Hallie Abelman is a performance artist and animal studies researcher from Florida currently residing in New York. Her performance practice has taken shape alongside her research of animals. Currently, she also writes and performs monologues about tools used for interspecies play, objects that simultaneously distance us and draw us closer to our companion animals. She uses props, objects, and costumes to create solo shows about how we relate to these objects. Treading the line between performance art and animal activism, she positions herself among the strong lineage of queer performance artists making relevant and ethical work about animals. This places her pieces within the playful boundaries of eco-theatre, activist theatre, and interspecies performance. Her first foray into her performance career was her ongoing project titled Home Tours, which consists of performative interventions within people’s homes or workplaces as a way of collecting and gleaning content and giving it a language. Upon entering someone’s home,she plays the role of a voyeur, observing how people live with animate or inanimate animals. Be it a work of art or token of self-interest, Hallie sees each object as a coded artifact, most often used to teach children about animals or facilitate closeness to someone or something. Above all, these objects reinforce how nonhumans help us produce what it means to be human.

She is also an M.A. Candidate in the NYU Tisch Performance Studies department where she is researching contemporary forms of racist animalization in popular culture and performances working to bring attention to animal-centric coloniality. Hallie also serves as research assistant to the NYU Professor and eco-theater scholar Una Chaudhuri.