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Equus

Equus
Your Price: $18.95 CDN
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

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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