Going to the Dogs
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Going to the Dogs is a 1986 play by Dutch writer, artist, and television director Wim T. Schippers. It premiered on 19 September to a sell-out audience in the Stadsschouwburg in Amsterdam, with six German Shepherds, allegedly trained as actors by the Amsterdam police, as the performers. The play provoked national and international attention, and even drew protest from an animal rights group.
Schippers, who had gained a reputation as an artist creating unusual works of visual art in the 1960s (for instance, his Pindakaasvloer consisted of a floor covered in peanut butter),[1] conceived of the idea for the play in the early 1970s,[2] and explained that the six dogs had been acquired as puppies and had received acting lessons from the Amsterdam police. The real spectacle, he said, was "the curious fact that people will actually come to the theatre to watch dogs eating, barking, urinating, fighting, sleeping and playing".[3]