First off, I'm aware I've done a run of
three weeks of playwriting tips. It's
been a little while since I've done a
performance analysis but I am going to
see two things this week so the next
couple of weeks should be taken up by
performance analysis. So, I thought I'd do
a fourth entry into my Playwriting Tips
videos this week. And, we're going to look at the
work of Sarah Kane and more specifically
her first play Blasted. Now, usually the
discussion of a play wouldn't invite any
discussion as to the life of its author,
however, I think the context today of
Sarah Kane's severe depression, which
eventually led to her death by suicide,
is unavoidable. So, consider this a bit of
a trigger warning that the discussion of
this play will necessitate talking about
war and conflict and sexual assault, so
this just bit of a heads up for that. If
you decide not to watch because of that
then I completely understand and I will
look forward to seeing you next week.
What I particularly want to avoid is any
kind of romanticizing of the tortured
artist figure. It's undoubtable that
Sarah Kane's severe depression gave her
a unique view of the world which
informed her plays. However, when
discussing such work I think it's important
not to over romanticise such things and to
acknowledge that, though some artists
have had severe mental health troubles,
it's a sad bit of context which sits
alongside the work rather than something
which I think we can glorify in making
that work possible. So, with that out of
the way, let's take a look at Blasted.
Blasted is initially a dialogue between
the characters Ian and Cate set in a
hotel described as "so expensive it could
be anywhere in the world". Ian is a
misogynistic, homophobic, racist
journalist and Cate a young woman who
he's invited into this hotel room in
order to attempt to seduce. Cate
turns down these sexual advances but,
when she suffers an epileptic fit, he
sexually assaults her. It's at this point
in which the play takes a turn for the
somewhat unexpected. The door swings
open revealing an armed soldier. He comes
into the hotel room and recounts to Ian
some of the horrific crimes which he's
both witnessed and taken part in. At which
point we learn that Cate has escaped out
of the bathroom window. With the two of
them alone in the hotel room, the soldier
proceeds to rape Ian before sucking out
his eyeballs. The soldier then takes his
own life and, as the play continues, we
essentially see it become relocated from
a cushioned Hotel room into a warzone. A
mortar bomb lands in the hotel room and
blasts a wall away, Cate returns having
saved a baby. It is, by all accounts, a
very dark, harrowing play. On its
premiere, critics were shocked by the
brazen, explicit imagery of Blasted. The
Daily Mail went as far as to describe it
as "a disgusting feast of filth". Others, I
think, have overly poeticised its
explicitness. In many ways this is a very
raw play and I think it shows many of
the signs of being a dramatist's first
work in that it shows a very exciting
disregard for established theatrical
conventions but is also somewhat muddy
in what it's trying to say. In being
quite so blunt, though, I think that Blasted
opens up an interesting conversation
as to theme and imagery within
playwriting. The aim of any writer of
fiction is to facilitate the creation of
connections in a reader or an audience's
mind. Through the subtle art of
suggestion they can suggest to us that
one thing might lead to another, or in
many cases, that one thing is like
another.
It's the subtlety that is both the key
to success and the challenge here. If we
imagine a continuum, on one end of which
sits a play which seems quite overcooked
and overdone and obvious and on the
other end seems almost incomprehensible
in its muddiness and confusion, the ideal
play will sit somewhere in the middle. We
can see this most clearly in some
allegorical works, for example Arthur
Miller's The Crucible doesn't make a
single mention of the House Committee on
un-American Activities yet, to a
contemporary audience, it was clear that
that was what it was about. The same is
true of Animal Farm. By only making these
suggestions rather than making these
connections clear on the page or on the
stage, a writer plays upon our vanity,
imploring us that it was us, the audience,
that made those connections not them. the
writer. And it's not just the case in
allegorical works, we can see in many
stage plays where two or more characters
who initially seem to have very little
in common slowly uncover that which
they share. For example the two
characters in Jack Thorne's adaptation of
Let the Right One In or the Miners and
Policemen in the musical version of
Billy Elliot. In Blasted the approach is
even more clear than this. In many ways
it is a deconstruction in the Derridean
tradition. In short, deconstruction is the
idea of taking two themes or ideas or
concept which might initially seem
either very separate or completely
opposed to one another and pointing out
the things which they have in common. The
prime example is Derrida's essay Racism's
Last Word in which he looks at the
response of many Western countries to
South Africa's apartheid regime and
points out many of the hypocrisies which
exist due to many of the structures
which enabled such a discriminatory
system being either formed or inspired
by the English or French or Spanish
colonial systems and also the Jim Crow
laws in America. In Blasted, Sarah Kane
brings together both rape as an
individual act between two people in a
luxurious, capitalist, western hotel and
rape as a weaponised act of war. At the
time of the play's writing, conflict was
raging in Bosnia.
It led to an attempted ethnic
cleansing and the rape of an estimated
between 12,000 and 20,000 people. The
international community responded with
outrage and, although they were slow to
act, sanctions were eventually followed
by the deployment of UN peacekeeping
troops. It is not a physical response
that Kane responds to in Blasted however
but a representational one. My reading of
Blasted, which is certainly just one
among many, is as a critique of the
potential of news media, both on
television and in print media, to portray
such horrific acts as were happening in
Bosnia at the time when Kane was writing
the play as happening "over there". It is
an attempt to belie the idea that such
acts are geographically limited and it
is precisely through the destruction of
geographical distance that Kane also
closes a gap in meaning. This is
something well referred to in Dan Rebellato's
article From State of the Nation
to Globalization, which I'll link to below.
By opening the play in such a luxurious
location of the hotel room, Kane suggests
a world of a play in which wealth
insulates from harm, in which such
horrific acts which will later take
place within the play would be
unthinkable. On the entrance of the
soldier, however, Kane suggests that such
horrific acts that we are used to seeing
happen "over there" can also happen "here".
First off, Kane contests the idea that
there is any difference between Ian's
rape of Cate within the closed door of a
luxurious hotel room and rape as a
weaponized act of war in Bosnia. She
belies the notion that the thread count
of the sheets might make any difference
whatsoever. She also suggests that, living
in a society where one's body can feel
constantly at threat, though a political
state of war might not exist, it is
possible to feel equally besieged.
Furthermore, there is an element of
unrefined anger in the play. Ian's crimes
toward beginning of the play do not go
unpunished, he is brutally raped and
maimed by the soldier on his entrance
and I think in this there is a cry for
retribution towards people who commit
such acts. But also the fact that in
the real world
Ian's wealth might well insulate him from
paying for those actions and so I
think there's a real disdain in the play
that, while horrific people might be able
to insulate themselves from paying for
such actions through being so rich, much
better people are stuck in situations in
Bosnia where they find themselves being
maimed as such. Many plays within the
history of playwriting have sought to
bring together seemingly distant or
opposing ideas and find out what they
have in common. Blasted is not a perfect
play, it is rough and ready in many ways
but I do think it opens up an
interesting conversation about the key
features of theme and imagery in
playwriting. However brutal and
uncompromising the images that Kane
invites upon the stage in Blasted, none
of the readings or suggestions as to
what those might mean are explicit in any
way throughout the play. Though in its
imagery it may be very blunt, Kane
invites us to find the deeper meaning
within the play therefore playing upon
our intellectual vanity and also
allowing us to feel like we've made
those connections instead of her. Thank
you very much for watching this video. As
I said at the beginning, for the next
couple of weeks I'm going to be doing
some performance analyses, I'm seeing a
couple of works towards the end of this
week. If you have enjoyed then please
do subscribe or give it a thumbs up. If there's
any playwright you'd like me to take a look at
then do leave a comment below. Thank you
very much and have a great week!