Product Description

When Blasted was first produced at the Royal Court in 1995 it was hailed jointly as a masterpiece and a 'disgusting piece of filth' (Daily Mail). Subsequently that play, and the others that followed, have been produced all over the world. This anthology includes Kane's never-before-published Channel 4 screenplay, Skin."Kane wrote simply and starkly about the world she saw around her...a mature and vividly theatrical response to the pain of living." Guardian

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #3625 in Books
• Published on: 2001-05-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 230 pages

Customer Reviews

Her voice will go on
At last, all the plays of the most brilliantly original, talented and thought-provoking playwright to emerge in the last decade are collected together. While Sarah Kane didn't start the new wave of 'in-yer-face' theatre she certainly pushed back the boundaries and paved the way for Mark Ravenhill, Rebecca Prichard, Joanna Laurens et al.

Confronting war, abuse of all kinds, extreme boredom, hypocrisy, clinical depression, obsessive love, lost love, Sarah's brilliance lies in using her own emotional catharsis to create radical, stunning plays. Who else would set a love story in an ethnic cleansing camp?

She was, famously, not afraid to show the full horrors of extreme violence by depicting it on stage - as she herself said, "If you are saying you can't represent something on stage, you are denying its existence, and that's an extremely ignorant thing to do" - but it would be a shame if this were allowed to obscure her capacity for mordant black humour, and for the most beautiful poetry. For the finest example of the latter, read the play Crave. Written by her to get over a broken affair, she there achieved a stated ambition of hers, "to create something beautiful out of despair."

Sarah sings with compassion for the desperate, the lonely and the abused, while socking home points as topical as tomorrow's news. Her tragic death at 28 deprived us not only of a very lovely lady but of many more wonderful plays, but her voice will go on. Her own work will be performed for centuries and new writers influenced by her are already emerging.

In the words of the poet, "What is rare is the courage to follow talent to the dark place where it leads." Sarah had that courage.

Thank you, Sarah. You will never be forgotten.

Gripping!
I got this book by complete chance. A friend of mine wanted to buy me a book for christmas and i was drawn to this selection of plays. I am an avid theatre goer and reader but had never heard of Sarah Kane so it was a bit of a chance buy. What a book. I could not put it down from start to finish. I stayed up all night reading it as it was absolutely gripping. It is supremely dark but written with intelligence and thought. It is an abstract representation on her own view of life and i believe that it is truly brilliant work. What a shame that the world has lost a writer such as Sarah Kane.

More human than human
The plays of Sarah Kane have not only influenced the whole of theatre in the years to come, but also have had a deeply personal effect on many peoples lives, mine for instance. Never before have I witnessed so much raw power in a work. The world is a not a happy place, but there is hope.