Mad Horse Theatre

As part of Mad Horse’s Board of Directors, I took on the challenge of redesigning their site. The Theatre’s board members felt that the site was not competitive with other theaters. A screenshot of the original site is below.

They hoped for a new site that conveyed originality and cutting-edge artistry. They also wanted one that would be responsive rather than fixed, such that it would work on mobile devices. Finally, the new site was being launched during the first year of COVID - obviously, a time of great shift for theatres. They wanted to reconfigure the site so that it could maintain audience engagement in a remote format, while also being able to support a return to normal operations when such an option would be available.

We landed on a theme making use of a black background and lighter colored text, having discussed their desire for a site that reflected the physical space of the theater, in that all plays are performed in a “black box”. A black background would also work well with their play photography, which they wanted to feature heavily on the site.

For content management, they were already using Squarespace, so I kept the site with that company in order to maintain access to a CMS with which they were comfortable. However, the home page was entirely redesigned to include sections that could be expanded or hidden depending on needs - for example, a large central hero image for a currently running play, or a series of multiple images to advertise an upcoming season.

I also reconfigured the navigation, as the navigation of the prior site was often duplicative, and analytics showed that the site’s audience seemed to have difficulty finding the most important areas of the site (in the client’s view) - that is, the current season, tickets, and donations pages. The navigation was updated to better drive traffic to these pages, which was confirmed with analytics following launch. The new navigation format upon re-launch is shown at the bottom of this page.

Following launch of the site, I continued in my role on the Board of Directors with Mad Horse for a few years, and in that capacity, I continued to update the site with new season information, etc.

Below - Mad Horse site in 2025.

Below - Mad Horse site in 2023.

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