Never been human I am bird: on the Shape of Love

This essay approaches the field of posthuman performance, focusing on the personification of love in the form of Eros. After focusing on the changing depictions of Erotic love across archaic and classical Greece, the essay then delves into the theatrical depiction of winged love in Aristophanes’ timeless comedy Birds. The author argues for the importance, in performance practice, of love as ethical praxis, suggesting that real erotic love is a fundamental energy driving performance. The critical takeaway of this essay is the need to perform a love that is not merely anthropomorphic or anthropocentric— a love of humans for humans— and the importance of practising more-than-human love, to tether living beings in an interspecies web of bonds and relations.