ABSTRACT
The theater season in the fall of 2011 was an interesting time in New York for someone who (like me) works on both theater and animal studies. Just about everyone I knew or met asked me if I’d seen War Horse, and if I’d loved it as much as they had. In time I learned to couch my answer in terms that would make it less disappointing to my interlocutor, by saying that, actually, the animal play that I’d been really impressed by was Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo. This 2010 Pulitzer Prize Finalist by the American playwright Rajiv Joseph reached nowhere near the huge audience numbers as the London-bred War Horse, nor did it garner anything like the English play’s accolades (War Horse won the Tony Award for Best New Play, among numerous other prizes). Nevertheless, most people I talked to had at least heard of it, if only because the Broadway production starred Robin Williams in the title role.
