Written by Peter Shaffer

Director: Mark Gallagher
Costume Designer: Tony Johnson
2013, The Gallery Players
Lighting Designer: Scott Borowka
Set Designer: Young Juang
Photos from Gallery Player Achives 

Final Design Collages

Final Human Character Design Collages
Final Horse Character Design Collages

Horse Development
Due to the abstract nature of the horses I created different design packages, or packs, to facilitate discussions with the director.

Horse First Design Pack

With this first design pack I wanted to show the director four different directions I wanted to go based off our discussions in the initial production design meeting and our initial costume design discussion.
  • The director described the horses as primal beings and wanted to explore an ancient, tribal quality.
  • In our earlier design meetings we discussed that the horses appear to be the statues of the ancient Greek gods Dysart worships while not active on stage.
  • One of the director's major concepts for the play was the imploding of Dysart's aged world and exploding of Alan's young world.
  • Alan's descriptions of the power and muscular nature of the horses led me to research the muscles of the horse.

Horse Second Design Pack

With this second design pack I began merging the concepts the director liked from our first discussion into a cohesive, general design that could provide variations for the different horses.  I began with research images and proceeded with possible solutions for giving the human form a horse-like shape while trying to keep the feel of the ancient Greek clothing.

The director and I enjoyed the idea of presenting Alan's gods, the horses, as Dysart's gods, the ancient Greek gods, since it is Dysar's play.  However, I wanted to link Nugget and Jesus to illustrate Alan's connection between his religion and his mother's religion.

The idea of primal tattoos intrigued the director and gave the horses a sense of tribal community.  For the final production, Nugget's lack of tattoos gave him Jesus-like purity among the horses.  Through collaboration with the choreographer, the tattoos also became a tool to show glimpses of human spirits exploding out of the horses as they were blinded.
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