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Equus
Equus
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Biz Staff Pick!
Author: Peter Shaffer Publisher: Samuel French (cover may change) Format: Softcover # of Pages: 106 Pub. Date: 1973 Edition: Acting ISBN-10: 0573608725 ISBN-13: 9780573608728 Cast Size: 4 female, 5 male and 6 actors to play horses
* Whole number only
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About the Play:
Equus was one of Royal
National Theatre of Britain's top 100 plays of the 20th century.
Equus has long been a favourite of acting teachers for Female Monologues, Male Monologues, and Female/Male Scenes.
Equus is a full-length drama by Peter Shaffer.
Psychiatrist Martin Dysart attempts to understand why young stableboy
Alan Strang has blinded six horses. In his exploration of the
troubled boy and his dysfunctional parents, Dysart must confront the
shortcomings of his own life. Equus is essentially a
post-modern detective story, with the psychiatrist trying to
understand the cause of the boy's actions while wrestling with his
own sense of purpose.
Equus the story of a psychiatrist who tries to treat a young man who has a fascination with horses. Dr. Martin
Dysart, a psychiatrist, is confronted with a boy who has blinded six
horses with a metal spike in a violent fit of passion. The atrocity
was committed by an unassuming seventeen-year-old stable boy named
Alan Strang, the only son of an opinionated but inwardly-timid father
and a genteel, religious mother. This very passion is as foreign to
Dysart as the act itself. To the boy's parents it is a hideous
mystery; Alan has always adored horses. To Dysart it is a
psychological puzzle that leads both doctor and patient to a complex
and disturbingly dramatic confrontation. The powerful and provocative story of a stable boy
and a psychiatrist who seek to understand the sexual and religious
mystery which leads to a climatic and unbelievable event. The most shocking play of
its day, Equus uses an act of violence to explore faith,
insanity and how the materialism of modern life can destroy
humanity's capacity for pain and passion.
Equus premiered in 1973 at The National Theatre in the West End of London. It won the 1975 Tony Award for best play and was made
into a film starring Richard Burton in 1977. This international
success reached new acclaim in London and on Broadway when revived in
2008. Daniel Radcliffe, the star of the popular Harry
Potter films, played the stable boy. Richard Griffiths,
who portrays Harry's mean Uncle Vernon in the Potter movies, played
the psychiatrist who treats the stable boy. The play has become a favourite scene study vehicle in acting classes and workshops and is regularly performed in repertory, high school, college, and community theatre productions.
Cast: 4 female, 5 male and 6 actors to play horses.
What people say:
"Equus is without doubt one of
the greatest English post-war plays. As a work of art, it is
magnificent. Rarely does contemporary drama probe so deep."
— The Sunday Times
"The closest I have seen a
contemporary play come to reanimating the spirit of mystery that
makes the stage a place of breathless discovery rather than a
classroom for rational demonstration. Mr. Shaffer may have been
trying for just such iconography a portrait of the drives that lead
men to crucify themselves there. Here I think he's found it."
— New York Times
About the Author:
Sir Peter Levin
Shaffer, CBE (1926-2016) was an English playwright and
screenwriter. He is familiar to North American audiences as the author
of Amadeus and Equus, two of the most successful plays
of the postwar era, and of a string of other award-winning plays,
several of which have been turned into films.
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