Pony
A Play

Sylvan Oswald (Author)

9780810148659

Paperback / softback, published 15 June 2025

144 pages
22.9 x 15.2 x 1.5 cm, 0.666 kg

“How do we reckon with the places where love and violence brush past? How do we free ourselves from the histories inside which we’re trapped? Pony is a play like a riddle, a play like a dare. Built from a theatrical language of longing and family, shape-shifting and queerness, Pony is a play about the stories we inhabit, the ones we become, and the urgency of unraveling those stories before they bury us. It has haunted me ever since I saw its earliest incarnation onstage in Chicago, and reencountering it now brings the keen pleasure of a mystery that only deepens with time.” - Jen Silverman, playwright, novelist and screenwriter

A seminal work of trans theater brought to the page for the first time
 
When Pony, a formerly incarcerated trans guy, moves to a small rural town to start a new life, he quickly becomes entangled with its isolated community. He starts to fall for a waitress who is obsessed with a local murder; he must comply with a butch social worker who doesn’t understand him; and he is pursued by a young trans man who thinks Pony could be the father he always wanted. Amid this whirlwind of fear and desire, Pony must find the strength to confront the stories he's been told about masculinity, violence, and self-worth. With a new preface by the author on searching for queer and trans community in the theater, and an afterword by critic Miriam Felton-Dansky contextualizing its place in contemporary theater, Pony is a seminal work of trans theater exploring questions of generational difference, class, and gender on an epic scale.

Preface: "Soft Butch Landing," by Sylvan Oswald
Pony
Afterword: "The Other Side of the Forest: Pony, Transmasculinity, and Generational Shift," by Miriam Felton-Dansky
Acknowledgments