Thursday, Nov. 6, at 7 p.m., TBD Theatre Troupe performed its first show of “Horseplay,” the first of three shows that weekend in Ewell Recital Hall.
You may have seen the daunting yet mysterious posters in the halls of Boswell Hall or Earl Gregg Swem Library: no context, just, “The horse is coming.” Months before the show, the troupe knew what they were doing: building up suspense while maintaining the element of surprise. What is this horse, and why is it coming here? Where is it going?
Playwright and Director Finley Cochran ’26 attributed this tactic to the play’s publicity designers Caroline Pirsch ’28 and Murphy Scherer ’28.
“We wanted to start advertising the show far earlier than most shows put posters up, so having an evolving, mysterious campaign allowed us to do that,” Cochran said.
A rustic barn immediately set the stage. The leading actors, Faith Carpenter ’27, playing Philip, and Max Heltzer ’26, playing Carl, kicked off the show with rugged country accents, wearing red bandanas and flannels and sitting against barn crates, debating the usefulness of horses — a conversation that becomes a motif throughout the play.
A panicked farmer, played by Lu Caudle ’27, introduces the main conflict, the disruptor of all peace at this barn in Missouri: a horse that looks you in the eye and telepathically tells you the exact date you will die. When shot at close range with a gun, the horse just sighs and kicks its feet — a convincing performance by Jack Baisch ’26, whose upper body was covered with a hyper-realistic papier-mache horse suit, though his legs were comedically exposed.
“I’ve written and directed a lot throughout my career in theatre, but for this one in particular, it was quite the challenge to put the horse on stage in a way that would be semi-believable,” Cochran said. “Honestly, props to our puppet designer Emily Banner for that.”
The horse soon becomes a national phenomenon. It survives a presidential nuclear strike and is framed by American media as everything from a Chinese espionage ploy to a biblical punishment. Meanwhile, Phil tries to outrun his fear by fleeing to an island in the Indian Ocean, raising questions about what he is truly escaping.
As the story of the horse evolves, actors take on multiple roles to represent a variety of reactions and scenarios.
“I had to make sure we were differentiating the players and all their different characters,” Cochran said. “We needed the audience to firmly understand that these were different characters, so a lot of care went into the physicality, vocal and costume work for the characters.”
Audience interaction added to the play’s tension: at one point, after a ritualistic scene in a corporate office, the horse looks into the crowd and declares that they will die April 24, 2026.
We then cut back to Phil and Carl, now far away from the barn where it all started, having a philosophical discussion about liking versus caring for something. Are they interchangeable concepts? We may never know, but Carl is sure of one thing: he wants to go back to his old life with Phil.
The story periodically returns to Phil and Carl as they attempt to process the chaos around them. In one sequence, a film crew parodies the pair’s barn conversation with exaggerated Hollywood accents, which created an appreciation for the real actors’ dedication to the setting.
“This was not much of a challenge for me, as I am Southern,” Carpenter said. “I do not have much of an accent myself, but my family does, and I pull from that.”
Not every actor had that advantage, so to help strengthen the context, the troupe used resources from the College of William and Mary.
“We also brought in theatre professor Abbie Cathcart to be our dialect coach,” Cochran said. “It is really important to me that these characters are Southern, it’s really integral to the characters.”
The scene then jumps to a university setting. The same philosophical questions about the horse arise, except it’s so incredibly William and Mary. It felt like I was transported back to my dreaded ethics class, especially when one of the students, a science freak, asserts that the horse is invincible, possibly because it is an armadillo hybrid. His other classmate ridicules him, which may be justified because he cracked about five “your mom” jokes and, instead, she questions why we should disregard God’s role in this. Does science really need to explain the formidable, invincible essence of the horse, and are we actually in some mass psychosis?
I’ve tried to peer into the actors themselves. What does the horse mean? What I got back was ambiguity.
“I’m contractually obligated not to say,” Caudle said.
At this point in the show, the audience receives updates about the horse from fratty podcast co-hosts, or “co-horses,” where they ponder if the horse is making its name in Hollywood or possibly replacing the President after his ousting.
In all this chaos, where are Carl and Phil? Still on the beach.
One of the show’s more intimate moments comes when Carl questions whether Phil fled from the horse or from Carl himself. Their tension culminates in a kiss, quickly complicated when Phil calls their love a sin. Cochran said the moment emerged organically while writing.
“Their kiss just sort of happened. From there, the greater significance of the show came on its own,” Cochran said.
Act II was much heavier emotionally, as it explored Phil’s deep internal shame and resistance to his love for another man. He is seen decorating his new rustic home while a radio plays a country melody, lace cloth covers the dining table and photo memories are framed on the bookshelf. A voice lingers on the radio, getting louder and louder as seconds go by, saying, “This is how it has to be.”
Just when we think Phil escaped all his prohibitions, everything comes full circle and visits him one last time. Carl, whom Phil sent letters begging to come back, enters his home. So does the horse, which only Phil can see — it reveals the date of his death to him, then to Carl and Phil’s respective fathers. The fathers’ visit brought out the true struggle in Phil’s mind. He denies decorating his home after his father criticizes it with homophobic terms, though he eventually kicks him out for insulting Carl. Then, the Hollywood director and actors visit the men one last time, and so does the President, none of them being any help in explaining the horse’s significance or Phil’s struggle.
As we reach the end of the second act, an emotional whirlwind sweeps the audience, as a child, claiming to be Carl and Phil’s, reaches out to them, wanting to play. However, there is no happy ending as Phil confesses he has a family of his own in an attempt to shake off his love for Carl (Though this may have been the case just for the first three shows.)
“For me, a lot of this story is about cyclical trauma, whether it be self-inflicted or inflicted by authority figures like parents, the entire show sort of functions like a loop,” Cochran said. “Each plot closes its own loop — the movie crew ends up with the same conclusion they began with, the President assumes office again, and the main characters end in the same place that we started, until closing night when we perform a different ending — a sort of breaking of the loop when the characters rise above their trauma.”
Though this unresolved love story found its resolution eventually, the story itself is a tale too true for many with the same conflict with “unconventional” love in the South.
“From the moment I read the script for the very first time, it was the story of these gay men struggling with their identity, struggling against the repression from all these different angles, and just the idea that I could get to tell that story and be a part of that story is what really drew me to the show,” Heltzer said.
Carpenter added their hopes for the audience’s takeaways from the show.
“I want people to know that it is okay to be yourself, that it is okay to live the life you want,” Carpenter said. “I think theatre should comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable. It should make people think, but it should also tell people that they are not alone.”
For a story that started just as a “bit” about the horse to Cochran, it touched many hearts this past weekend. Although the meaning of the horse may remain a secret for eternity, Carl and Phil’s story is a reminder to audiences that life will end inevitably, so we should live in ways that make us happy.
