O' the glory of the Middle Ages! The Spanish Inquisition, the boiling-in-oil and the elaborate ritual of bringing animals into court to try them for crimes ranging from petty theft to murder! The accused beasts - cows, dogs, cats, sheep, goats, rats, bees and even termites - were provided with defense counsel, held in the same jails as humans, sometimes given human garb to wear to court and, almost always, sentenced to death by hanging in the public square.
Interestingly, these strange but true tales of animals in court continue today in all corners of the globe - from France where a Great Dane named Scooby was a courtroom witness during a 1996 murder trial to the 2010 on-camera bust of a talking parrot for acting as "look-out" for a Colombian drug cartel to the 2009 arrest and trial of a goat in Nigeria for armed robbery.
A multitude of the most curious chapters from 500+ years of animal trials will take center stage in late November at the Gerald W. Lynch Theater at John Jay College with excerpts from "The Tragical-Comical Trial Trial of Madame P and Other 4-Legged and Winged Creatures," a multi-media phantasmagoria-in-progress by award-winning playwright Susan Yankowitz. The play is widely interdisciplinary, engaging themes of animal rights and law, criminal justice, philosophy and ethics. The concluding event of John Jay's annual Art of Justice Series, it will be presented on Monday and Tuesday, November 29 and 30 at 7:00pm. The Gerald W. Lynch Theater is located at John Jay College, 899 Tenth Avenue, NYC. Tickets are $10 (free for CUNY students with valid ID) and may be purchased by calling Ticket Central at 212-279-4200 or visiting www.ticketcentral.com.
Directed by Daniella Topol, this provocative work utilizes actors, puppets, songs, animation and interactive video to relate actual cases chronicled in legal textbooks like The Criminal Prosecution and Capital Punishment of Animals (1906) and the media, ones in which a veritable Ark's-worth of species, from mammals to insects, were prosecuted for vandalism, bestiality and other "crimes against humankind."
Yankowitz's piece is bookended with two scenes relating the story of Madame P, an enormous sow who was tried for the murder of an infant in 16th century France, along with her alleged accomplice, a dog named Lilah. Dressed in human attire for her trial, Madame P is defended passionately by an assigned attorney, modeled on celebrated 16th century Frenchman Bartholomew Chasseneé, who was a pioneer in the legal protection of animals. The passionate attorney is also seen in the play defending a group of rats accused of causing famine in a village after they ate its harvest of barley. In this trial, the attorney made case law by getting the charges dismissed. His argument? That the defendants could not be insured safe passage to the court house because the streets around it were populated by cats! Other seemingly unbelievable cases from the past that are woven into the narrative include: a swarm of bees charged with the stinging murder of a young woman in 16th century Britain; a termite colony that was tried for the destruction of a monastery in 18th century Brazil and various goats, sheep and horses who were charged with bestiality. The punishment most often meted out in these cases? That animal and human "consecrate" their union in a legal marriage or die together on the pyre!
The issue of animals on trial is brought into the current day via another attorney character based on the noted Swiss lawyer Antoine Goetschel, a renowned animal rights crusader who has a large practice dedicated to their defense. Many of these modern day cases are dramatized or presented through video. Among these are the prosecution of seven dogs in courts in the U.S. and Great Britain, several of which we're condemned to the death for "excessive barking" and the impassioned calls for the trial of a "serial murdering" orca at SeaWorld this year. Another video montage documents a series of interspecies weddings - man and goat, woman and snake, man and dog, woman and dolphins - from India to Israel. Other curious cases that may be finding their way in Yankowitz's theater work-in-progress are the 1916 decision by a Tennessee court to hang an elephant that killed its keeper and a 1906 murder case in Switzerland where two human received life imprisonment and their canine accomplice a death sentence. But whatever the form, it is amazing to note that all the events in the play are derived from actual court cases.
