Holly Laurent and Jet Eveleth are entering week two of their new sketch show I Live Next Door to Horses, directed by Pat O'Brien. These two young, independent women express their intellect and quirkiness through the diverse relationships and points of view of their sometimes strange, sometimes beautiful characters, existing in scenes revolving around a fictional 1980's TV sitcom. The result is a mixture of bubble-gum-pop-comedy and dark humor. Jet and Holly create an outrageous world where vulgarity and beauty blur.

The Bastion asked Holly Laurent about the writing, rehearsing, direction, and stage decor (horsey paint by number, it appeared). Miss Laurent kindly obliged:

"For the most part every scene was written by Jet or by me; in fact I think half the scenes are Jet's and half are mine, but after we bring in a script we are open to the ideas and inspiration the other player brings, and to Pat's input. All of them would be considered sit-down-written except the closing scene with the two old ladies on the porch. That was from a long road trip where jet and i were trying to make each other laugh.

"Pat is an amazing director, he created the over-arching theme for the show, designed the music, pain stakingly works and reworks the running order but for the most part he tries to give minimal input on the scene content because he wants it to reflect our vision. But actually as I say that I recall several scenes where he gave specific direction about how it should be rewritten with a new specific vision in mind.

"Our rehearsal process was bringing in scripts that we'd been inspired to write and then Pat would give us homework as well. He would give us assignments like 'Next week I want you to bring in a scene that makes you lose from breath from being very physical, a silent scene, a scene where each character speaks one word at a time'... stuff like that. It was amazing because it brought out things in my writing I never would have found on my own.

"The horse paintings were given to me by my sister who was cleaning out her in-laws basement last summer...I never knew what I was going to do with them or why they came my way until this show came along. In fact they were added the day of the performance almost as an after-thought."

This show is funny, sweet, eccentric, stylized and pretty. These are all super positive adjectives, so it is clearly higly recommended.

I Live Next Door to Horses, Fridays at 10:30 in the Del Close Theater. Opening acts include Team Submarine (Steve O'Brien and Nate Fernald) and Garage Sketch (Pat O'Brien and Peter Grosz).

-Mackenzie Condon