Equus

by Peter Shaffer

Nevada Conservatory Theatre, 2013

Director: Todd Espeland

Lighting Design: Josh Wroblewski

Costume Design: Mariya Redeva-Nedyalkova

Photos Courtesy of Julie DiBiase

When child psychiatrist Martin Dysart agrees to take on the case of Alan Strang, a teenage boy who faces prison for blinding six horses with a metal spike, he discovers the driving force behind Alan's crime of passion is a horse god born from his own imagination.  To cure Alan of his pain and make him "normal," Dysart must decide if it is truly just to take away the boy's worship and passion, qualities that have long since disappeared from his own life.

The setting is a deconstructed horse stable.  The walls and roof are removed, leaving a raked wooden deck punctured by beams of lumber that evoke an exterior forest just as well as an interior barn.  Doors and gates are represented by columns of light, which surround and permeate the entire set, even shining up from between the floorboards.  When Alan and Equus embark on their midnight ride, the two flanking turntables rotate in opposite directions, carrying the "trees" past them as they speed by.