Clash of cultures

The Royal Hunt of the Sun, Peter Shaffer’s 1964 play about the conquest of the Incas

The Royal Hunt of the Sun, Peter Shaffer’s 1964 play about the conquest of the Incas, contains one of the most famous stage directions in modern drama: ‘They cross the Andes.’ On the face of it, these four words are completely preposterous. How could a theatre company possibly create the illusion that a 4,000-strong army is crossing a mountain range? Yet there was method in Shaffer’s madness. By including a stage direction that was impossible to follow naturalistically, he was forcing directors, actors, set designers, and so on to fall back on their ingenuity. In order to do justice to this play, they would have to use such devices as mime, music and dance — they would have to embrace what has come to be known as ‘total theatre’.