Not just performance. A strategy for change.
A warm welcome to Performing Animal Rights on Substack: exploring how theatre and protest move people toward animal liberation.
Hello there!
Thank you for being here.
This is the first-ever email from Performing Animal Rights on Substack. Whether you've been following the blog or podcast for a while or have just discovered this space, I’m so glad you’re here.
A quick hello from me, if you don’t know me already: I’m Ben. I’m a performance artist, researcher, and campaigner working at the intersection of creative practice, practice-based research and animal rights.
Over the past few years I’ve been exploring how performance can open hearts, challenge norms, and spark action for nonhuman animals. Through endurance performance, drag, protest theatre, and interviews with other artist-activists, I’ve been gathering stories, strategies, and ideas about what art can do in movements for change. I’ve just tied up my PhD on these very things.
This Substack is a new chapter. I’ll be sharing research, essays, creative reflections, updates on the podcast, and some behind-the-scenes glimpses into my work. I want this to feel like a letter, not a lecture. Something you can read with a cup of tea and a sense of possibility.
Today I want to talk about something that's been on my mind a lot lately: how performance can move people forward on their animal rights journey.
Meeting them where they are: How performance moves audiences on their animal rights journey
In animal rights activism, performance doesn’t just express. It persuades. Whether it's a piece of street theatre, a musical protest, or an endurance-based performance artwork, what unites these acts is their ability to emotionally and viscerally engage audiences. But for performance to be effective, we need to understand who we’re performing for and where they are in relation to the message.
A recent guide by Animal Think Tank, Persuasive Narratives for Animal Freedom: Audiences, offers important insights into how people process new ideas about animals. It reminds us that there is no one-size-fits-all message. And in many ways, performance is especially well-suited to working with that complexity.
From apathy to action: Performance as a journey companion
People encounter animal advocacy from very different places. Some have never really thought about animals before. Others might be questioning their choices or feeling conflicted. Some are already committed and active. Performance can offer an entry point for all of them.
A participatory protest might disrupt someone's assumptions just enough to get them thinking. A slower, more meditative piece like an art walk with Soya the Cow might offer validation and emotional release to someone who already cares but feels overwhelmed.
Performance can be soft or searing. That’s its strength. It has the ability to meet people where they are, without compromising its core ethics.
Challenging mental models without shutting people down
According to the guide, people filter new ideas through "mental models", ways of making sense of the world based on experience, culture, and social norms. Performance can open up new models without directly confronting someone's identity or self-image.
Think about:
A humorous drag character like Soya the Cow that invites audiences to question the boundaries between human and animal.
Die-ins or vigils that centre human grief as a way of acknowledging nonhuman animal suffering.
Songs by artists like Barbara Helen that gently unravel the 'food animal' story through emotional honesty and simplicity.
These performances don’t demand immediate change. They invite reflection. They plant seeds. And they ask open questions, which the guide highlights as being far more persuasive than imperatives.
The emotional glue: Belonging and identity
Performance is communal. It creates shared experience. In activism, this matters deeply. People are more likely to act when they feel that others care too. A crowd gathering around a street act. A flash mob erupting into dance or song. A silent procession of grief moving through a public space. These moments send a social signal: this is important, and you are not alone in caring.
When audiences witness people expressing their values through art, it can awaken curiosity rather than defensiveness. That is the power of embodied, live performance. It shows that resistance is not just necessary, but also possible and even beautiful.
Performance as persuasive strategy
If you’re already using performance in your activism, here’s what you’re probably doing right:
You reflect rather than dictate. You invite feeling before debate.
You use symbolism and embodiment to make nonhuman animal suffering felt, not just understood.
You give people space to arrive at their own conclusions.
So are we performing to persuade?
Yes. And not in a manipulative sense. When done with care and integrity, performance doesn’t tell people what to think. It gives them permission to feel what they may never have been allowed to feel before. It offers a moment to pause, to witness, to listen.
Animal Think Tank’s guide offers the roadmap. Performance gives us the emotional language to follow it.
If you want to explore more:
Performance doesn't just reach hearts. It helps reshape minds. And when we understand our audiences more deeply, we can help move them—gently but surely—toward liberation. For all animals.
Thanks for reading,
Ben