Equus

In the original notes to Equus, Peter Shaffer tells us that the story is
based on a tale that so upset him, he felt compelled to create a mental world in which the deed could be made comprehensible.

Our production uses the psychological space as a battleground between Alan and Dysart.  Each man, in their own way, forces the other to question the legitimacy of their passion, or lack thereof.  The father/son dynamic that develops between them drives them both to face the truth of their situation.  

The swings provide tension between freedom of unbridled passion and the controlled Normalcy society expects from us.  The characters you see before you are mere shadows of the people they once were, a living, breathing organism of tethered normalcy who reflect us- tethered to our hand held devices, our never slowed pace, and our inability to make time to talk face to face.

To witness an event is to be present at it in some fundamentally ethical way, to feel the weight of things and one’s own place in them, even if that place is simply, for the moment, as an onlooker.  In Schaffer’s Equus, characters witness events as a collective yet in this production, we highlight their inherent and inevitable isolation.

Alan’s horrible crime is not the result of a disregard for social norms, but rather the expression of a deeply disturbed introjection of them, produced by a convoluted development as an individual. In a time where extremism and religion motivate and justify actions unspeakable, Equus demonstrates that no single act, even the most horrific can be viewed solely through the lens of black or white.  Equus gives us the opportunity to explore the complexity of the grey spots in between.

-Elenna Mosoff, Director