"In Better Places": Space, Identity, and Alienation in Sarah Kane's Blasted

Wixson, Christopher

doi:10.1353/cdr.2005.0003

Cited by 4 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 6 publications

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“…Embodied performances counteract removed experience by placing the audience within a multi-sensory environment that (at present) cannot be completely simulated in a definite way. Similar to the way Wixson (2005) describes the alienating effect of Sarah Kane's dystopian landscapes, immersive theatres have the potential to point towards one's own lack of physical connections. In being placed within the theatrical spectacle, the audience is able to more readily identify with the narrative because the performance happens both in and through the body.…”

Section: Dystopian Worlds In Immersive Theatresmentioning

confidence: 99%

Zombies, time machines and brains

Howson

2015

Thesis Eleven

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Critical thought on immersive theatres is gathering in pace with many arguments centred on explorations of audience/performer interaction and the unique relationship these theatres create. Within this paper I look beyond these debates in order to consider the implications of immersive theatres within contemporary culture, with the aim of furthering the ways in which immersive theatres are presently being framed and discussed. Theatre and science fiction have shared a somewhat limited relationship compared to their burgeoning usage within other forms of entertainment. This paper focuses on how the conceits of science fiction are being staged within this theatrical setting. Primary focus is given to Punchdrunk's ... and darkness descended (2011) and The Crash of the Elysium (2011Elysium ( -2012. This is considered alongside The Republic of the Imagination's (TROTI) Cerebellium (2012-14), an original narrative created for the performance which has been subsequently developed over a three-year period to date. This discussion is presented and framed through my personal experience as both a performer in Cerebellium and (later) as audience member. The particular use of dystopian narratives and alternate worlds is given consideration, with reflection on the way these works destabilize and call into question the audience's sense of self either through their ability to survive or understand their sense of self. By making evident the spectrum of practice, I endeavour to delve further into identifying and demystifying immersive theatres and their differences to conventional theatre.

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Section: Dystopian Worlds In Immersive Theatresmentioning

confidence: 99%

Zombies, time machines and brains

Howson

2015

Thesis Eleven

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Blasted's Hysteria: Rape, Realism, and the Thresholds of the Visible

Solga¹

2007

mdr

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A curious blind spot remains in the critical response to Sarah Kane's Blasted : the rape of Cate by Ian. In a play famous for its onstage violence, why is this rape, one of its pivotal moments of brutality, left unstaged? My article seeks to worry this lacuna by exploring the theoretical and historical dimensions of the ''missing'' in Kane's play. I argue that Kane's representation of Cate's rape as missing signals both her engagement with the history of rape's representation – an elusive, evasive history rather than an outrageous, in-yer-face one – as well as a deft understanding of how the ''missing'' operates as realism's menace, the ghost of what realist representations must garrison away in order to instantiate their truth-claims. I frame my reading of Kane's critique of both genre and history by exploring how Blasted charges us, as contemporary spectators of realism, to recognize the schism between knowledge and the eye, the limits of our powers of sight.

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Reopening Sarah Kane’s “Chamber of Horrors”:Blastedas Gothic Drama

Stratford¹

2019

Modern Drama

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This article seeks to reclaim the maligned term Gothic for contemporary theatre in a feminist and postcolonial context. It does so by offering a feminist, postcolonial Gothic reading of Sarah Kane’s controversial first play, Blasted (1995). Gothic hermeneutics make clear the often overlooked feminist and postcolonial critiques embedded in Blasted’s apparent inconsistencies, its bloody imagery, its hybridization of known forms and influences, its innovative slippage between mimetic and metaphorical registers, and its sensational national and global politics. The article focuses on Kane’s reinvention of four iconic Gothic conventions: the chamber, the ruin, the unspeakable narrative, and the vampire. Analysing these features, I demonstrate that the Gothic offers an illuminating approach to Kane’s work that situates her in an important genealogy, one with significant potential for feminist theatre and performance in the twenty-first century.

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"In Better Places": Space, Identity, and Alienation in Sarah Kane's Blasted

Cited by 4 publications

References 6 publications

Zombies, time machines and brains

Zombies, time machines and brains

Blasted's Hysteria: Rape, Realism, and the Thresholds of the Visible

Reopening Sarah Kane’s “Chamber of Horrors”:Blastedas Gothic Drama

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