浩宸 Leon CHIU, Alicia GOETZ
Experience cuteness in a simple game. Do you want to play?

《Stray》 2026 葉俊伸 Chun-Shen YEH
4-12 year old and their families are invited to hear stories of famous Taiwan orangutans.

《Zoo Within Your Ears》 2026 余妮霏 Ni-Fei YU, 林緯淇 Wei-Chi LIN
Put on headphones to hear the inner thoughts of animals in the zoo.

《Be Aware of Poo Poo Pal》 2026 張舒婷 Shu-Ting CHANG
Want to see the different animal poops up close? Come and meet the poop collector!

《Trapped》 2026 洪鈺涵 Hannia HONG
Trapped, troubled, tangled, tight. The animal still plods slowly forward.

《Farewell, Fare Well》 2026 楊竺軒 Chu-Hsuan YANG, 馮琦 Angela FENG, 鄭景鴻 Roy CHENG, 王佑凱 Pumpkin WANG
At the end of the day, turn into animals and join Shoushan’s elders for their final farewell!

PERFORMANCES FROM 2025

《Peacock Man》 2025
The peacocks display their feathers to try and attract a mate. Humans show-off too. Brands try to get our custom.

《David’s Daily Life》 2025
We wander around the zoo looking at the animals, some strange and some familiar. Humans are animals too. David is here for you to look at.

《The Poop They Eat》 2025
The Taiwanese are obsessed with food. But what do the animals eat?

《Let’s Play》 2025
Plastic pollution is a serious global problem and it affects many species, including humans. We have to remember to reduce, reuse and recycle. It can be fun!

PERFORMANCES AND INSTALLATIONS DEVISED, CREATED AND PERFORMED,
INCLUDE* THOSE BY:
2025: 黃治歆 Cindy HUANG, 林義豪 How How LIN, 歐佳怡 Lisa OU.
*Students opt in to be credited.

With thanks to Shoushan Zoo for their collaboration on this course.

Text and Spatial Narration convened as Becoming Animal was supported in 2026 by the Ministry of Education Teaching Practice Research Project, Taiwan, and in 2025 and 2026 by National Sun Yat-sen’s Collaborative Learning Practice Project, “Sustainability and Local Revitalisation”.

The key marketing visuals for Becoming Animal in 2026 were designed by 鄭景鴻 Roy CHENG.