1 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
2
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
3
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.
4 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
5 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.
6 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
7 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. I read it, studied it and wrote notes about it, finding that the intrigue in how Kane’s mind worked had only continued to deepen. But now, I was more concerned with the feminist subtext contained within her work and this is something I began to consider. This has undoubtedly developed into a true curiosity of mine and led to the choice of topic for this thesis, which I hope explores most of what I have been contemplating.
Kane and (Post-)Feminism
Many critics have taken to reviewing Kane’s work through a feminist lens, notwithstanding the fact that Kane did not explicitly use the label of feminist for herself. She stated that she doesn’t “see the world being divided up into men and women.”13 She also rejects the label of
‘woman writer’ and states that she avoids an “over-emphasis on sexual politics” as she believes they are a “diversion from our problem [as] class, race, and gender divisions are symptomatic of societies based on violence or the threat of violence, not the cause.”14 These beliefs are made particularly explicit in her play Blasted. I would argue that Kane had a reluctance to be confined to the category of feminist playwrights but was also arguably ignorant of the true definition of ‘feminism’. By that, I mean a misunderstanding of the feminist movement due to the cloud of misinformation and conspiracy that surrounds it.
13 Sarah Kane cit. in Heidi Stephenson and Natasha Langridge, Rage & Reason: Women Playwrights on
Playwriting (Methuen, 1997).
8 However, her position can still be considered a specific feminist position. To begin with, I aim to clarify any misconceptions about contemporary feminism, specifically fourth-wave feminism. I will do this by giving a brief overview of the main movements of feminism since its origin, also known as ‘waves’. Then I will engage a reading of Kane’s work in relation to the issues and debates of what is now sometimes come to be known as fourth-wave feminism. My research question specifically is interested in how the written works of Sarah Kane can be analysed through the use of a fourth-wave feminist framework.
The Waves of Feminism
In terms of feminism, I will be looking at the UK specifically as this is where Sarah Kane is from. The history of feminism is often described in terms of ‘waves’, referring to historical highlights or culminating points.15 Each wave was a reaction to the worldly goings-on at the time and developed from the ideas and concerns of the waves preceding it.
There are some limitations to use of ‘wave’ as a metaphor. Emily Hoeflinger warns that the “wave rhetoric evokes notions of generational or familial feminist tensions, and the exclusion or ignorance of certain feminist groups within feminism’s historical framework.”16 Linda
Nicholson goes further, saying that referring to ‘waves’ is no longer “useful” for the feminist movement.17 She states that using the metaphor of waves groups together and therefore reduces many simultaneous movements within feminism, and it suggests that all of them are united on issues.
15 Nancy A. Hewitt, “Feminist Frequencies: Regenerating the Wave Metaphor,” Feminist Studies 38, no. 3
(2012): 658–80.
16 Emily Hoeflinger, “Talking Waves: Structures of Feminist Moments and the Potential of a Wave Economy,”
Third Space 8, no. 1 (2008).
9 Starting with the first-wave of suffragettes, their focus was to gain the right for women to vote. They aimed for women to gain political power, also in receiving rights to property. With the second-wave, the focus was on a movement for sexual liberation for women. Nicola Rivers states in her essay Postfeminism(s) and Announcing the Arrival of Fourth-Wave
Feminism that “the second wave of feminism is associated with taking place approximately
between the 1960s and 1990s.”18 Many second-wave feminists were also involved in other
political movements, for example the civil rights movement which occurred in the US in reaction to the treatment of its black citizens. In the 1990s, the ‘third wave’ of feminism was concerned with queer theory and furthering the idea that sex and gender exist outside of a binary. The third-wave therefore coincided with Kane’s period of writing her five plays featured in Complete Plays. This wave continued the work of its predecessors, aiming to stop violence against women and so on.
However, Elaine Aston argues that feminism became stale and no longer appealed to young women. She put this down to several reasons including: “the demise of feminism as a political movement; feminism’s self-reflexive critiques of its failure to recognize difference in the category of ‘women’; the sociocultural backlash against feminism; and widely
circulating ideas of postfeminism that unhelpfully foster an erroneous belief that feminism is redundant and over.”19 She believed that in order for feminism to not die along with the
generation, something needed to change in order to keep it relevant.
Fourth-Wave Feminism
18 Nicola Rivers, “Postfeminism(s) and the Arrival of the Fourth Wave: Turning Tides,” Postfeminism(s) and the
Arrival of the Fourth Wave: Turning Tides, 2017, 1–162, doi:10.1007/978-3-319-59812-3: 22.
19 Elaine Aston, “Feeling the Loss of Feminism: Sarah Kane's Blasted and an Experiential Genealogy of
10 The fourth-wave, which started in the 2000’s, brought feminism into the 21st century.20
Rivers notes that whilst some propose fourth-wave feminism began as late as 2014, “Jennifer Baumgardner was writing about the fourth wave of feminism in 201121 and actually dates its arrival as early as 2008.”22 Ann Kaplan suggests that the fourth-wave could have been
propelled into action following 9/11, which created new concerns surrounding gender, race and class.23 For example, it brought to light issues of capitalism and neo-liberalism, which are
often depicted as enemies of feminism along with the patriarchy. In her interview with renowned fourth-wave feminist, Decca Aitkenhead argues that fourth-wave feminism is “already being discussed as a rejection of the third and the notion of feminism as being reassuringly in the past or even hindering women today.”24 In this way, fourth-wave
feminism was born out of a requirement to renew feminism to appeal to and fulfil the needs of the new generation. It aims to be inclusive of all races, classes, genders and sexualities. Fourth-wave feminism can be defined by its involvement with social media, which helps young women who are privileged enough to have access to the internet relate to and engage with issues. For example, the use of ‘hashtag activism’ like #metoo, which helped
demonstrate the scope of the problem of sexual harassment.25 With many celebrities coming
forward with their stories, over 500,000 tweets containing the hashtag have been recorded, confirming and bringing to the social media sphere what has been widely recognised in feminist scholarship for decades as a massive problem. Laura Bates is the creator of the
20 Ealasaid Munro, “Feminism: A Fourth Wave?,” Political Insight 4, no. 2 (2013): 22–25,
doi:10.1111/2041-9066.12021.
21 Jennifer Baumgardner, F’em! Goo Goo Gaga and Some Thoughts on Balls (London: Seal Press, 2011). 22 Rivers, “Postfeminism(s) and the Arrival of the Fourth Wave: Turning Tides.”: 22.
23 E Ann Kaplan, “Feminist Futures: Trauma, the Post-9/11 World and a Fourth Feminism?,” Journal of
International Women’s Studies 4, no. 2 (2003): 46–59, http://vc.bridgew.edu/jiws/vol4/iss2/5.
24 Decca Aitkenhead, “Laura Bates Interview: ‘Two Years Ago, I Didn’t Know What Feminism Was’” (The
Guardian, 2014), https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jan/24/laura-bates-interview-everyday-sexism.
25 Nadia Khomami, “#MeToo: How a Hashtag Became a Rallying Cry against Sexual Harassment,” The Guardian,
2017, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/oct/20/women-worldwide-use-hashtag-metoo-against-sexual-harassment.
11 Everyday Sexism Project, which began as a means of recording instances of ‘everyday
sexism’ – or the experiences of women on a day-to-day basis. In her interview with
Aitkenhead, she states: “’two years ago, I didn’t know what feminism meant.’”26 This is an
important distinction from self-proclaimed feminists who identify with earlier waves, who may have more of an academic knowledge and understanding of the movement. Interestingly, Rivers notes that the Everyday Sexism Project “could be seen as a return to the kind of
collective identity politics that characterized much of the second wave.”27 So in a way, the
fourth-wave has taken elements of the previous waves of feminism and aimed to make it relevant to today’s society. For example, it still concerns itself with the queer theories of third-wave feminism and takes the sexual liberation movement of the second-wave into new heights with ‘sex-positivity’, or a rejection of ‘slut-shaming’.
Consent has been a massive concern of fourth-wave feminism, with the concept being filled with grey areas; silence, being drunk and being coerced are still considered by some to be consent to a sexual activity. The US Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network (RAINN) found that “1 out of every 6 American women has been a victim of an attempted or completed rape within her lifetime” 28 and yet when taken to court “out of every 1000 rapes, 994 perpetrators
will walk free.”29 Then those few who do serve jailtime may only have short sentences, such
as Brock Turner, a man who raped an unconscious woman. He only served three months in custody. Even so, prison terms can not be equated with true long-term justice. Questions like ‘what were you wearing?’ following an assault bring the blame onto the victim instead of the perpetrator. This is referred to as ‘victim-blaming’. Similarly, the controversial term
26 Aitkenhead, “Laura Bates Interview: ‘Two Years Ago, I Didn’t Know What Feminism Was.’” 27 Rivers, “Postfeminism(s) and the Arrival of the Fourth Wave: Turning Tides.”: 24.
28 RAINN.org, “The Criminal Justice System: Statistics,” RAINN, 2015,
https://www.rainn.org/statistics/criminal-justice-system.
29 RAINN.org, “Victims Of Sexual Violence: Statistics,” RAINN, 2015,
12 shaming’ can be used when discussing the judgement of women’s behaviour that is deemed promiscuous and therefore uncouth.
Fourth-wave feminism, like its previous waves, is also concerned with the wage gap30 as well
as the lack of representation of women and people of colour in careers, such as in the science, technology, engineering and medicine (STEM) fields. These concerns were also present in the earlier waves and presents an ongoing common argument that they all share. A survey of the US workforce found that while “women filled 47 percent of all U.S. jobs in 2015”, they “held only 24 percent of STEM jobs.”31 Furthermore, reproductive rights are still being
argued – in Ireland, many women make the journey across to the UK to have abortions. Many people picket outside abortion clinics, shaming the women who visit them with grotesque and often inaccurate pictures of ‘aborted fetuses’ and religious manipulative language. In many US states, women are required to receive counselling or an ultrasound prior to being
permitted an abortion, in "a veiled attempt to personify the fetus and dissuade a woman from obtaining an abortion."32
Fourth-wave feminism has also taken on a new realm of public interest as many celebrities are self-proclaimed feminists, including popular singers Beyoncé and Taylor Swift. This kind of attention in the media is unique to the wave, providing feminism with a popularity in the Western world that it has never experienced as a political movement. However, there is a limitation to viewing this in a positive light as the celebrity attention can be defined as an “individualized, neoliberal, and capitalist vision of ‘success.’”33 This means that whilst
attention from popular celebrities may appear positive, the privileges they hold can limit their
30 Lora Jones, “What Is the Gender Pay Gap?,” BBC, 2018, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-42918951. 31 Ryan Noonan and Office of the Chief Economist, “Women in STEM: 2017 Update,” 2017,
https://www.esa.gov/reports/women-stem-2017-update.
32 Meghan Keneally, “Where US Abortion Laws Stand 45 Years after Roe v. Wade,” ABC, 2018,
http://abcnews.go.com/US/us-abortion-laws-stand-45-years-roe-wade/story?id=52462955.
13 insight into feminist issues. Furthermore, the industry in which they are part of is stepped in sexism; Rivers argues that “access to this success in the male dominated environment of the music industry is still dependent on presenting a youthful and highly sexualized image of femininity.”34 Therefore, it can be argued that these celebrities are not truly feminist without
speaking out against the issues in the environment they find themselves in.
Post-Feminism
As defined by Rivers, postfeminism “shifted the responsibility for women’s success from the collective to the individual … this in turn allowed for the easy slippage between
postfeminism as a time after feminism, and postfeminism as a backlash against the
movement.”35 This matches Kane’s disapproval of the term ‘woman writer’, as she preferred
to focus on her own individual merits and avoid being grouped together with other female writers.
Ann Brooks explores the concept of postfeminism in her book Postfeminisms: Feminism,
Cultural Theory and Cultural Forms. She argues that “the term is now understood as a useful
conceptual frame of reference encompassing the intersection of feminism with a number of other anti-foundationalist movements including postmodernism, structuralism and post-colonialism.”36 I believe that post-feminism extends further than a conceptual
“anti-foundationalist movement” since people have co-opted the term to describe a feeling that feminism is no longer applicable to their lives. Post-feminists believe that this goal has been achieved and therefore feminism is now redundant. Kane stated in an interview: “I have no
34 Ibid: 25. 35 Ibid: 20.
14 responsibility as a woman writer because I don’t believe there’s such a thing.”37 I would
argue that although Kane rejected the notion of being seen as a representative of women, this was likely due to her aversion to being categorized as that and only that. Elaine Aston noted that Kane “did not wish to be seen as a representative of a ‘biological or social group’.”38 She
wanted her work to be viewed by all with an open mind, not with the bias that often comes when reading a play you know to be feminist in nature and purpose. “Kane is representative of the 1990s ‘woman’ playwright who is genealogically connected to feminist theatre histories, but is generationally divorced from an “old” style of feminist attachment.”39
I believe there is not enough evidence to conclude that Kane could be considered a post-feminist. She is no longer alive to confirm or deny such a label and we cannot judge from the few comments she made about feminism. In spite of this, I think it is definitely possible to consider Kane’s work through a feminist perspective, regardless of her intentions or beliefs.
Kane and Feminism
I argue that Kane’s work can be analysed through a fourth-wave feminist critical lens as the issues her work addresses are still wholly relevant, if not more so than the time of their writing. I believe this is important due to the renewed interest in feminism and the everyday sexisms that still occur. Though the media may play a role in highlighting the frequency of these acts, I feel these issues are becoming more of a problem than ever. In particular, Kane addresses the issues of violence (specifically perpetuated by men, often towards women),
37 Sarah Kane cit. in Heidi Stephenson and Natasha Langridge, Rage & Reason: Women Playwrights on
Playwriting (Methuen, 1997): 134.
38 Elaine Aston and Janelle Reinelt, “A Century in View: From Suffrage to the 1990s,” in The Cambridge
Companion to Modern British Women Playwrights (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 1–20.
39 Aston, “Feeling the Loss of Feminism: Sarah Kane’s Blasted and an Experiential Genealogy of Contemporary
15 mental health and sexuality. To understand how these issues are explored, I will be using fourth-wave feminist theorists to situate Kane’s work. The methodology I will be using is a text analysis of Sarah Kane’s plays, alongside the use of secondary sources such as journal articles or books on Kane’s work. I will also be examining staged performances to support my arguments and analyse interpretations of Kane’s works in terms of performativity. This is important as without the addition of live performance, we are at risk of attempting to judge the playwright’s intentions through the text, which is simply not possible. Through
performance, we can, however, bring to life the text which may in turn reveal subtexts included with or without the playwright’s knowledge. Furthermore, we can apply our own directorial influence onto the play in order to shape the text in whatever way we like.
Blasted
It was Sarah Kane’s ultimate belief that society has a “human need for violence.”40 She felt that violence was an integral part of society, making it “the most urgent thing we need to confront.”41 This line of thought shaped her works to feature the theme of violence as well
exploring the blurred lines between victim and perpetrator. She rejected following the usual route of writing gender as dictating the roles of characters in acts of violence. Instead, she stated: “I don’t think of the world as being divided up into men and women, victims and perpetrators.”42 Therefore, her play Blasted plays around with the confused perceptions
between the categories, bringing into question the role of men as both perpetrators and victims. In an interview about the play and its process, she said: “I tried to draw on lots of
40 Sarah Kane cit. in Graham Saunders, “Love Me Or Kill Me”: Sarah Kane and the Theatre of Extremes
(Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2002) 27.
41 Sarah Kane cit. in Graham Saunders, About Kane: The Playwright and The Work (London: Faber & Faber,
2009) 101.
42 Sarah Kane cit. in Heidi Stephenson and Natasha Langridge, Rage & Reason: Women Playwrights on
16 different theatrical traditions. War is confused and illogical, therefore it is wrong to use a form that is predictable. Acts of violence simply happen in life, they don’t have a dramatic build-up, and they are horrible. That’s how it is in the play.”43 In Blasted, the acts of rape and violence occur matter-of-factly, presenting them as things that “simply happen” in both the context of the domestic and more broadly, international sphere.
Blasted
Blasted is one of five written plays by Sarah Kane, first performed in 1995 at the Royal Court Theatre. It features Cate, a young emotionally vulnerable woman, and her previous partner Ian, an older tabloid journalist who is sexist and racist. The pair meet up in a hotel room, seemingly based in Leeds, and the play begins with dialogue between them. Ian openly brags about his misogyny and racism then attempts to seduce Cate but is unsuccessful. Cate suffers from fits where she loses conscious thought, instead erupting into unstoppable laughter. Ian takes advantage of these moments throughout the play and sexually assaults her while she is incapacitated. Then the realism of the play is shattered as a soldier arrives at the door and the set is literally ‘blasted’ into pieces. Cate escapes through the window of the bathroom as now vulnerable Ian comes face-to-face with the intimidating Soldier, who then proceeds to anally rape him. The Soldier talks about the atrocities of war he has both watched and participated in, including the rape and murder of his girlfriend Col, and then commits suicide. Ian is left alone and blind, after having his eyeballs sucked out by the Soldier during the sexual assault. Cate returns, with a baby in hand, and describes the war that is now ongoing outside of the room. The baby dies and she buries it, before leaving again. Ian is alone again and
demonstrates his pathetic vulnerability by masturbating and crying. At one point, the stage
17 directions states that he dies but he continues to talk, seemingly unable to reach death:
“Shit.”44 (60) Finally, Cate returns with food and with blood on her crotch, making it clear
that she experienced sexual violence or has exchanged sex for sustenance. She feeds Ian the food by hand and he replies with a simple, yet poignant “Thank you.” (61)
Blasted was first performed in 1995 at the Royal Court Theatre, London and was met with
harsh criticism due to its graphic nature. The newspaper critic, Jack Tinker, believed the play to be based solely on shock-value and described it as a “disgusting feast of filth”45. Kane uses graphic yet often impossible stage directions and imagery to “redefine the representation of staged violence.”46 For example, the seemingly romantic props such as a bouquet of flowers
and a large hotel bed, become a signifier for self-destruction and violence. In the case of the bouquet, the flowers are ‘ripped apart’, symbolic of the sexual assault that takes place and makes reference to the phrase ‘deflowering’ to mean the taking of a woman’s virginity. The bed is where the assault takes place, and even the mini-bar in the hotel room, which is full of alcohol Ian helps himself to thus becoming a symbol of his chronic alcoholism and health problems. His declining health become more and more apparent throughout with his continuous coughing. The associations of the images she creates are what Christopher
Wixson describes as “the unthinkable”, with depictions of “hideous acts of cruelty and human degradation not meant to be shown on a stage.”47 But these images are not without intention
simply for the sake of ‘shock value’, as her critics originally argued. Instead, her writing, according to Elaine Aston, “aims to make us see and to feel the effects of violence not as a world outside of ourselves, othered and neutralised, but as inside our lives, value systems,
44 Sarah Kane, “Blasted,” in Complete Plays (London: Bloomsbury Methuen Drama, 1995), 1–61. 45 Bayley, “A Very Angry Young Woman.”
46 Jack Tinker, “This Disgusting Feast of Filth,” Daily Mail, 1995.
47 Christopher Wixson, “‘In Better Places’: Space, Identity, and Alienation in Sarah Kane’s ‘Blasted,’”
18 choices and behaviours.”48 Where some plays aim to entertain and in turn reassure its
audience, Blasted does not. As Aston goes on, “consuming violence in the theatrical event does not afford the reassurance and the comfort that is craved to make us feel safe and certain, but discomforts and threatens.”49 However, this is necessary to affect an audience
deeply enough to create political and personal change, which I believe Kane aims to do. Instead of being concerned directly with gender issues, she believed that they are
“symptomatic of societies based on violence or the threat of violence.”50 She admitted her
intentions with Blasted were to compare the domestic rape with the sexual violence that occurs in war-ravaged areas. This is an inherently feminist viewpoint. She does this through her use of the male characters Ian and the Soldier as representatives of masculinity and violence on different scales, local and global. This also brings into question the intersections of race, class and gender. Ian’s language suggests he is part of the working-class yet
demonstrates a right-wing approach wherein he feels extremely patriotic to the point of racism. The Soldier can be said to represent those corrupted by war, forced to become killers and often killers of marginalised groups. “Her debut play, Blasted, figures the fault line between a ‘personal as political feminist past’ and a ‘personal without a feminist political present/future.’”51 While Kane may have been influenced by feminist playwrights that came
before her, she did not actively seek to create written works which represent a feminist or political viewpoint. Despite that, her work does concern itself with presentations of gender, and in particular, masculinity. Her work speaks from a strong feminist viewpoint and imagines characters who reflect a patriarchal society. Stephenson and Langridge argue that
Blasted “undoes nostalgic attachments to an old style of feminism and detaches from
48 Elaine Aston, “Reviewing the Fabric of Blasted,” in Sarah Kane in Context (Manchester: Manchester
University Press, 2010), 13–27.
49 Ibid, 19.
50 Stephenson and Langridge, Rage & Reason: Women Playwrights on Playwriting: 135. 51 Ibid, 580.
19 postfeminism’s concealment of the enduring power of a masculinist order, in the interests of feminism’s renewal.”52 Her representation of Ian and the soldier are a clear criticism of
masculinity; she highlights the toxicity of masculinity and subverts it with the ‘blast’.
Staging
Richard Wilson directed Blasted during the ‘Sarah Kane season’ at Sheffield theatres in 2015 – 20 years after its premiere at the Royal Court. Nina Kane describes the set as naturalistic, “which evoked the presence of the ‘paper-thin wall’.”53 The set design was created by James
Cotterill and it seems apparent that whilst he aimed to keep the set true to Kane’s directions, he also incorporated creative possibilities. Nina Kane describes that there were “two offstage areas within the set”54 which were hidden by Perspex sheets. “The first was revealed as a hotel corridor when the door opened, the suggestion of other rooms constructed within it in a cul-de-sac of closed doors; and a second area – the bathroom – whose entrance was technically ‘off-stage’ but whose internal dimensions were inferred as running alongside the wall of the visible stage area.”55 The set design successfully recreated Kane’s idea of an expensive hotel room, but also allowed for theatrical possibilities for the actors.
One notable change that Wilson made to the text of Blasted when directing it, was his omission of the line ‘it’s like that when I touch myself’. This line is said by Cate and its removal seems questionable. Nina Kane states, “it was problematic in denying the adult character of Cate her sexual agency.”56 I whole-heartedly agree and feel there is something to
52 Ibid, 584.
53 Nina Kane, “Breath and Light: New Directions in the Staging of Sarah Kane,” Litro, 2015,
https://www.litro.co.uk/2015/07/breath-and-light-new-directions-in-the-staging-of-sarah-kane/.
54 Ibid. 55 Ibid. 56 Ibid.
20 be said about the choice to remove this line. Female masturbation is often considered taboo; something not to be talked about aloud for worry of shame. To remove Cate’s
acknowledgement of her own sexuality is to remove her agency. This diminishes her character, leaving her to remain as a representation of vulnerability, not allowing her to develop any strength as a woman. It’s unfortunate that this line was removed in Wilson’s adaptation and it shines a light particularly on the possibility that a male director would retract a female character’s ownership of her sexuality.
The Domestic and the International
Whilst Kane was attempting to write a play, of which the original material morphed into the first act of Blasted, she turned on the TV only to learn about the atrocities occurring as the time in Eastern Europe. Kane stated that upon watching the news and seeing the suffering that was happening at the time in Bosnia, she was deeply moved. Thus, she was inspired to create a comparison between domestic sexual assault committed between two ex-lovers and rape being used as a tool in war. This led to the creation of the second act wherein the set is ‘blasted’ apart with a mortar bomb. Though she steers away from identifying the source of conflict depicted in the play, she confirmed in numerous interviews that she was inspired by the images of the Bosnian war that she was exposed to. There are no specific locations or people identified; the play “does not seek to represent incidents, but reference them.”57 While she agrees the Bosnian war influenced her writing, she doesn’t want to create an explicit representation of the politics of the incident but rather create a commentary of war and violence as a whole. In fact, the bomb that divides the more naturalistic first act from the surreal, expressionistic second act was a direct result of her decision to include the material of
21 war in the play. The bomb exploding the set could very well change the location to one of a war-zone, but it could also be argued that the place remains the same and instead, the war comes to Leeds. The vague uncertainty of the location means that the events of the play can be taken into consideration under less specific terms and applied to a variety of general situations. Furthermore, a hotel room is a familiar place, but it is not a home. It is, instead, an “environment which a species of rape familiar in domestic environments can take place.”58
This means the so-called ‘domestic’ rape is still applicable to our understanding, yet dramatically it withholds a sense of belonging for the characters for the play. A hotel room can seem “a space of profound alienation”59 which serves to isolate both Cate and Ian,
making their vulnerabilities clearer to one another as well as the audience. Additionally, a hotel room is “instantly recognisable” to an audience which in turn “places the play well within the familiar world of social realism.”60 As Ehren Fordyce states, “Kane creates
equivalence between Cate’s sexual assault and the rape camps of Yugoslavia by exploding the hotel room and the battlefield into each other.”61 Kane uses Blasted to argue that though
they differ in severity, they come from the same place – the cultural norm of violence. She states: “The logical conclusion of the attitude that produces an isolated rape in England is the rape camps in Bosnia and the logical conclusion to the way society expects men to behave is war.”62 Here she explains there is a clear connection between the patriarchal norms and
pressures, which affect both men and women, and violent acts. Kaplan’s article about the reaction to 9/11 points out the complications of race and gender, which intersect and are
58 Ken Urban, “An Ethics of Catastrophe: The Theatre of Sarah Kane,” PAJ: A Journal of Performance and Art 23,
no. 3 (2001): 36–46., 230.
59 Ward, “Rape and Rape Mythology in the Plays of Sarah Kane.”
60 Christopher Wixson, “‘In Better Places’: Space, Identity, and Alienation in Sarah Kane’s ‘Blasted,’”
Comparative Drama 39, no. 1 (2005): 75–91, doi:10.1353/cdr.2005.0003.
61 Ehren Fordyce, “The Voice of Kane,” in Sarah Kane in Context (Manchester: Manchester University Press,
2010), 103–14.
62 Kane in Ehren Fordyce, “The Voice of Kane,” in Sarah Kane in Context (Manchester: Manchester University
22 therefore both of concern to fourth-wave feminists. The acknowledgement of the current ‘Islam’ versus ‘West’ issue brings forth questions about how one’s geography could affect the type of behaviours we engage in. Many conservatives in the western world believe that Islam is an inherently violent religion and its aim is to conquer the world. In saying this, they completely disengage with the reality that America went to the Middle East to fight violence with violence Furthermore, she discusses the problem with believing that bombing other countries could ‘liberate’ its people, notably its women. Although in the 1990’s, when Blasted was written, the world was still pre-9/11 and ‘terror’ attacks likely had different meaning. However, by bringing issues like these to the forefront, it seems Kane would be proposing the same type of criticism of Western society and its politics. This still holds significance today.
Bodies and Land as Commodities
Blasted is a play which I believe is more relevant than ever due to the rise in power of the
right-wing in politics. Ian acts as a representative for the conservative Englishman who takes pride in his nation, stating he “loves this land” (40).63 However his patriotism takes on a form
of racism as he sees “foreign affairs” as a “threat to his space.”64 He says he “hate[s] this
city” as “Wogs and Pakis taking over,” (4) referring to Leeds, the city the play is set in. This character is a clear critique on location-based politics, wherein people feel a certain
allegiance and therefore place claim over a piece of land. This idea of property and ownership ties in with the treatment of women disturbingly well. As Wixson states: “Kane's play
represents a sterile and self-destructive world that understands bodies only as space for territorial aggression and defense, what Ian describes as ‘soldiers screwing each other for a
63 Urban, “An Ethics of Catastrophe: The Theatre of Sarah Kane.” 64 Kane, “Blasted.” 81.
23 patch of land’ (48) Identity is staked out on bodies and spaces.”65 These bodies can and are
often women. Women are treated in such a way that they are likened to property; they are commodities which are merely to be owned or passed on to buy and sell. In a patriarchal society, they lack agency and autonomy, and I believe Kane’s careful execution of writing about the politics of war, violence and sexual assault pass clear commentary on this fact. Ian is a representation of the right-wing politics and nationhood that still manifests in society today. Both land and bodies can and are fought over by men perpetuating the ‘masculine’ ideals of the patriarchy. This is clearly linked to the bodies of women becoming commodities, as though they too are merely objects to be conquered.
Violence Against Women
Cate’s character represents the (perceived) vulnerability of women, though she does defend herself against Ian by biting his penis when he forces it inside her mouth. She feels to blame; she “seems only too willing to assume that she is, to some degree, culpable in her own violation”66 Catherine Rees agrees that Cate is “complicit” in her own victimisation for
remaining in the room following the rape and for retaliating with aggressive behaviour, despite this seeming to be an appropriate reaction considering the circumstances. Worse still, even the playwright blames the victim she has created. Kane says in an interview: “I think Cate’s very fucking stupid. What’s she doing in that hotel room in the first place? Of course, she’s going to get raped, and it’s utterly tragic that this happens to her.”67 I would argue that
this is a kind of victim-blaming, and though it is a fictional character, it can be incredibly dangerous and perpetuates many myths that surround consent. For example, the fact that Cate
65 Wixson, “‘In Better Places’: Space, Identity, and Alienation in Sarah Kane’s ‘Blasted.’” 66 Ward, “Rape and Rape Mythology in the Plays of Sarah Kane.” 231.
24 and Ian have previously had a sexual relationship does not mean that she consents to further sexual relations this time, or any. Furthermore, Cate is a vulnerable person due to her seizures which cause her to black out. Ward adds that this “should have made her more cautious of her personal safety”68 but this still gives no reason for Ian to take advantage. Ian is also older than
Cate, furthering their unbalanced and arguably abusive dynamic. The abuse cycle is clear; Cate feels uncomfortable, threatened and unsafe when around Ian, however she remains in a “completely self-perpetuating circle of emotional and physical violence”69 due to feelings of
self-blame and guilt. This is a sadly familiar story for many women in abusive relationships. The pair represent a well-known and widely experienced dynamic between men and women in relationships, wherein the man exerts his power (physically, sexually and emotionally) over the woman in order to keep her within his control. Fourth-wave feminism places particular importance on the prevention of relationships based on an imbalance of power. Kira Cochrane, an author who affiliates herself with fourth-wave feminism, writes about this in her book which aims to raise awareness about the issues the wave deals with.70 One of these issues is domestic violence and abuse towards women, specifically in the UK.
Masculinity
Written in 1977, Robin Morgan writes in Going Too Far: The Personal Chronicle of a
Feminist that she believes that rape is the “perfected act of male sexuality in a patriarchal
culture,” and the “ultimate metaphor for domination, violence, subjugation, and
possession.”71 Through this second-wave feminist reading, we can understand that rape is not
about a man attempting to fulfil sexual pleasure, but instead it is about dominating women
68 Ward, “Rape and Rape Mythology in the Plays of Sarah Kane.”, 231.
69 Saunders, “Love Me Or Kill Me”: Sarah Kane and the Theatre of Extremes, 46.
70 Kira Cochrane, All the Rebel Women: The Rise of the Fourth Wave of Feminism (Guardian Books, 2013). 71 Robin Morgan, Going Too Far: The Personal Chronicle of a Feminist (New York: Random House, 1977).
25 through a violent act. Rape is just a means for gaining power and control over a person. Keeping this in mind, we can compare Ian’s rape of Cate to the Soldier’s rape of Ian.
Interestingly, Cate’s rape occurs offstage, which may be a subversion of norm and reaction to the desensitisation of violence towards women. Since we as a society have become used to images of violence in popular media as well as on the news, Kane appears to be
acknowledging this by refusing to depict her rape and instead leaving it implied when they wake up in bed together. This is disturbing in itself – the fact that violence towards women is so normalised in our media and everyday life that Kane thought it unnecessary to depict the scene in its entirety onstage and merely hinted towards it. Wixson proposes that Kane’s choice to omit the rape could be because “the act has been accommodated in the economy of male heterosexual desire.”72 The #metoo movement was created in reaction to this kind of event. Its title refers to the number of women who have experienced sexual assault at the hands of a man.
On the other hand, the Soldier’s rape of Ian occurs onstage which may be a deliberate subversion of the ‘expected’; a homosexual rape being perceived as uncommon or even as a joke by other men. This raises questions of what constitutes a ‘real’ rape, with ideas of sexual assault usually pertaining to a violent attack of a woman by a male stranger. However, this is typically not the case, as in reality most rapes occur by known males73 and of course,
homosexual rape is no myth. Kane’s inclusion of Ian’s rape also serves to reverse the victim-perpetrator relationships. Further to Ian’s identity as a nationalist, it is also “shaped by an aggressive relation to others, an overstated masculinity and a desire for control exacerbated by his failing health and imminent physical demise. All these values are cast into question by
72 Wixson, “‘In Better Places’: Space, Identity, and Alienation in Sarah Kane’s ‘Blasted.’”, 90. 73 RAINN, “Perpetrators of Sexual Violence: Statistics,” RAINN, 2015,
26 the Soldier’s appearance on stage”.74 While Ian takes on the abusive, misogynistic, racist,
alcoholic chauvinist throughout the first act, the Soldier’s entrance makes his masculinity look fragile in comparison. This “so-called ‘crisis of masculinity’ and the interplay of power between men and women dominate all [Kane’s] work.”75 Ian’s own masculine image is
perpetuated by his abuse of alcohol and smoking leading to his declining health which he acknowledges in the play. This also serves to “complicat[e] his cruelty with reminders of his own vulnerability.”76
We witness Cate and Ian’s relationship follow the cycle of abuse with Cate’s actions of smelling his jacket and then ripping the arms off (25-26) creating a metaphor for her feelings towards him. Ian repeats “I love you” to Cate, despite engaging in behaviour that shows the opposite – calling her brother a ‘retard’ (17), telling her she looks like a ‘lesbos’ (19) and of course the physical violence towards her. He seems entirely unaware of her discomfort and after having sex with her till she bled, he is surprised to hear that she “didn’t want to do that” (31). Alternatively, he simply doesn’t care. Either way, Cate’s feelings are deemed
unimportant compared to Ian’s sexual pleasure. When she has a fit following a
non-consensual kiss (“I don’t want to do this” (14)), Ian feels hard done by saying, “that wasn’t very fair … leaving me hanging.” (14-15) He refers to her as though she is property – “you’re more mine than his” (16) – when discussing Cate’s boyfriend, yet another reason she would not consent to sexual acts with Ian. However, it is the Soldier’s entrance that completely reverses all power exerted from Ian unto him, with the bomb’s explosion revealing his vulnerability. His first word is, “Mum?” (39) This demonstrates that despite his outwardly misogynistic outbursts, he is, in the end, vulnerable and craving the love and care of a
74 Stefani Brusberg-Kiermeier, “Cruelty, Violence, and Rituals in Sarah Kane’s Plays,” in Sarah Kane in Context
(Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2010), 80–87.
75 Ibid, 30.
27 woman, namely his mother. The Soldier talks about the atrocities of war he has experienced including the gang-rape of underage women. Ian is visibly disgusted by this (“charming” (43)) yet he cannot make the connection between this and his own non-consensual sexual experiences with Cate, arguing that the number of people involved is important. Even in the face of a gun, Ian tries to maintain face and refuses sex from the Soldier, who finds it amusing that he would “rather be shot than fucked and shot” (49). The Soldier proceeds to rape him after sharing the story of his girlfriend’s untimely death. “The re-enacted violence turns Ian into an empathetic sufferer to experience the horror Col has gone through in the war and propels him to reflect the brutal physical and mental insults he has perpetrated on
Cate.”77 He has flipped from filling the role of the perpetrator to becoming the victim, thus
encouraging him, albeit also through violence, to take into consideration the violent
experiences that he has put Cate through. However, I would argue that Ian does not reflect on the assault and Cate’s emotional state, but instead he simply feels sorry for himself. It could be argued that Ian’s reliance on Cate for food at the end and his final words of thanks show his redemption arc, but I would disagree. Instead, to me this further demonstrates that women have to serve men and provide them emotional labour, even in times of strife. For all that Ian has done to her, he does not deserve a redemption, but it seems the cycle of abuse perpetuates itself as she finds herself once again back with him. On the other hand, Kane argues that the play and its ending demonstrate the “the breakdown of human nature itself.”78
The rapes of Ian and Cate have been staged primarily as written in the play. They are to appear realistic, which is what makes them as frightening as they are. As stated before, these rapes can be comparable to real-life examples and this makes them close to home. Therefore, some directors may choose to shy away from the graphic depictions, instead alluding to
77 C E N Wei and M A Teng, “Masculinity in Crisis : A Gender Study of Blasted by Sarah Kane,” Studies in
Literature and Language 14, no. 4 (2017): 7–10, doi:10.3968/9222.
28 meanings. However, this diminishes Kane’s style of writing. She aimed to be upfront with the goings-on she wrote about, whether that be a sexual assault or a war crime. She wanted her audience to engage with the political and social contexts of the violence depicted. She did not shy away from grotesque imagery. Further to that, simply alluding to the violent acts does not highlight the feminist perspective. In order to understand how this violence occurs in the world, we must see them in their honest, brutal form. Viewing them in a graphic, full-frontal form onstage could be helpful, as it is then that we can begin to fight back.
Fighting Violence With Feminism
The women in Blasted are subjected to extreme violence at the hands of men; even at the end Cate emerges with “blood seeping from between her legs” (60) suggesting she has been victim of rape yet again to get food to survive. Though, this also raises questions about the exchange of sex for money or goods, or sex work. There is the potential that Cate made the choice to do so herself, though the blood suggests otherwise. It is dangerous to assume that sex work is an inherently negative thing but, in this circumstance, it would appear Cate’s choices are limited – eat or die – and therefore she is not truly given a choice.
Throughout the play, we are exposed to both suggested and explicit images of rape, both in the faux-domestic setting and in a confused war-like setting. The acts are “violent, cruel, and ultimately rather too familiar. It is, of course, this which makes them also so unsettling. Kane’s rapes are ordinary rapes; except that no rape is really ordinary.”79 She aims to present
the rape of Cate in a nearly domestic setting to demonstrate that rape occurs in familiar settings, often by familiar people, making them all the more disturbing. In Rethinking Rape, Ann Cahill states that rape is “a crime that epitomizes women’s oppressed status” and one of
29 “indisputable violence and loathing.”80 This confirms that a man raping a woman is not only
an act of violence, but a means of power and control. Jacqueline Rose argues that feminism needs to recognise this kind of violence and its processes in order to fight against it. She states: “feminism today cannot not talk about such crimes, whether rape as a war crime, FGM [female genital mutilation], or domestic abuse.”81 She goes on to explain that the best way to
“counter violence against women is to speak of, to stay and reckon with, the extraordinary, often painful, and mostly overlooked, range of what the human mind is capable of”, including rape.82 Kane provides us with the associative world of war and violence that we find familiar
in our own society and Rose provides us with the tools to tackle it.
Following Elaine Aston, it can be claimed that “gender concerns are very much a concern of her plays, most particularly her representation of masculinities in crisis.”83 Ian and his
abusive tactics are representative of the patriarchal structures in place and Cate is the vulnerable woman subjected to it (though that is not to say that all women are vulnerable or that women are always vulnerable). Kane’s Blasted shows a world which is unsettlingly close to that we live in now, despite its use of associative metaphors and ‘impossible’ occurrences. Ian’s character is reflective of the type of conservative man who is misogynistic and racist, and very much close to reality. Although her writing took place in the 1990’s, these types of people still exist and if anything, their voices have become more amplified given Trump’s successful campaign to become the President of the United States. The world we currently live in is not too dissimilar from that of Blasted’s – war still takes place, within which crimes like rape take place. Further to that, domestic rapes still occur with men being the main
80 Ann Cahill, Rethinking Rape (New York: Cornell University Press, 2001).
81 Jacqueline Rose, “Feminism and The Abomination of Violence,” Cultural Critique 94, no. Fall 2016 (2016): 4–
25, doi:10.5749/culturalcritique.94.2016.0004.
82 Ibid, 6.
83 Aston, “Feeling the Loss of Feminism: Sarah Kane’s Blasted and an Experiential Genealogy of Contemporary
30 perpetrators. There are problems with the pressures and expectations of the patriarchy, such as upholding masculinity. Men feel they cannot express emotion, often leading to built-up anger. Men also view women as objects, leading to the dismissal of their feelings, which is helpful when treating them poorly. All of these reasons and more prove that her work could contribute to a fourth-wave feminist viewpoint and inspire action in contemporary society.
Cleansed
Cleansed, first performed in 1998, is another violent play of Kane’s, although this time it can
be said there is a more redemptive arc. In this play, the characters are tested to see how far they will go for love. Surprisingly, love appears to succeed, with all the couples sticking by one another through torture, in the form of bodily mutilations, sexual assaults and other means of violence. Following on from her rejection of naturalistic drama in Blasted, in this next play, she has “stripped away the mechanics of explanatory narrative and presented the audience with a series of poetic images and pared dialogue.”84
The play follows the storylines of several characters who are all under the control of Tinker, the overseer of torture. There is Graham and Grace, who are siblings but are incestuously involved with one another; Carl and Rod, a homosexual couple; Robin, a young vulnerable boy; and lastly an unnamed woman, simply known as ‘Woman’, who is an exotic dancer. As Bicer points out, “scenes are not continuous, the play is not really joined, and there is no linear chronological order or a rational development.”85 The play begins with Tinker and
Graham “just inside the perimeter of a university”86 (107), the setting of the text. Tinker is
84 David Greig, “Introduction,” in Sarah Kane: Complete Plays (Bloomsbury Methuen Drama, 2001), xi-xii. 85 Ahmet Gökhan Bicer, “Sarah Kane’s Postdramatic Strategies in Blasted, Cleansed and Crave,” The Journal of
International Social Research 4, no. 17 (2001).
31 preparing heroin on a spoon and Graham insists he adds more until Tinker injects it into Graham’s eye. He overdoses and dies. In the second scene, we are introduced to Rod and Carl. They are in what seems to be a new relationship and they both attempt to determine their level of commitment. Rod is more cynical whilst Carl wants to wear Rod’s ring and insists he will always love him and never betray him. In the ‘White Room’, Tinker explains to Grace that her brother Graham has died of an overdose. She asks to see his clothes, but Tinker says they have been given to someone else. Upon her insistence, he orders Robin, a young nineteen-year-old boy, to enter the room and give the clothes he’s wearing (Graham’s) to her. He strips naked and so does Grace, putting on her brother’s old clothes. She has a breakdown and cries. Tinker lifts her onto a bed and handcuffs her to it. Then he gives her a pill and states that she is not his responsibility before leaving the room. She asks Robin to write a letter to her parents telling them that she is staying there. Robin shares his suicidal thoughts with her but states that “nobody wants to die” (115) and “nobody kills themself here” (115), suggesting that this place is safe despite the events so far telling a different story. In Scene 4, Tinker is in charge of some sort of invisible beating of Carl and he demands to know the name of his lover. Tinker’s pushes a pole up Carl’s anus until he admits he is romantically involved with Rod. When the pole is removed, Rod falls from a great height beside them. Tinker then cuts Carl’s tongue off, takes Rod’s ring from his finger and makes Carl swallow it. Grace begins to hallucinate that Graham is still alive and it is revealed that they have an incestuous relationship as they kiss passionately when he ‘returns’. They make love and daffodils sprout through the floorboards. Graham picks one up, smells it and says “lovely” (121) - a line which is repeated throughout the rest of the play. Tinker goes to the Black Room. A flap, accessed with the use of tokens, reveals a woman dancing and Tinker watches her, masturbating. They then have a short conversation where he refers to himself as a doctor and offers her help, claiming that she “shouldn’t be here” as “it’s not right” (122).
32 He calls her by the name Grace and then the flap closes. Grace tries to teach Robin to write in the Round Room, the university library. Robin tells Grace that he is in love with her, but she rejects him then Tinker humiliates him by ripping up his attempts at writing. Carl and Rod are sat just outside of the university together and Carl attempts to communicate by writing in the mud. Tinker enters and removes Carl’s hands; Rod lays with him and comforts him. Tinker returns to the Black Room where the woman is dancing. They speak briefly and she asks him to ‘save me’ (p.130) In the Red Room, Grace is being beaten by the same invisible forces as Carl was previously, however this time there are disembodied voices taunting her. She is raped by one of the Voices and hallucinates that Graham is comforting her throughout. The room is filled with the sound of automatic gunfire and both Grace and Graham are covered in blood. Suddenly, through the floor sprout many daffodils. Again, Graham picks one up and says ‘lovely’ (133). Robin buys a box of chocolates for Grace but is intercepted by Tinker who makes him eat them all until he wets himself. Grace undergoes shock therapy and becomes unresponsive until the sex change. But even then, all she can utter is the letter ‘F’. She has turned into an amalgamation of Grace and Graham; she looks and acts the same as her brother and is even referred to by Tinker as ‘Graham’.
Locations
The play is set in a university which has been turned into what seems to be some form of institution or concentration camp. Many of the rooms are referred to by colours that connotate certain meanings – The White Room as clinical and the place where the surgery and electric shock therapy occurs, The Red Room for blood and where the torture happens, and so forth. This also brings about a comparison of Strindberg’s concept of Stationendrama, in which rooms are “places of discovery and revelation for characters [and] constitute a form
33 of ongoing journey or pilgrimage.”87 For example, the Red Room provides the characters
with the most violent parts of their journey but often this is where they encounter their realisations about their true feelings towards one another. The theatrical space of Cleansed can be described as having a “continuous and enclosed ‘as-if’ world, in which the everyday is relegated to the space offstage.”88
The fence
At the time of writing this, the 2018 World Cup has begun and thus, sadly, so has an increase of reports of domestic violence. According to reports, “incidents of domestic abuse … rose by 38% when England lost. When they won or drew abuse increased by 26% compared to days when there was no England match.”89 This is no doubt due to the prevalence of alcohol
use during sports games, particularly football, but could patriarchal pressures also contribute? Football and the stadiums in which it is played are typically ‘coded’ male, in that the majority of participants and spectators are male. The pressure to win and the competitive riling up of the other supporters can lead to aggressive behaviour. As demonstrated by the statistics, when ‘their’ team lost, men would let their anger out on their wives, mothers, sisters, children. In domestic abuse cases following a football match, it can be concluded that the perpetrators are projecting their anger onto their victims and using violence to provide them with an
emotional release. Typically, in these cases, the victims are women and the perpetrators are men; they are usually related to one another by marriage or blood and share a home together.
87 Graham Saunders, “Love Me Or Kill Me”: Sarah Kane and the Theatre of Extremes (Manchester: Manchester
University Press, 2002), 94.
88 Annette Pankratz, “Neither Here nor There: Theatrical Space in Kane’s Work,” in Sarah Kane in Context
(Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2010), 153.
89 Sky News, “Police Prepare for Domestic Abuse Surge as England Start World Cup Campaign,” Sky News,
2018, https://news.sky.com/story/police-prepare-for-domestic-abuse-surge-as-england-start-world-cup-campaign-11407723.
34 In Nina Kane’s doctoral thesis, she proposes a link between the university perimeter fence in
Cleansed and the hooliganism of British football fans, taking the connection of violence one
step further. She discusses the use of ‘cages’ within football stadiums, arguing that “the fencing-in of football hooligans represented the detainment of a violent masculinity, monitored through surveillance, but allowed to exist and express itself within its 'cage’.”90
This reflects the goings-on in the university, where Tinker enacts horrific violence onto the other characters and appears to be all-knowing. Nina Kane argues that football matches also contain a feeling of institutionalisation, wherein people feel contained and controlled. Furthermore, she proposes that the fence acts as a “binary divider within an ontology of gender relations that puts men on the inside of the fence and women on the outside”91 so by
placing the action of the play, and therefore the audience, within the fence, “Kane ultimately enacts a transgressive spectacle of gender violence and intervention in Cleansed that
inherently militates for a queer reading of the work.”92 Through her presentation of violence
towards certain characters, we are able to read the work through a queer lens, and therefore a fourth-wave feminist lens.
All of the characters in Cleansed, besides Tinker, are victims of violence and they seem to share a commonality – they are all part of marginalized or misunderstood groups. This can be taken as a representation of real world examples and therefore be analysed from a feminist perspective.
Influences
90 Nina R. Kane, “‘F- f- Felt It’: Breathing Feminist, Queer and Clown Thinking into the Practice and Study of
Sarah Kane’s Cleansed and Blasted” (University of Huddersfield, 2013), http://eprints.hud.ac.uk/19287/ 261.
91 Ibid, 254. 92 Ibid, 254.
