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1 an Exploration of Sarah Kane's Plays Through A AN EXPLORATION OF SARAH KANE’S PLAYS THROUGH A FOURTH-WAVE FEMINIST LENS Thesis submitted in partial requirements for the degree MASTER OF ARTS IN THEATRE STUDIES at the UNIVERSITEIT VAN AMSTERDAM July 2018 Supervisor: Sruti Bala Second reader: Laurens de Vos 1 Table of Contents Introduction: Sarah Kane and Her Works In Context ................................................................ 2 Kane and (Post-)Feminism ........................................................................................................ 7 Blasted...................................................................................................................................... 15 Cleansed ................................................................................................................................... 30 Phaedra’s Love......................................................................................................................... 44 Conclusion ............................................................................................................................... 59 Bibliography ............................................................................................................................ 61 Introduction: Sarah Kane and Her Works In Context “There isn’t anything you can’t represent on stage. If you are saying that you can’t represent something, you are saying you can’t talk about it, you are denying its existence. My 2 responsibility is to the truth, however difficult that truth happens to be.” – Sarah Kane in ‘A very angry young woman’1 Sarah Kane was born in 1971 and grew up in Kelvedon Hatch, a small village in Essex, England. She studied theatre at Bristol University and graduated with First Class Honours in 1992. From there, she decided to do a Masters in Playwriting at Birmingham University but she dropped out before completion. It was here whilst aged 23 that she began her first draft of Blasted, her first play, and after its first performance, she secured her agent, Mel Kenyon. Because of her young age, she had a large student following. While at university, her early works included a piece called ‘Comic Monologue,’ which was about a woman who was sexually assaulted by her boyfriend. Ken Urban comments that “this man, like many of Kane’s male characters, was both violent and kind to his victim.”2 Here an early pattern of Kane’s writing style can be detected, with her often writing characters who confuse the binary between victim and perpetrator. She also wrote ‘What She Said’, based on the title of a The Smiths song, which is about a bisexual woman torn between two lovers, and ‘Starved’, a monologue about a woman suffering from bulimia. All three of these monologues were presented at an event called ‘Sick’ at New End Theatre, Hampstead. Kane was influenced by many playwrights and other dramatical figureheads, such as Antonin Artaud and Samuel Beckett. Kane’s only and final body of work consisted of five stage plays (Blasted, Cleansed, Phaedra’s Love, Crave and 4.48 Psychosis) and one film script (Skin), all of which can be found compiled in Sarah Kane: Complete Plays. All of these texts were written over less than a four-year period. Despite her small repertoire before her untimely death in 1999, her agent insisted that the works were complete. 1 Clare Bayley, “A Very Angry Young Woman,” The Independent, January 23, 1995. 2 Ken Urban, “Sarah Kane,” in Methuen Drama Guide to Contemporary British Playwrights, 2011. 305. 3 In-Yer-Face Theatre Sarah Kane is one of the most stand-out playwrights often included in the category of in-yer- face theatre, along with Mark Ravenhill (Shopping and Fucking) and Jez Butterworth (Mojo). She is also one of few, if the only, females renowned in this style of theatre. To understand in-yer-face theatre and Kane’s place within it, we must first draw upon its definition. Also referred to as ‘New Brutalism’, it “is marked by the rejection of the norms of the contemporary British stage in terms of language and form while embracing explicit sexual and violent content.”3 Elaine Aston discusses Aleks Sierz’s breakdown of in-yer-face theatre and concludes it as: “an intense, confrontational, emotional roller-coaster ride of extreme experiences; as an aesthetic experience that favors more visceral, immediate ways of ‘waking up the audience,’ rather than rehearsing a politically explicit wake-up call for less oppressive, more democratically organized futures.”4 In-yer-face theatre is defined by its outlandish nature, often with graphic depictions, and its playwrights and texts hailing from the United Kingdom during the 1990s. It occurred alongside the reign of ‘Cool Britannia’, which Ken Urban refers to as “when Tony Blair’s New Labour Party rebranded London as the global capital of coolness, and when the British advertising industry heralded the return of Swinging London.”5 Despite sounding positive, the 1990s was known as a time of depression for masses of people who were not profiting 3 Hallie Rebecca Marshall, “Saxon Violence and Social Decay in Sarah Kane’s Phaedra’s Love and Tony Harrison’s Prometheus,” Helios 38, no. 2 (2011): 165–79. 4 Elaine Aston, “Feeling the Loss of Feminism: Sarah Kane’s Blasted and an Experiential Genealogy of Contemporary Women’s Playwriting,” Theatre Journal 62, no. 4 (2010): 575–91. 5 Ken Urban, Rebecca D’Monte, and Graham Saunders, “Cruel Britannia,” in Cool Britannia? British Political Drama in the 1990s (Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), 39. 4 from the capitalistic push by its reigning politicians. A name coined by Urban himself, ‘Cruel Britannia’ refers to “a youth-based counter-politics to the cynicism and opportunism of Cool Britannia.”6 Urban suggests that Kane was part of this generation who used cruelty in her writing to raise political awareness and create commentary on the current affairs of her country at the time. He says that she “use[s] cruelty as a means of both reflecting and challenging the despair of contemporary urban life, shaped by global capitalism and cultural uniformity.”7 This worked out favourably, bringing Kane her literary success, albeit mostly after her death. But after all, “the defining feature of 1990s drama is its cruelty.”8 Sierz explains that in-yer face theatre “describes not just the content of a play but the relationship between the writer and the public, or (more accurately) the relationship between the stage and the audience.”9 The ‘in-yer-face’ refers to the content and onstage action interacting with its audience. Its theatre is unabashed, often violent or sexual. Sierz goes on to explain further the name of ‘in-yer-face’. He states it’s strongly suggestive of “what is particular about the experience of watching extreme theatre – the feeling that your personal space is threatened. It gives a sense of that violation of intimacy that some forms of extreme drama produce in the audience.”10 Whilst watching in-yer-face theatre, the aim of the playwrights or directors may be to induce visceral reactions from its audience members. Some characteristics that may be considered integral for a piece of theatre to be called ‘in- yer-face’ include the use of “a stage language that emphasizes rawness, intensity and swearing, stage images that show acute pain or comfortless vulnerability”11 and so forth. Or simply put: “When theatre makes you squirm inside with its depiction of emotionally fraught 6 Ibid, 39. 7 Ibid, 39. 8 Ibid, 43. 9 Aleks Sierz, Rebecca D’Monte, and Graham Saunders, “The Politics of In-Yer-Face Theatre,” in Cool Britannia? British Political Drama in the 1990s (Palgrave Macmillan, 2007). 10 Ibid, 24-25. 11 Ibid, 30. 5 relationships and extremes states of mind, then its justifiably named ‘in-yer-face’.”12 For these reasons, it is clear to see how Sarah Kane’s work is included in this category. Kane and I Although Sarah Kane’s work was written in the 1990’s, her legacy lives on posthumously. I was unfortunately too young to have been able to experience any of the premieres, though I would have particularly enjoyed seeing her directorial take on her own text of Phaedra’s Love. My interest in Sarah Kane’s work began in 2011 when I was undergoing my GCSE’s in Wales. I was studying GCSE Drama and it was one of my favourite subjects; little did I know it would become what I would study later in life. I had already received an A* in the devised piece and was determined to receive the same grade in the scripted piece. My teacher, Miss. Thomas, saw potential in myself and two similarly-minded fellow students and was enthralled when we expressed the desire for challenging material. She gave us 4.48 Psychosis to read through and warned us of its disturbing content. Within the first two pages, I was in awe. I’d be trapped in the idea that all plays must be written as dialogue, with set characters and stage directions provided. Kane opened up a new world of possibilities for me. As a performer, I was excited by all the different ways I could perform it – as a single monologue, split up into various characters or in more abstract ways, such as voices heard through audio recordings. Not only did the form excite me, but so did the content. As a teenage girl going through personal difficulties, Kane’s stories of painful depression resonated with me. Sadly, my own issues were to get worse before they got better, but I took note of the sub-textual warning of things to come. Luckily, I was able to get along better with medication than Kane was, and it has helped me tremendously. I still read 4.48 Psychosis with a strange sense of 12 Ibid, 30. 6 nostalgia and relatability, of times that were not so bright. But more importantly, I see it as the first play that truly lit a fire within me, making me eager to perform, write and direct. The next play of Kane’s I encountered was Blasted, in the second year of my undergraduate degree at Aberystwyth University. The play was featured in a module called ‘Contemporary British and Irish Drama’ and I chose it partially due to my interest in Sarah Kane’s work.
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