Designer Michael Locher On His Conceptual Design for Untitled Horse Play by Hilary Bettis
Theatre designers regularly find themselves exploring lives and stories which don’t reflect their own experiences, a challenge which sometimes transcends the need to research unfamiliar locations or decorative styles. Sometimes, we’re invited to imagine worlds that represent deeply personal stories. Hilary Bettis’s Untitled Horse Play isn’t merely set in remote, rural Colorado – a world apart from my upbringing in suburban California. It’s an autobiographical evocation of the playwright’s own unique experiences as an adolescent woman of color – a prompt which invites greater than typical sensitivity and care, even when designing scenery.
As a designer, two things immediately struck me about the piece: on one hand, the world these characters inhabit is in many ways defined by its vastness. Much of Eastern Colorado is flat, sparsely-populated plains, home to the sort of communities where a half-mile may separate a home from their closest neighbor. On the other hand, it’s an intimate story, focused on places characterized by their smallness and their abundance of detail: bedrooms, lockers, classrooms.
So, the design for Untitled Horse Play becomes a balancing act. In these sketches, I imagined the stage as cavernous place, dominated by a dark sky and distant structures. In the foreground, a massive ceiling piece, suggestive of a barn or large shed, looms overhead. Here, suspended within rafters and beams, aren’t merely the tools of horse owners (saddles, bridles, etc). The overhead space also contains pieces from the girls’ home and school lives – twinkle lights; a school blackboard; an old rocking horse – which descend, periodically, to evoke scene changes.
Horses, unsurprisingly, play a role in Untitled Horse Play. That said, they rarely appear in earnest: most often, they’re discussed and referenced, albeit with great affection. We felt it was important that any horse presence in the play never upstage the characters themselves, however – an elaborate puppet or anthropomorphic costume might add an uncanny quality that we sought to avoid. So, in this world of memories and low light, I’ve depicted horses by their shadows only, whether stretching across the plywood floor, or cast proudly onto a wall.
