Equus A Level Drama Revision Guide – Edexcel Section B

Teaching Equus for Edexcel A Level Drama? This is the complete, ready-to-use revision guide for Component 3, Section B.

I wrote this guide because I couldn’t find a single resource that covered Equus in the depth Section B demands. Students need to know the whole play well enough to answer on an unseen extract without the text, as both a performer and a designer. This guide gets them there, and saves you hours of preparation.

What you get:

8 top-band model answers. Each has a student-style plan, examiner-style AO3 comments in the margin of the answer, and a short examiner’s summary. They show students exactly what Level 5 looks like. Two of them recreate what the full-mark 2022 Equus answers did.
All 35 scenes summarised and analysed, with key quotations, a performer idea and a designer idea for each, and a note of which scenes have already been set.
That makes it easy to spot the never-set climax (Scenes 28–35).
Every Equus extract from 2016 to 2025 in one table, alongside what the examiners’ reports actually say about Equus answers.
The mark scheme in plain English: the 12/6 split, the caps, and a Level 4 to Level 5 checklist that students can use for self-assessment.
Context that feeds into practical choices, not history lessons: Shaffer, the real crime, 1970s psychiatry, religion and Greek myth.
Performer and designer toolkits, including Shaffer’s own notes on the horses, the set and the Equus Noise, and guidance on staging the nudity and the blinding sensitively.
12 practice question pairs with starting points: ready-made timed tasks, homework or cover work.
Sentence starters, writing frames, a 70-line quotation bank, a six-week revision plan and a 250-term glossary.

How teachers use it

As a class revision text alongside the play
For independent study and homework
For mock and exam preparation, using the model answers as examples
As support for non-specialists or new staff teaching Equus for the first time

It’s written in clear, student-friendly language, with key terms explained as they come up, so it works for your whole class, not just the strongest students.

Also available in paperback on Amazon (search “Equus Sophie Winby”), so students and parents can buy their own copy.