Equus is a play by Peter Shaffer written in 1973, telling the story of a 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 who blinded six horses in a small town near Suffolk.[2] He set out to construct a fictional account of what might have caused the incident, without knowing any of the details of the crime.
The play’s action is something of a detective story, involving the attempts of the child psychiatrist, Dr. Martin Dysart, to understand the cause of the boy’s actions while wrestling with his own sense of purpose.
The stage show ran in London between 1973 and 1975: later came the Broadway productions that starred Anthony Hopkins as Dysart (later played by Richard Burton, Leonard Nimoy, and Anthony Perkins), and from the London production, Peter Firth as Alan. Tom Hulce replaced Firth during the Broadway run. The Broadway production ran for 1,209 performances. Marian Seldes appeared in every single performance of the Broadway run, first in the role of Hesther and then as Dora.
Numerous other issues inform the narrative. Most important are religious and ritual sacrifice themes, and the manner in which character Alan Strang constructs a personal theology involving the horses and the supreme godhead, “Equus”. Alan sees the horses as representative of God and confuses his adoration of his “God” with sexual attraction.
Also important is Shaffer’s examination of the conflict between personal values and satisfaction and societal mores, expectations and institutions. In reference to the play’s classical structure, themes and characterization, Shaffer has discussed the conflict between Apollonian and Dionysian values and systems in human life. (Wikipedia)
It was December, 1975, when I first saw the Broadway smash hit and multiple Tony Award Winner, Equus. The play was one of the most gut wrenching and yet brilliantly staged stories I believe I had ever seen – then and now. I definitely wanted it for the Paramount’s 1976/1977 season. There was one problem. A brief nudity scene was critical to the story. There was no way to take it out.
I thought I had better check with the mayor and city council. You see, Austin, Texas had an obscenity law on the books in 1976. It was no joke. If I couldn’t sway them to waive that statute, goodbye Equus!
By now, Mayor Jeff Friedman and the rest of the City Council were getting to know me quite well. Most importantly, they might not have said it out loud but I believe they were in favor of the Paramount finding new life as a performing arts center. No one wanted to be the Council that sat in silence as it was destroyed for a Holiday Inn which was a distinct possibility if we failed.
While I didn’t know it at the time, I was forced to learn how to pull a hat out of a rabbit on critical issues that lay waiting in the mist of the not too distant future.
I don’t know when I realized that I had a command of the English language and a pretty strong presence as a public speaker. Organizations, individuals and media, city wide, had played audience to my act. I would talk to anybody, anywhere at any time if they would let me bring my vision of what the Paramount could become and set it down right in front of them. Motherhood and apple pie, right? It should have been. It was not. Real support by any of the big institutions or government was a big goose egg in the first few years of the project. And that is why I had to actually learn to communicate – something which I never was actually taught in three years attending the University of Texas’ School of Communications Department for Radio, Television and Film. I’ve got a diploma right behind me saying I’ve got a BS in that very School. That’s all it was good for. BS!
So, I convinced the city clerk to put me on the agenda to discuss Equus and my little problem with bringing it to Austin. As you can tell from the first paragraph of this story, via Wikipedia, this is a complex and deeply disturbing story of a young boy who blinded six horses in real life! I can promise you I didn’t “go there” with Mayor Jeff Friedman, Mayor Pro Tem Jimmy Snell, Councilpersons, Lowell Lebermann, Jr., Emma Lou Linn, Margaret Hoffman, Betty Himmelblau and John Trevino.
Friedman owed me a favor. When he was running for Mayor after being on the Council, he asked if he could give the “keys to the city” to Dave Brubeck, on stage, for our inaugural concert at the venerable Paramount. I had conjured up this screwy position that I would never let the Paramount be used in any way, politically. Not sure where that came from or why I felt so strongly about it. However, Jeff was a good guy and I relented in the end. A year later, I ran in to Jeff on Congress Avenue after he had been elected mayor and the Paramount had garnered some restoration monies and more importantly, some major momentum with the public and media. He said, “They forgot to tell us it was impossible”. Amen.
I’d gotten to know Lowell Lebermann, who would become president of my board for a two year stretch in 1979 and 1980. Johnny Trevino enjoyed a few cocktails at The Veranda watering hole on Lamar and 13th Street along with a hundred or so of our best friends, each and every night after work.
Margaret Hoffman’s husband had one of the most unique skills, ever. He repaired and restored some of the great organs and pipe systems in the country. Regrettably, the Paramount’s organ and pipe system was gone. Not even the hint of it remained anywhere. Many years later, one of the IATSE union film projectionists, John Stewart, told me the pipes had been hidden just above the opera boxes behind a decorative lattice structure. Nevertheless, Margaret had a soft spot in her heart for the theatre.
Emma Lou was something of a folk hero figure to many in Austin, particularly the more liberal minded of us who had survived the Sixties. She was a champ and a trailblazer, living on 6th Street which was gutsy in those days. She liked me which was a piece of luck enjoyed by thousands of our fellow ex-hippies.
I have no memory, whatsoever, of Jimmy Snell. Betty Himmelblau’s name rings a very faint bell but that’s it. I mean we’re talking about forty years ago. Hey, five out of seven wasn’t a bad start, lobbying wise.
Dan Davidson was the City Manager in those days. He was a gruff, tough, no bullshit man who was probably an ex-Marine and could still bring forth the “point of the spear” on call. First things first!
Well, what can I tell you! I laid out the basic story of the play. And then, I had to find a way to convince them of two things. First, the nudity scene was very brief and that there was no touching involved. The two “human” characters were the young boy and his female psychologist. She de-robes to try and make the young man feel less inhibited by an adult and a “shrink”. He is encouraged to do the same. Now, I could talk myself to death about art, nuance and other theatrical conceits till the earth gives up her dead. Less is more! Another “Amen”!
I’m pretty sure I really brought the message home that was, indeed, these kinds of dramatic, powerhouse Broadway shows that would galvanize the public and media to know that we were deadly serious about becoming a nationally prominent performing arts center. Shows like Equus were a theatre’s lifeblood.
We got a 7-0 unanimous vote in favor of allowing us to bring Equus to the Paramount a few months later.
At the end of the council meeting, Dan Davidson pulled me aside, with a pretty firm grip and an even stonier countenance on his face. “Bernardoni let me tell you what you’re going to do for me, now. I want you to make damn sure that, in each and every advertisement of every kind, these words appear because I’m not getting hung out to dry over an artsy farts play from New York when the shit hits the fan with the bible bunch. I was good on my word. So every print add, radio or television spot said…
‘NO ONE UNDER 18 WILL BE ADMITTED DUE TO NUDITY SCENE’
Equus sold out five performances at 1,300 tickets per performance in one day! That’s 6,500 tickets, friends and neighbors, which was a record for the number of performances by a Broadway play in Austin at that time sold in one shot. Broadway shows just didn’t come to Austin. They considered us a second tier market – no shit!
If all that doesn’t make you sit up and bark just like a Labrador retriever, it gets better!
As part of the contract, we had to have a number of seats, actually on the stage, up close and personal with the two actors and the other performers who created the illusion of the six horses in their black attired, metal construct of horse faces and elevated hoofs of the same material. I left that little detail out of my City Council remarks! Those seats sold firsts. We had now become part theatre and part brothel. Show business is my life!
Equus crushed with our audiences. It was spell binding, mesmerizing, visceral, breathtaking and more. And, it was a grand slam with critiques. The PR was priceless, particularly in those early days when we needed as much ink as possible, colored with the provocative for good measure.
A Broadway theatre had just been created on Congress Avenue where a Vaudeville house used to stand.
God Bless America and Dan Davidson!!
