A Kennel Built From the Inside: Dog Act & the Sacrifice of Agency
Disciplines
Acting | Dramatic Literature, Criticism and Theory | Performance Studies
Abstract (300 words maximum)
Spring 2025, KSU’s Department of Theatre & Performance Studies produces Dog Act by Liz Duffy Adams, a play about two post-apocalyptic vaudevillians named Zetta Stone and Dog. The latter is a young man who has willingly demoted his species from human to dog. On the surface, their transformation is humorous, but its reasoning is truly, deeply sad. When Dog was a young boy, he made an unintentional decision that led to the genocide of his people, and his grief and atonement manifested with him swallowing those feelings and becoming a dog, or in other words, less than human. The artist-scholar presentation focuses on my background research and strategies as the actor assuming the role of Dog in KSU’s production. In particular, I focus on the concept and embodiment of agency, inspired by György Gergely’s scholarship. If agency is a person’s capability to commit an action or make a decision, agency is absent for Dog-it is not taken by force but willingly given away. I use an analysis of Dog Act, along with a performed selection from the play, to demonstrate how individuals in modern society give up their own agency to protect their own way of life, remove the threat of societal morals, and avoid existentialist dread in an uncertain world.
Academic department under which the project should be listed
COTA - Theatre and Performance Studies
Primary Investigator (PI) Name
Tom Fish
Powerpoint for Symposium Presentation
A Kennel Built From the Inside: Dog Act & the Sacrifice of Agency
Spring 2025, KSU’s Department of Theatre & Performance Studies produces Dog Act by Liz Duffy Adams, a play about two post-apocalyptic vaudevillians named Zetta Stone and Dog. The latter is a young man who has willingly demoted his species from human to dog. On the surface, their transformation is humorous, but its reasoning is truly, deeply sad. When Dog was a young boy, he made an unintentional decision that led to the genocide of his people, and his grief and atonement manifested with him swallowing those feelings and becoming a dog, or in other words, less than human. The artist-scholar presentation focuses on my background research and strategies as the actor assuming the role of Dog in KSU’s production. In particular, I focus on the concept and embodiment of agency, inspired by György Gergely’s scholarship. If agency is a person’s capability to commit an action or make a decision, agency is absent for Dog-it is not taken by force but willingly given away. I use an analysis of Dog Act, along with a performed selection from the play, to demonstrate how individuals in modern society give up their own agency to protect their own way of life, remove the threat of societal morals, and avoid existentialist dread in an uncertain world.