Performance Conventions

The Unconscious

Professional Flair

Performance conventions have to do with how the engineering product is handled during design and production. Under performance conventions, the engineering product connects to the audience three ways. One way is how the product ties to the rest of the performance. For instance, the engineering product might tie to the main theme or the contrasting theme. Another consideration is answering the demands of the performance. And, finally, the engineering product must help tell a story.

The play, Equus, demands that an actor play the horse, Nugget. The main theme of Equus is the combination of a triad of themes: religion, horse, and sex. The play (mainly through Dora's dialogue) tells of the importance of the combination of horse and rider, horse and man, and that there was a time when people saw that combination as godlike. Horse/man connects to religion, horse, and, (when the play offers exposition about Alan's youth and his first encounter with a horse and rider), sex. Tying to the main theme, then, Nugget would be portrayed onstage by a man wearing a horse's head in order to show that combination of horse and man. This way, the production has the potential to express something mythic, depending on the skill of the actor as well as the skill and understanding in designing and building the horse's head. A skilled designing, building, and handling of the horse's head helps tell the story about Alan's pain and his passion as well as Dysart's fear and pain because of the possibility of transcendence that can take place.

Two guys in a horse suit playing Nugget would reduce the play to buffoonery. Also, the director or the producer for the film version decided to relate Nugget and the rest of the horses to the contrasting theme - the Normal - instead of the main theme triad. They used real horses. Consequently, the film version failed to achieve the sense of the mythic that the play demands.