Dachshund UN: Performance art is going to the dogs

Dashshund UN, an art instalment currently being staged by Toronto's Harbourfront Centre's World Stage festival, has critics' and audiences' tails wagging.

The 50-minute show, developed by Australian artist Bennett Miller, involves 36 dachshunds reenacting a meeting of the United Nations Commission on Human Rights.

"It gets the audience to consider human behaviour differently," Miller told CBC News.

"Shock, delight, cacophony! A meeting of the United Nations Commission on Human Rights is staged with the help of specially recruited dachshunds in this wild performance installation. Joyful and chaotic, spectacular and fascinating, Dachshund UN questions our capacity to imagine and achieve a universal system of justice," Harbourfront Centre's website states.

"It's a simple concept. Some choral music with a martial tone and then the curtain rises on four tiers of dogs — apparently a replica of the UN office in Geneva — and then the audience watches the dogs, talks loudly and snaps photos throughout, and the dogs stare back, mostly in bafflement," Toronto Star entertainment reporter Bruce DeMara writes.

"When you go to a play, you know that they’ve rehearsed it – even in improv, there’s a structure," Tina Rasmussen, World Stage's artistic director, told the Globe and Mail. "This, we don’t know…It's a different kind of situation – space meets time meets the possibility of randomness."

During each performance, the dogs' owner sit on stage, out of sight from the audience.

Watch Bennett Miller talk about the show he created below:

The Toronto staging marks the show's North American premiere — and its first time being staged indoors.

Rasmussen says she hopes the free show, which runs from February 28 to March 3, will attract people who aren't typical theatre-goers.

"We're such a 'dog' town. People are crazy about their dogs. I just want people to be excited about coming to the theatre. That's my whole mission in my life and my work. If this is something that will help people get to know about World Stage, then that's what I need to do," she told the Toronto Star.