For yesterday’s New York Times, I wrote a story called “War and Sex: Who’s Afraid of Sarah Kane?” In my career thus far, it’s one of the stories I am most excited to have written. (The one I feel most honored to have written is coming in two weeks… but more on that anon.)
Sarah Kane, for those who don’t know, was a remarkable playwright who died before she was thirty. Her estate–run by her brother Simon–and her enormous number of admirers have kept her work alive, and now New Yorkers are getting our first chance to see a production of her debut play, Blasted.
I have known this play for years, and while I initially resisted its violence, I have grown to admire it. I saw the current production on Saturday, and it does absolute justice to this difficult, valuable work of art.
(p.s. — that photo up there was taken by Simon Kane, who currently works in London as a theater photographer and has come to New York to document and advise on Blasted.)
2 responses so far ↓
1 Rachel // Oct 7, 2008 at 12:03 am
“Initially resisted its violence”?? Um, I think there was some blind denunciation involved (no pun intended). But, yes, I must say that when I saw that article yesterday (in my california-printed edition of the Gray Lady) I thought about how totally your theatrical endeavors had come full circle.
And I thought about how incredibly difficult it was to explain Sarah Kane to a mass audience in just a few hundred words, and I thought you did a super job of it. –Like when you had to explain The Cenci??!
2 Mark Blankenship // Oct 7, 2008 at 1:02 am
Ha! You’re right. I was all like, “No Sarah Kane! No!” And you were like, “Have you read the plays?” And I was like, “I don’t NEED to read them.”
Sigh. I was raised in a Republican city, remember.
Thanks for your kind words. It really means a lot that you know what a task it is to condense such vibrant, challenging work into such a tiny, gray-scaled space.
(p.s. — the video will be here eventually, I swear!)
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