Photograph of Peter Shaffer.
Peter Shaffer

Overview

Sir Peter Levin Shaffer (born May 15, 1926) is an English dramatist, author of numerous award-winning plays, several of which have been filmed.

Early life

He was born to a Jewish family in Liverpool, and is the twin brother of another playwright, Anthony Shaffer.

He gained a scholarship to Trinity College, Cambridge University to study history.

Shaffer was a Bevin Boy coal miner during WW2 and took a number of jobs including bookstore clerk, and assistant at the New York Public Library, before discovering his dramatic talents.

Theater

Shaffer's first play, The Salt Land (1954) was presented on the BBC. Encouraged by this success, Shaffer continued to write and established his reputation as a playwright in 1958 with the production of Five Finger Exercise which opened in London under the direction of John Gielgud and won the Evening Standard Drama Award. When Five Finger Exercise moved to New York in 1959, it was equally well-received and landed Shaffer the Drama Critics Award.

Shaffer's canon contains a unique mix of philosophical dramas and satirical comedies. The Royal Hunt of the Sun (1964) presents the tragic conquest of Peru by the Spanish, while Black Comedy (1965) takes a hilarious look at the antics of a group of characters feeling their way around a pitch black room — although the stage is, of course, actually flooded with light.

Equus (1973) won Shaffer the 1975 Tony Award for Best Play as well as the New York Drama Critics Circle Award. An electrifying journey into the mind of a 17-year-old stableboy who had plunged a spike into the eyes of six horses, Equus ran for over 1000 performances on Broadway and has been revived by Massachusetts' Berkshire Theatre Festival in the summer of 2005, staged by Scott Schwartz, with Victor Slezak as Dr Martin Dysart and Randy Harrison as Alan Strang. (Roberta Maxwell, who originated the role of Jill, Alan's would-be girlfriend, in the original Broadway production in the 1970s, played a judge in this revival.) and in 2007, with Richard Griffiths and Daniel Radcliffe in the leading roles. The play was directed by Thea Sharrock, and opened in London in February 2007 at the Gielgud Theatre. The casting of Radcliffe, still associated with films intended for general audiences, caused some major controversy, since the role of Alan Strang required him to appear naked on stage.

Shaffer followed this success with Amadeus (1979) which won the Evening Standard Drama Award and the Theatre Critics Award for the London production. Amadeus tells the story of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and court composer Antonio Salieri who, overcome with jealousy at hearing the "voice of God" coming from an "obscene child," sets out to destroy his rival. When the show moved to Broadway, it won the 1981 Tony Award for Best Play and, like Equus, ran for more than 1000 performances.

Film

Several of Shaffer's plays have been adapted to film, including Five Finger Exercise (1962), The Royal Hunt of the Sun (1969), Equus (1977), and Amadeus (1984), which won eight Academy Awards including Best Picture.

Shaffer received two Academy Award-nominations for adapting his plays "Equus" and "Amadeus" for the big screen. For writing the screenplay for "Equus", he was nominated for the 1977 Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar but the award went to Alvin Sargent, who wrote the screenplay for "Julia". For writing the screenplay for "Amadeus", Shaffer received both the 1984 Best Screenplay Golden Globe and the 1984 Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar.

Peter Shaffer received the William Inge Award for Distinguished Achievement in the American Theater in 1992, was appointed Cameron Mackintosh Visiting Professor of Contemporary Theatre at Oxford University in 1994, and awarded a Knighthood by Queen Elizabeth II in the annual New Years Honors (2001).

Selected works

*The Salt Land (1954), his first play, which was presented on BBC television. *Balance Of Terror (1957) *The Prodigal Father (1957) *Five Finger Exercise (1958) *The Private Ear and The Public Eye (1962) *The Establishment (1963) *The Merry Roosters Panto (1963) *The Royal Hunt of the Sun (1964) which examines the conquest of Peru by the Spanish, and was made into a 1969 film. *Black Comedy/White Lies (1967) *The Battle of Shrivings (1970) *Equus (1973), based on the real-life story of a teenage stable-boy who blinded several horses, won the 1975 Tony Award for Best Play and the New York Drama Critics Circle Award, and was made into a 1977 film. *Amadeus (1979) which tells a fictional story of how court composer Antonio Salieri attempted to destroy Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart of whom he was jealous, and also won a Tony Award for Best Play, in 1981. It was made into a 1984 film, which won eight Academy Awards including Best Picture. *Black Mischief (1983) *Yonadab (1985) *Lettice and Lovage (1987) *This Savage Parade (1987) *Whom Do I Have The Honour Of Addressing? (1990) *The Gift of the Gorgon (1992)

References

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This biography says:

...(Roberta Maxwell, who originated the role of Jill, Alan's would-be girlfriend, in the original Broadway production in the 1970s, played a judge in this revival.) and in 2007, with Richard Griffiths and Daniel Radcliffe in the leading roles. The play was directed by Thea Sharrock, and opened in London in February 2007 at the Gielgud Theatre...

That biography says:

...He took the role because he wanted to appear in a film in which he played a supporting role rather than the central character. Next, Radcliffe opened on 27 February, 2007 in a revival of Peter Shaffer's play Equus as Alan Strang, a stable boy who has an obsession with horses. The role generated significant pre-opening media interest and advance sales topped two million pounds, as Radcliffe appeared nude in one scene in the play...

This biography says:

...Encouraged by this success, Shaffer continued to write and established his reputation as a playwright in 1958 with the production of Five Finger Exercise which opened in London under the direction of John Gielgud and won the Evening Standard Drama Award. When Five Finger Exercise moved to New York in 1959, it was equally well-received and landed Shaffer the Drama Critics Award...

This biography says:

...Shaffer followed this success with Amadeus (1979) which won the Evening Standard Drama Award and the Theatre Critics Award for the London production. Amadeus tells the story of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and court composer Antonio Salieri who, overcome with jealousy at hearing the "voice of God" coming from an "obscene child," sets out to destroy his rival...

That biography says:

...Russian composer Nikolay Rimsky-Korsakov adapted Pushkin's play as an opera of the same name in 1898. A popular perpetuation of the story was in Peter Shaffer's play Amadeus (1979) and the Oscar-winning 1984 film directed by Miloš Forman based upon it...

This biography says:

...Shaffer followed this success with Amadeus (1979) which won the Evening Standard Drama Award and the Theatre Critics Award for the London production. Amadeus tells the story of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and court composer Antonio Salieri who, overcome with jealousy at hearing the "voice of God" coming from an "obscene child," sets out to destroy his rival...

That biography says:

...Modern audiences have been gripped by the account of Mozart's life given in Peter Shaffer's play Amadeus, as well as the film based on the play. Shaffer seems to have been especially taken by the contrast between Mozart's enjoyment of vulgarity (noted above) and the sublime character of his music...

This biography says:

He was born to a Jewish family in Liverpool, and is the twin brother of another playwright, Anthony Shaffer....

That biography says:

Anthony Joshua Shaffer, (May 15 1926 – November 6 2001), was an English playwright, novelist, and screenwriter. He was born in Liverpool and was the twin brother of the better-known Peter Shaffer. He graduated with a law degree from Trinity College, Cambridge University....

That biography says:

Critics consider many of his works masterpieces, such as the poem The Bronze Horseman and the drama The Stone Guest, a tale of the fall of Don Juan. His poetic short drama "Mozart and Salieri" was the inspiration for Peter Shaffer's Amadeus. Pushkin himself preferred his verse novel Eugene Onegin, which he wrote over the course of his life and which, starting a tradition of great Russian novels, follows a few central characters but varies widely in tone and focus...

That biography says:

...In addition to his work in the subsidised theatre, Blakemore has directed several productions in the West End and on Broadway, including Noel Coward's Design for Living , with Vanessa Redgrave (1973), Knuckle, David Hare's first play (1974), Peter Shaffer's Lettice and Lovage, with Maggie Smith and Margaret Tyzack (1987), the musical City of Angels by Larry Gelbart, Cy Coleman and David Zippel (1989), Arthur Miller's The Ride Down Mt...

That biography says:

...Joseph is prominently featured in Peter Shaffer's play Amadeus, and the movie based upon it. In the movie, he is played by actor Jeffrey Jones as a well-meaning but somewhat clueless monarch of limited but enthusiastic musical skill, easily manipulated by Salieri; however, Shaffer has made it clear his play was fiction in many respects and not intended to portray historical reality.

That biography says:

...Highlights of his career in modern theatre include the roles of Sir Thomas More in Robert Bolt's A Man for All Seasons (1960), Charles Dyer in Dyer's play Staircase, staged by the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1966, and Antonio Salieri in the original stage production of Peter Shaffer's Amadeus (1979). Expresso Bongo, Staircase and Amadeus were filmed with other actors, but Scofield starred in the screen versions of A Man for All Seasons (1966) and King Lear (1971)...

That biography says:

Sheen soon established himself as one of the most promising talents on the theatrical scene, notably being cast as Mozart in Peter Shaffers play Amadeus, which was staged at the Old Vic theatre and directed by Sir Peter Hall....

That biography says:

*The Discovery and Conquest of Peru by William H. Prescott *Conquest of the Incas, John Hemming, 1973. *The Royal Hunt of the Sun, by Peter Shaffer, 1964.

That biography says:

...Much of the group's work was queer re-contextualizations of classic works, such as a tragicomic Macbeth with both the title character and Lady Macbeth played by performers of the opposite gender. More recently, in March 2001 he directed his own Egguus, a parody of Peter Shaffer's 1973 play Equus that exchanged a fixation on horses for a fixation on chickens. Savage has not directed, produced, or performed in any productions since a 2001 production of his trimmed version of Mark Twain's "The Diary of Adam and Eve," which received poor reviews, including an extremely negative review from his own paper.

That biography says:

...In 1964, she starred in a Broadway revival of Anton Chekov's The Three Sisters with Kim Stanley and Shirley Knight. The production was directed by Lee Strasberg. She also starred in Peter Shaffer's Black Comedy/White Lies, in 1967, which was the production in which both Michael Crawford and Lynn Redgrave made their Broadway debuts...

That biography says:

...Although Hopkins continued in theatre (most notably in the Broadway production of Peter Shaffer's Equus, directed by John Dexter) he gradually moved away from it to become more established as a television and film actor...

This biography says:

...(Roberta Maxwell, who originated the role of Jill, Alan's would-be girlfriend, in the original Broadway production in the 1970s, played a judge in this revival.) and in 2007, with Richard Griffiths and Daniel Radcliffe in the leading roles. The play was directed by Thea Sharrock, and opened in London in February 2007 at the Gielgud Theatre...

That biography says:

...He reprised his role in the movie version which was released in October 2006. Together with Daniel Radcliffe, who plays Harry Potter, he appeared in a stage revival of Peter Shaffer's Equus at the Gielgud Theatre in London. Griffiths also played Magistrate Phillipes in the popular film, Sleepy Hollow...

This biography says:

...An electrifying journey into the mind of a 17-year-old stableboy who had plunged a spike into the eyes of six horses, Equus ran for over 1000 performances on Broadway and has been revived by Massachusetts' Berkshire Theatre Festival in the summer of 2005, staged by Scott Schwartz, with Victor Slezak as Dr Martin Dysart and Randy Harrison as Alan Strang. (Roberta Maxwell, who originated the role of Jill, Alan's would-be girlfriend, in the original Broadway production in the 1970s, played a judge in this revival.) and in 2007, with Richard Griffiths and Daniel Radcliffe in the leading roles...

That biography says:

...There he appeared in a number of plays, including in the roles of Goya in Antonio Buero Vallejo's The Sleep of Reason, the lead role in Słowacki's Fantazy and the role of Salieri in Peter Shaffer's Amadeus. He also appeared in numerous films, among them Krzysztof Kieślowski's Blind Chance, Krzysztof Zanussi's The Contract and Andrzej Wajda's Man of Marble...

That biography says:

...He appeared with Olivier in Shakespeare’s Othello and Ibsen’s The Master Builder. He also appeared in Peter Shaffer’s The Royal Hunt of the Sun (with Robert Stephens), Charley's Aunt, Tom Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, Congreve's The Way of the World, Feydeau’s A Flea In Her Ear (directed by Jacques Charon of the Comédie Française), The Crucible, Pirandello's The Rules Of The Game, Dostoevsky's The Idiot and Shaw's Mrs...

That biography says:

Napier earned a position as an Associate Designer at the Royal Shakespeare Company. He has designed for the National Theatre, notably the production of Peter Shaffer's Equus, Trelawny of the Wells, An Enemy of the People and Candide. John Napier has also designed for the Royal Opera House, for Glyndebourne, for the English National Opera and others...

That biography says:

...A supporting role in the 1983 Rodney Dangerfield film Easy Money, and a guest shot on Remington Steele led to his replacing Ian Richardson in Forman’s 1984 adaptation of the Peter Shaffer play Amadeus as Emperor Joseph II, to whom he bore an uncanny resemblance. Jones’ performance in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off made him a cultural icon...
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