Photo credit: Valerie Leduc
Around + Out Theatre Co. May 2025
Playwright: Jessie Walker
Director: Luciana Silvestre Fernandes
Production Manager: Gina Woodward
Production Designer: Tegan Porter
Lighting Designer: Ryan Wilcox
Horse Girls was a delight to work on. A surreal comedy about hobby horse dressage, the stage had to mimic both a teenage girls bedroom and also the hobby horse competition arena. Bright primary colours in tie-dye formations, and horses a plenty in the scenic dressing. My main build for this show was to create the horse jumps. Our main actor, Jessie Walker, could jump 2'6", so that was my point of reference for building height. I then looked at actual horse jumps and scaled them down to human-jumping size. One main challenge was that Horse Girls travelled, meaning the structures here going to take a larger beating being crammed in the back of a van. We needed to make the jumps both stable, easy to transport across Nova Scotia, and withstand storage for it to be revived at a later date.
Photo credit: Valerie Leduc
Replicating actual horse jumps, the shape was very similar and needed to be base heavy so they would not fall over when an actor was jumping over them
I then needed to create recesses for the poles to slip into. I measured the pole to where it would sit flush then used the bandsaw to cut out all the curves on the 2x4's
Porter and I then measured out striped for the poles. Once finished and painted, the bottom poles were screwed into the structure for better movement on stage
Photo credit: Valerie Leduc
Tegan Porter and I spent many hours sponging on paint to create a cohesive palette for the show