Peter Shaffer Shaffer received the William Inge Award for Distinguished Achievement in the American Theatre in 1992. Two years later he was appointed Cameron Mackintosh Visiting Professor of Contemporary Theatre at Oxford University. In 1993 he was awarded an Honorary Degree (Doctor of Letters) by the University of Bath. Shaffer's play, "Five Finger Exercise" won the Evening Standard Drama Award when it premiered in London and then won the New York Drama Critics' Circle Award for Best Foreign Play when it moved to New York City. Shaffer's play, "Equus" won the 1975 Tony Award for Best Play and the New York Drama
Equus (play) on 11 September 1976. It then opened at the Helen Hayes Theatre on 5 October 1976, ending on 2 October 1977, for a total of 1,209 performances. Shaffer adapted the play for a 1977 film starring Richard Burton, Peter Firth, Eileen Atkins, Colin Blakely, Joan Plowright, and Jenny Agutter, directed by Sidney Lumet. Unlike stage productions, where the horses are portrayed by human actors, often muscular men wearing tribal-style masks, Lumet did not believe this could adequately be done in a film version, concluding a degree of realism was required, "because the reality he [Alan] was being watched in was