The art of horsemanship is to develop the horse's innate athletic qualities by using advanced horsemanship methods. Encourage his desire to demonstrate these qualities. The highest level is achieved when the horse immediately obeys even the gentlest commands of the rider without resistance, but remains relaxed and seemingly working effortlessly.
Seventeen-year-old Alan Strang pierces the eyes of six horses.
The art of riding - the horse's coat must be extremely clean, cleaned several times, sometimes even polished with various means. Areas of nostrils and ears are cleaned and visible. The hooves are usually blackened. The rider wears special white riding breeches and a hat. Fastened belt, worn white shirt with high neck. The gloves must be white, the jacket must be black.
Seventeen-year-old Alan Strang pierces the eyes of six horses.
Trying to understand Alan's obsessions, psychiatrist Martin Daisarts embarks on a detective odyssey into the depraved, terrifying subconscious of the guy. A doctor who has reached professional menopause hides his disappointment with life in the pages of ancient Greek art albums and desperately seeks escape from his self-created routine. But his sense of sanity, normality, what is right and what is wrong crumbles when he realizes that the subconscious that must be true on the dissecting table of such concepts is his own. Entering the labyrinth of Alan's madness, the psychiatrist gets lost in the dead end of his own fears and nightmares.
Alan's soul is destroyed by both the inadequacy of institutionalized religion and the lack of religiosity (as a form of mental and spiritual expression). He lives in a void that echoes with frustrated desires and formless specters. He is tormented by the knowledge of what he cannot find out because he is unable to even begin to explore a reality he does not belong to anyway.
There is no way out, no choice but to create your own deity, Equus, the horse, the archetypal beast that unleashes the consuming lust of life. However, offerings to the deities are mandatory. And when you run out of victims, you either have to sacrifice yourself or slaughter the deity on her altar.
This play was written by British playwright Peter Shaffer in 1973 after hearing a story about a guy who maimed six horses in a small East Anglia town in Suffolk. The writer, never knowing the true circumstances of the event, used this fact for his story and invented motives that could make the seventeen-year-old act like that. Peter Shaffer - a famous British author, playwright and screenwriter who won many awards (including "Oscar", "Golden Globe" and "Tony"), and also received an honorary doctorate from several universities, he was awarded the title of an honorary knight of Great Britain . In the drama "Equus" themes of faith, societal customs, expectations, normality and resistance to everything that is usual and conventional are important to Shaffer. In this work, the writer dramatizes the conflict between Apollonian and Dionysian values in human life.
Director Jokūbas Brazys, who chose the play "Equus" for his first performance at the Lithuanian National Drama Theater, focuses on the confrontation with his God. The viewer, as a detective, is invited to embark on a journey through Alan's subconscious in order to find out the motives of his actions, the price of normality and stand together with him in a confrontation with his deities.
