Horse Cave Repertory

Warren Hammack’s plan was for Horse Cave Theatre to operate in a “rotating repertory” format. This model comes from theater festivals where audiences travel to spend several days watching plays. It’s a compressed, demanding schedule for performers and audiences alike: three plays in two days on weekends, and three plays in three days during the week.

Even though Horse Cave Theatre is located in a rural area, Hammack has never assumed that his audience is unsophisticated. He avoids commercial comedies and never produces musicals. Often he turns to works by classical dramatists such as Shakespeare, Chekhov, and Molière, as well as to modern playwrights like O’Neill, Miller, and Pinter.

Perhaps the most distinctive component of Horse Cave Theatre’s repertory is its annual production of a new play by a Kentucky writer. This series of new Kentucky works began in 1981, and Horse Cave’s is the only project in the state devoted to the development of plays by or about Kentuckians.

During shooting for the Electronic Field Trip to Horse Cave Theatre, the company was performing the 17th annual new Kentucky play: Liz’s Circus Story by Liz Bussey Fentress. A former actor, stage manager, and associate producer at Horse Cave Theatre, Fentress began Liz’s Circus Story in Warren Hammack’s playwriting workshop. The one-character autobiographical play details her summer adventures with the Franzen Bros. Circus.