War and Sex: Who’s Afraid of Sarah Kane?:
Though it was the first work staged in Ms. Kane’s short career — she committed suicide in 1999 at age 28, leaving only five plays behind — “Blasted” immediately established her as an important voice in modern playwriting. But the things that make the play remarkable also make it challenging to produce.
On the most obvious level, it bursts with audacious violence. Drawing parallels between sexual assault and the cruelty of war, the plot follows an older man and a younger woman as they hide from combat inside an opulent hotel room. The war then literally and figuratively invades their space, subjecting them to Jacobean-style horror. One stage direction has eyeballs being sucked out and eaten, and another has a dead infant getting buried under the floor.
1:30 PM
Dilettante Archives