“My father gave me a crocodile skull for my second birthday. I named him Horace. Horace was once a 4.5 meter crocodile that lived on the north coast of Australia. When he was old, he swam into the mangrove swamp to return peacefully to earth, and that’s where my father found him.”

My Friend Horace is a duet between Renae Shadler and a crocodile skull. The pop up piece addresses on the regenerative cycle of life and is based on Renae’s true story of her lifelong friendship with the bone and their many adventures together.

Audience members move through worlds filled with underwater creatures, becoming Horace’s prey and trying to escape him, swimming in the bottomless ocean with all its mysteries and beauties, and in the end becoming a crocodile themselves.

My Friend Horace raises the question of how we can coexist with animal companions and their environment and stay connected to living creatures long after they have died.