Why can't we all write a Warhorse?

One thing that I found really frustrating during residency was the constant hammering of the notion of keeping your play as basic as possible because otherwise, nobody would want to produce it. Keep your cast tiny. Keep your sets minimal. Your milieu inexpensive. Your themes current. Make sure the audience understands it and blah blah blah. It was kind of maddening to me, as it seemed like unless you wanted to write some more fucking Beckett-style nonsense, nobody was ever going to be interested in your plays.

But today my mom told me about this new play on Broadway called Warhorse. She said that it's a meditation on wartime about a boy whose beloved horse is drafted into service in War World I, and he follows him through the war to take him home. She said that the show portrays horses with gorgeous, fully articulated puppets that move and behave so much like real horses that it's mesmerizing. She suggested I look them up on Youtube, and my God, I was amazed.

Look at this. This is magic. This is fabulous theater. I am in AWE of how much those puppet draws me in. They are huge and gorgeous and they move like real horses. They are so fucking beautiful and ingenious and perfect that I can't imagine how much more powerful my theater experience would be going to see this because of that touch.

And this play demands it. The heart of the story of Warhorse is about how the best in the human spirit is brought out through the love of horses. You don't FEEL that on a visceral level without the force and shape and awe-inspiring presence of a horse right there to drive it home to you. But how would you ever get a horse onstage? Does this story not belong onstage because that's an impractical thing to write into a show?

But the play was good enough that somebody made it happen, regardless of the difficulty. And this show is a smash hit. I think it just shows that if your play is good enough, people will make it happen the way it needs to happen. Yeah, we are certainly not all going to get lucky enough to get such a big budget, or even any attention at all. I just can't help but think why teach people to write a worse play just to handle concerns of ever getting off the ground?