Equus
- Dates
- Oct 24, 1974 – Oct 2, 1977
- Performances
- 1209
About
Equus is a 1973 play by Peter Shaffer, about a child psychiatrist who attempts to treat a young man who has a pathological religious fascination with horses. Shaffer was inspired to write Equus when he heard of a crime involving a 17-year-old boy who blinded 26 horses in a small town in northern England. He set out to construct a fictional account of what might have caused the incident, without knowing any of the details of the crime, and to evoke the same "air of mystery" and "numinous" qualities as his 1964 play The Royal Hunt of the Sun but in a more modern setting. The narrative of the play follows Dr. Martin Dysart's attempts to understand the cause of the boy's (Alan Strang) actions while wrestling with his own sense of purpose and the nature of his work. The original stage producti...