Approx length: 106 pages in the version linked below.
Where to find it: Currently available to borrow on Archive. org here
What is it, in summary?: A psychiatrist, Martin Dysart, attempts to treat a young man, Alan Strang, who blinded six horses in a seemingly random outburst. Over the course of the play Dysart tries to find the root of this violent attack and also unpack the imagery and causation of Alan’s extreme psychosexual religious obsession with horses. Dysart is disillusioned with his career and dealing with Alan further challenges his own ideas of normality, societal taboos, and worship. Patient making the therapist worst!
What do you love about it?: The back-and-forth dialogue between Alan and Dysart, the interrogatory format, Dysart’s discursive monologues, desperate psychosexual repulsion/obsession, Dysart's very English repression and Alan's disrupting effect, the conflict of Dysart’s role as a psychiatrist and his dried-up desire for instinctual and true worship that he knows he will never have in the way Alan has, Apollonian vs Dionysian values, doubts and mental decline, the central question of “what is Normal and what sacrifices do we make to it, in its role as society’s true God?”
What sort of things are you likely to request for it?: Character study, therapy discussion, homoeroticism. More psychosexual obsession, more of Dysart's interactions with Alan and his own intellectualisation, more mental dissolution. Rituals and images of Equus. Dysart’s discontent with societal mores and his own loveless marriage and repression of instinct is good material for a gay reading of his character. Strange and offputting manifestations of repressed attraction, boundaries, Alan decimating Dysart’s worldview, connection and Seeing Self Represented in The Other. There’s a lot of Themes to play around with here!
Are there sections of canon (rather than the whole canon) that can be consumed by themselves to fulfil your requests, or that showcase particular characters and relationships?: No, though the 1977 film is a good place to start if you want to see the characters performed, though obviously it curtails the more abstract theatrical staging of the play. Burton and Firth give great performances (watching this for the first time while cleaning stables on an isolated horse ranch was certainly…a choice 🤪). I don’t think there are any professional stage recordings online but there may be amateur ones on Youtube.
Content warnings (ie, rape, incest, racism, gore/violence): Animal harm, discussion of violence, self-harm, implied bestiality—though the sexual element is more about religious Passion and Ecstasy rather than specific sexual acts, patient-therapist dynamics, mental institutions.
Equus--Peter Shaffer
Media: Play
Approx length: 106 pages in the version linked below.
Where to find it: Currently available to borrow on Archive. org here
What is it, in summary?:
A psychiatrist, Martin Dysart, attempts to treat a young man, Alan Strang, who blinded six horses in a seemingly random outburst. Over the course of the play Dysart tries to find the root of this violent attack and also unpack the imagery and causation of Alan’s extreme psychosexual religious obsession with horses. Dysart is disillusioned with his career and dealing with Alan further challenges his own ideas of normality, societal taboos, and worship. Patient making the therapist worst!
What do you love about it?:
The back-and-forth dialogue between Alan and Dysart, the interrogatory format, Dysart’s discursive monologues, desperate psychosexual repulsion/obsession, Dysart's very English repression and Alan's disrupting effect, the conflict of Dysart’s role as a psychiatrist and his dried-up desire for instinctual and true worship that he knows he will never have in the way Alan has, Apollonian vs Dionysian values, doubts and mental decline, the central question of “what is Normal and what sacrifices do we make to it, in its role as society’s true God?”
What sort of things are you likely to request for it?:
Character study, therapy discussion, homoeroticism. More psychosexual obsession, more of Dysart's interactions with Alan and his own intellectualisation, more mental dissolution. Rituals and images of Equus. Dysart’s discontent with societal mores and his own loveless marriage and repression of instinct is good material for a gay reading of his character. Strange and offputting manifestations of repressed attraction, boundaries, Alan decimating Dysart’s worldview, connection and Seeing Self Represented in The Other. There’s a lot of Themes to play around with here!
Are there sections of canon (rather than the whole canon) that can be consumed by themselves to fulfil your requests, or that showcase particular characters and relationships?:
No, though the 1977 film is a good place to start if you want to see the characters performed, though obviously it curtails the more abstract theatrical staging of the play. Burton and Firth give great performances (watching this for the first time while cleaning stables on an isolated horse ranch was certainly…a choice 🤪). I don’t think there are any professional stage recordings online but there may be amateur ones on Youtube.
Content warnings (ie, rape, incest, racism, gore/violence):
Animal harm, discussion of violence, self-harm, implied bestiality—though the sexual element is more about religious Passion and Ecstasy rather than specific sexual acts, patient-therapist dynamics, mental institutions.