Dramaturgy: Horsegirl & Cowdaddy

September 16, 2026

Out Being Wild: Queer Ecologies and Rural Poetics

Leo Mock, Production Dramaturg

“I have long considered the phrase “trans theater” redundant because theater’s fundamental premise is inherently trans…: when an individual steps onstage, they unquestionably become another iteration of themself. For me, “suspension of disbelief,” the greatest of theatrical maxims, serves as a utopian model for the collective emotional investment we should all have in others achieving …their most deeply felt selves.” – Jess Barbagallo 

“God blessed me by making me transsexual for the same reason God made wheat but not bread and fruit but not wine, so that humanity might share in the act of creation.” – Julian K. Jarboe

Howdy, y’all!

You’re about to spend a summer with Horsegirl and Cowdaddy, in their cozy home nestled in the rolling hills and vast cornfields of rural PA. In preparation, here are a few facets of this world that have been particularly inspiring to our creative team to guide your way as you wander through the cornfields.

The particularly Appalachian flavor of magical realism of this world draws upon queer ecologies, and trans performance aesthetics, and kink consent technologies to reimagine how we define what is “natural”. All of these paradigms ask us to locate the binaries in our lives – queer and straight, man and woman, rural and urban, and give ourselves permission to see them as messier spectrums of experience. Which also means rejecting a binary that puts normal or natural at one end, and abnormal and unnatural at the other.

Queer ecology, at its simplest, is the understanding that human notions of gender and sexuality have influenced how we research and name plant and animal life. We simplify incredibly complex systems of reproduction into how “male” and “female” parts interact. We reject the messy for a binary. Queer ecology demands that we talk about what is actually happening, in all its mess, rather than elide the truth for an efficiency of language. This is something queer and trans folks understand well – the sensation of others demanding a box that shrinks how much we can actually talk about our experience, where the people in power get to decide what information is necessary and valid. One piece of queer ecology you’ll see in Horsegirl and Cowdaddy are the fairy fingers – the membrane that covers a foal’s hooves after birth. Squishy, messy, in-betweens are everywhere in the natural world.

Speaking of power, you’ll also see an exploration of power and relationality through a lens of BDSM and kink: specifically, Pony Play. This is an explicitly stated and negotiated exchange of power where one party (the submissive) takes on the role of pony, and the other (the Dominant) takes on rider or trainer. What this looks like, why folks are into it, and how much sex is even involved varies from person to person! For the purposes of our show, I’ll name two key points: 

• One, practicing any kind of power play means the consent tools we are using are incredibly specific, pre-negotiated, and clearly communicated. It gets way harder to have a nuanced conversation once someone is tied up, so most of the conversation happens beforehand.
  
• Two, people who enjoy being the pony in the pony play say that they feel a sense of relief when they’re in pony mode – that it feels like turning their human brain off and trusting someone else to be in control for a while. That trust is really important. Both parties are trusting one another to make their wants, needs, and boundaries known in order to have a good time.

This play is set in an imagined amalgamation of rural Pennsylvania. Industrial legacies, Civil War battlefields, Amish & Mennonite farmland, Main Streets that feel frozen in time. We decided to center research around Lancaster and the surrounding area, to anchor us to reality while dreaming out of it. Lancaster County holds an incredible amount of American History, like how the city briefly served as the nation’s capital during the Revolution, or how nearby towns like Columbia and Christiania were sites of successful revolts by the community against federal agents attempting to recapture escaped enslaved people. Notably, Lancaster was the first city in PA to be Certified Welcoming by Welcoming America, a non-profit dedicated to supporting immigrant inclusion, and in 2024, Lancaster City Council voted to end cooperation with ICE.

In Trap Door: Trans Cultural Production and the Politics of Visibility, the authors describe experiencing visibility as a trans person as a trap door:, “not entrances or exits but secret passageways that take you someplace else, often someplace as yet unknown.” I want to think a similar way about trans art. The experience of transitioning, of becoming something and someone new, is a pretty messy process. Surgeries, second puberties, the world slipping up on names and pronouns. Many, many haircuts. We rarely wake up knowing exactly where we want to end up, or what door we open to get us there, but we take the doors that are open to us and learn where they lead. We want you to experience this play as opening a door that takes you somewhere as yet unknown.