{"id":171,"date":"2011-03-16T14:02:11","date_gmt":"2011-03-16T12:02:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/?p=171"},"modified":"2011-03-16T14:02:11","modified_gmt":"2011-03-16T12:02:11","slug":"blast-me-if-you-want-but-i-dont-understand-sarah-kane","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/2011\/03\/16\/blast-me-if-you-want-but-i-dont-understand-sarah-kane\/","title":{"rendered":"BLAST ME IF YOU WANT (BUT I DON\u2019T UNDERSTAND SARAH KANE…)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\tYesterday four students offered us Scene 1 and Scene 2 of Sarah Kane\u2019s Blasted<\/em>, with a courage and enthusiasm far beyond my expectations. Josep and Helena, Julia and Isabella played Ian and Cate, with Julia doubling as the Soldier. To begin with, in Scene 1 we had a young couple (happy, I assume!) playing the alienated couple in the play, which added a strange tension \u2013the class started giggling but grew silent as the scene progressed and jaded Ian\u2019s aggressiveness towards naive Cate was made visible. In Scene 2, the necessary cross-gendering (there are so few men in class…) made it quite clear that Ian\u2019s power over Cate and the Soldier\u2019s over him can be disconnected from their gender. In the end, we agreed, despite common sense feminist belief, what matters more is who becomes a victim and who holds power, regardless of gender.<\/p>\n

If you\u2019re familiar with Blasted<\/em>, you know that it has plenty of sex and violence (the worst physical violence erupts in Scene 3, in which the Soldier rapes Ian and swallows his eyes… later Ian eats a baby who dies on stage). Logically, the taboos operating in the classroom are much more restrictive than the taboos at work on the professional stage. The students decided to leave Kane\u2019s directions regarding touching and hurting to a narrator, a wise decision which didn\u2019t really detract from the impression of cruelty Kane wanted to generate. We wondered at how actors manage to play scenes like Kane\u2019s and what kind of psychological make up they need not to be affected by all this…<\/p>\n

\tEnsuing class discussion was short but very lively with three main reactions: downright dislike of the play (\u201cWe don\u2019t have to like every play, do we?\u201d), a staunch defence of its moral message (\u201cEveryone is a victim, and anyone can be\u201d) and, third, denial that the play means much (\u201cThis has no message, it\u2019s just written for shocks\u201d). The student who disliked the play claimed that it was actually quite easy to write something like Blasted<\/em> but far more difficult to write something with substance (as an example, she quoted Daniel MacIvor\u2019s In on it<\/em>). I myself think that Blasted<\/em> belongs to the particular 1990s moment that Aleks Sierz portrays so beautifully in his very personal essay In-yer-face Theatre<\/em> (2001, see http:\/\/www.inyerface-theatre.com\/main.html<\/a>). I am not claiming Kane’s play is dated, proof of this was that it worked well in the classroom. My impression is, rather, than in-yer-face theatre is a bit childish, the adult equivalent of the young child shocking the adults by using swearwords. That was part of the mood of the 1990s: Tarantino is a main referent and so is Trainspotting<\/em>. <\/p>\n

18 years after the scandal raised by Blasted<\/em> the shock value of in-yer-face theatre has somehow faded, maybe the pendulum is swinging. We all agreed that if Blasted<\/em> were stage in Barcelona we\u2019d see it \u2013though more out of intellectual curiosity than for pleasure, intellectual or otherwise. Here is a Catch 22 situation, for if I claim that I don\u2019t enjoy plays like Blasted<\/em>, I\u2019ll sound conservative and if I claim that I enjoy them I may sound too fond of gratuitous violence… Blast me if you know how to solve this dilemma!! <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yesterday four students offered us Scene 1 and Scene 2 of Sarah Kane\u2019s Blasted, with a courage and enthusiasm far beyond my expectations. Josep and Helena, Julia and Isabella played Ian and Cate, with Julia doubling as the Soldier. To begin with, in Scene 1 we had a young couple (happy, I assume!) playing the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":98,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-171","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-theatre"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/171","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/98"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=171"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/171\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=171"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=171"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=171"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}