Sir Peter Shaffer, British playwright, Died at 90

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Sir Peter Levin Shaffer was born on May 15, 1926, and died on June 6, 2016.

He was an English playwright and screenwriter of numerous award-winning plays.

Several of which have been turned into films.

His first play, The Salt Land (1954), was presented on the BBC.

Fueled 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.

After Five Finger Exercise moved to New York City in 1959, it was equally well received and landed Shaffer the New York Drama Critics’ Circle Award for Best Foreign Play.

The show Equus (1973) won Shaffer the 1975 Tony Award for Best Play as well as the New York Drama Critics’ Circle Award.

His 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 1,000 performances on Broadway.

And was revived by Massachusetts’ Berkshire Theatre Festival in the summers of 2005 and 2007, and by director Thea Sharrock at London’s Gielgud Theatre in February 2007, and on Broadway (in the Sharrock staging) in September 2008.

His other production, which ran in New York until February 2009, required the stableboy to appear naked; its star, Daniel Radcliffe, was still associated with the Harry Potter films intended for general audiences, and this led to mild controversy.

Hereceived the William Inge Award for Distinguished Achievement in the American Theatre in 1992

He died while on a trip to the southwest of Ireland.

Sir Peter Shaffer passed away at 90 yrs old.