meg o’connor

I was surfing Tix Bay Area on the TBA site just to see what was out there, and saw the title of a play I recognized: Blasted by Sarah Kane. I c licked on the link, read what little information there was, and bought my ticket. It didn’t matter that the ticket wasn’t cheap (though not pricey either) and it didn’t matter I knew so little about the theater company putting it on, or the hotel it was being put on in. It was a Sarah Kane play, actually being performed, so I had to go!

Blasted is a story that takes place in a hotel room in Leeds. It is about Ian, a journalist and awful human being, Cate, a simple young woman who was formerly in a relationship with Ian, and a Soldier who rips their tiny hotel-room-world apart. Ian spends the first half of the play trying to have sex with Cate, but she makes it clear she is not sharing this hotel room with him for that reason, and has to constantly push him off of her. Scene one ends and with scene two you find out Ian has raped Cate. You can see she has been forever changed by this, and her simple, child-like, attitude is now gone. Ian’s actions create a war inside the hotel room, and outside of it. A soldier bursts into the room and terrorizes Ian for three scenes, telling the intimate details of his lost love, his motivation to fight, and his torture techniques, which he later tries out on Ian (rape and sucking the eyeballs out of his sockets). Cate returns with a baby someone has thrown to her in the chaos of the war outside. The baby dies and Ian, starving, eats it and dies as well. Cate is left alone in a crumbling hotel room, in war-torn Leeds, with three dead bodies surrounding her.

An upper, huh? This production (put on by 19;29) was performed in a hotel room in the Mosser Hotel, and the eight-nine audience members are given black cloth masks to wear, and are invited to walk around the action as it happens. The ‘audience’ was warned the action may become overwhelming, and at anytime, we were welcome to leave. It felt like we were entering into something far more dangerous than just a play, which I appreciated, since Sarah Kane writes very dangerous plays. And there were some aspects of the performances that were stellar, and some that left the already abstract story more confusing than it needed to be.

What I loved:

The fact it was put on in a hotel room! And there was no designated audience section. We were the walls, the vase with the flowers in it, the seat at one point (Ian sat in the lap of an audience member). We didn’t have the added comfort of the distance from the front row to the stage- we were in Ian’s hotel room, watching terrible things happen, as if they were happening to us, and that was the most daring and effective part of the show.

The soldier blew my mind. His performance truly showed how complex a mindless killer can be. This soldier has killed so many people, but not just for his country. He is avenging the death of his lover, Col, and no matter how many people he kills, no matter how gruesome his acts are, Col can never come back, and in the end the soldier finds relief in suicide. And this actor (I don’t know the names, we received no programs) hit every note spot on. He completely committed, and carried the performance to a new level.

The playwright. I love Sarah Kane. I don’t love watching terrible things happen to people. I don’t love rape, torture, pain, suicide- but I love that this woman wrote these disturbing plays to make sure theater wasn’t this safe place for people to run to. I love a good Neil Simon comedy or a Stephen Schwartz musical, but if that was all live theater was, it would be lacking. Sarah Kane writes the impossible, and people make it happen. That inspires me to write.

What I loved-not:

It was performed by Americans. Sarah Kane writes like a Brit. She uses terms like “pet”, “love”, and “football match”. Ian and Cate should have english accents, but in the play they spoke with classic american accents, which would be fine, if they had tweaked the slang. Though, then there is an exchange between Ian and the soldier, and Ian talks about being Welsh, and when it is an American claiming he’s Welsh…well, it just doesn’t fly. Even though there were times I was inches away from Ian or Cate, the inconsistency distanced me.

And I found Ian and Cate were overpowered by the soldier. Neither of them truly committed. Some examples of non-committal: at one point Cate tries to bite off Ian’s penis. In this scene, Ian just pushes her off of him. No scream, barely any twinge of pain. Come on! A woman is biting off your penis, and you don’t scream! It happened again when the soldier sucks out his eyeballs. Someone is sucking the eyeballs out of your sockets! Really?! You got nothing!?!?! And Cate played her role a little too child-like.  Even when terrible things happened to her, she just seemed disconnected from her character, and taking the obvious acting choice. I could not imagine performing either of those roles, so I feel like the hypocritical jerk, but if you put on Sarah Kane, I think you have to respect her enough to find the people who can actually do justice to her words.

Moment of the night:

I bonded with other audience members and we all went out for dinner afterward. We spent the whole meal discussing the play (which was such a relief. After seeing a show like this, you need to talk it out.) and drinking beers. They were a delight, and it reminds me I live in an awesome city. One of the women I joined for dinner is a performance artist, and she is blogging about her experience. Check it out at      http://unstills.com/

I have begun a new play, and I am going to re-read my outline and first scene, see if I have anywhere to go, and then prepare for rehearsal tonight. (More on that later.)