Peter Shaffer

Peter Shaffer(1926-2016)[1] is a British playwright and director.

Peter Shaffer is one of the few British dramatists to have achieved major successes, both critically and with the public, without the benefit of ever being exactly fashionable. In 1958, when the "angry young men' at the Royal Court Theatre in London were expressing a mood of social and class frustration, Shaffer's tightly-knit domestic drama, Five Finger Exercise, opened in the West End; a play much in the style of Pinero about the emotional problems of a wealthy middle-class family. The sheer skill of the writing, coupled with a sophisticated awareness of the sexual and cultural tensions of the middle-classes, caused British and American critics to hail Five Finger Exercise as the best new play of the season, despite the prevailing theatrical mood. In the mid-sixties, confronted by many epic plays in the style of Brecht and productions influenced by Artaud, Shaffer incorporated some of the new techniques into his magnificent epic play, The Royal Hunt of the Sun. When many of his contemporaries were either committedly left or right wing, Shaffer maintained a sturdy liberal independence.

"The greatest tragic factor in history," he once wrote, "is man's apparent need to mark the intensity of his reaction to life by joining a band; for a band, to give itself definition, must find a rival, or an enemy".

The same freedom from shibboleths marks his flexible craftsmanship as a dramatist, neither avant-garde nor stolidly conservative. His open-mindedness is reflected by the variety of his achievements. Peter Shaffer has written perhaps the best modern farce, Black Comedy, one of the best epics, The Royal Hunt of the Sun, one of the best domestic dramas, Five Finger Exercise, and an ambitious philosophical drama, The Battle of Shrivings. This versatility was only achieved because his technique as a dramatist rests on sure foundations. His dialogue rarely fails to hold the attention and, more importantly, to rise to the demands of the story.

For more biographical details, see Wikipedia at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Shaffer.

The South African connection

All his works have been performed in South Africa, and he has also visited the country on occasion.

As director

In 1964 he came to South Africa to direct a revival of Noël Coward’s Blithe Spirit, and the first presentation of his own double-bill of short plays (The Private Ear and The Public Eye) for Taubie Kushlick at the Intimate Theatre in 1964.