Asterisk denotes entries on real places.
Rokeby
John Napier’s design for the set calls for a wooden square atop a wooden circle. The square resembles a boxing ring, which makes Alan and Dysart resemble evenly matched prize-fighters in their relentless rhetorical counterpunching. Functioning as witnesses, much like a Greek chorus, all other characters sit on benches behind the square, where they remain always visible to the audience. Napier’s stage directions include three tiers of audience seats placed around the circle, “in the fashion of a dissecting theater.” Metal horse-masks, donned by actors, are mounted on wooden poles.
Dalton’s stable. Scene of the blinding incident, which is bloodlessly, almost balletically, reenacted at the play’s climax. To Alan, the stable is a temple for clandestine worship of his horse-god, Equus–and the site of his failed first attempt at sexual intercourse with Jill Mason.
*Mycenae (my-SEE-nee). Ancient Greek site of pagan rituals of worship that are idealized by psychiatrist Martin Dysart, in contrast to the sterility that he believes characterizes the modern world.
Strang home. Working-class household in southern England that is the site of various family conflicts, primarily over religion. In his bedroom, Alan reenacts secret rituals of worship before a poster-sized photograph of a horse, which has replaced an image of Christ in chains that his atheist father removed.
Beach. Site of six-year-old Alan’s first ride on a horse, Trojan, which was interrupted when his father pulled him off the horse. The psychologically traumatic scene is reenacted during the play.
Field of Ha-Ha. Alan’s name for the site of his exultant clandestine night ride, which is reenacted at the end of the first act. He takes the name from a passage in the Old Testament: “He saith among the trumpets, Ha, ha; and he smelleth the battle afar off, the thunder of the captains, and the shouting” (Job 39:25).