Dramaturgical boundary crossings in William Baldwin’s Beware the Cat as a text for theatrical adaptation

This article argues that William Baldwin’s Beware the Cat is an already intensely theatrical text, prior to any form of dramatic adaptation. This proposition, and an exploration of how these concerns are subtly and playfully taken up by Babbage, Stenner and O'Connor's 2018 stage adaptation, is the focus of the essay. I anchor my discussion in the logic and discourses of dramaturgical practice and analysis to offer a reading that addresses the role of artifice, spectatorship, materiality, embodiment, textuality and narrative in the work and its interest in the makerly processes through which animal and human identities are constructed, assigned and negotiated. I propose that Beware the Cat, in both textual and live form, explores and negotiates three kinds of dramaturgical boundary crossings–between text and performance, between matter and meaning, and between performer and spectator. Overall, I propose that the titular ‘beware’ acts as a form of dramaturgical instruction for working with the text in a live context. I argue that, because Baldwin’s original work is so strikingly theatrical in its themes and structure, it offers a set of principles for the process of the work’s theatrical adaptation as much as it invites a reworking of its content for another form.