#we love sarah kane's Blasted

[my-worship-to-them]

God I fucking HATE being horny for someone so OBVIOUSLY outside my league.

She’s.

God.

This shit fucking sucks

[mariocki]

Play 20: Phaedra's Love by Sarah Kane

First performed: Gate Theatre, London, 1996

Quote: "There's a thing between us, an awesome fucking thing, can you feel it? It burns. Meant to be. We were. Meant to be." (Phaedra)

Stage direction: [Opens her mouth. No sound comes out.]

Notable cast: the original Gate production included Andrew Scott in a minor role. Laurence Penry-Jones starred in a 2005 revival at the Old Vic.

Notes: Only Kane's second play, Phaedra's Love was commissioned by the Gate Theatre, who asked for a drama inspired by a classical text. Reworking Seneca's Phaedra, Kane produced a clipped, precise distillation of tragedy as narrative. A paean to self-destruction which comments on voyeurism, faith and the inadequacies of love; critical reception was muted when compared to the histrionic moralising that greeted her first play, Blasted (1995). Featuring scenes of astonishing violence and horror, contemporary readings often focus on the brutality and nihilism of Kane's dialogue - but they're missing an extraordinary tenderness which unfolds alongside it. A masterful, troubling work from one of the greatest (and most sorely missed) voices of a generation of theatre.

Read: for the first time, but definitely not the last.

[jeremyheere]

play recommendations?

idk what genre ur looking for anon, but since it’s october here’s a couple of my favorite spookier plays, bc violent and horrific theatre is my jam. cw on all of these for violence obviously and disturbing imagery. if you’re looking for some different kinda recs i can def do that too!

- hand to god by robert askins. this one is a horror-comedy & definitely easier to read than the rest on this list lol. it’s also one of my favorite plays in general. follows a young teenage boy who is forced by his mother to join this puppet club at his church, and the sock puppet he makes is possessed by the devil. i directed a scene from this for a final once and it was super fun, we used a kermit puppet.

- mercury fur by philip ridley. really i could recommend any of philip ridley’s plays, i’ve read most of them and he loves him some violent in-yer-face horror. i haven’t read one i don’t really like. mercury fur is one of my favorites, it’s an apocalypse drama that follows two brothers who host “parties” in abandoned apartments for the rich and powerful in order to stay alive. other ridley plays i love are the pitchfork disney and shiver.

- the pillowman by martin mcdonagh. popular, and another horror-comedy that’s just so brilliant and cool. it’s about a short story author called into questioning by some detectives because a string of recent murders is eerily similar to what happens in his fiction. it won some tonys

- and if you’re into violent controversial theatre like i am, literally anything by sarah kane. my favorites of her are cleansed and 4.48 psychosis. artistic, abstract, bloody, and fascinating. don’t go near cleansed or blasted if you have a weak stomach or are sensitive to abuse/torture, but damn do they make you think.

[jflashandclash]

Traitors of Olympus IV: The Fall of the Sun

Twenty: Sadie

Distracting Gods 101

             The god, Set, took a step toward us.

           I had several choice words that I wanted to share with Carter’s and my old frienemy. Unfortunately, all I could do was go “MMMM!” and feel far more sympathetic to mummies than anyone ever should feel, Egyptian or otherwise. I squirmed in my wrapping but I knew it was useless.

           “Oh, I do suppose you’d like your mouth back, wouldn’t you?” Set asked in that uncomfortable double voice. Set—or really, the boy that Set was possessing—smiled wickedly as his dark eyes shared a knowing look with Leo. “She’s such an amusing chatter.”

           I appreciated that Leo attacked Set instead of agreeing with him. I didn’t appreciate that the demigod must have forgotten everything I told him on the flight over: Leo held a hand up and blasted a stream of fire at the god of disorder and storms that could control fire.

           As the flames enveloped the leather vest and burgundy dress shirt, Set laughed. “Oh, that tickles!”

           In retaliation, Set did something I wasn’t expecting. He bit his Egyptian battleaxe. A trickle of blood dripped down the boy’s chin as he spit the concoction of body fluids at the stream of flames. Gross and, I thought, ineffective.

           “K’aak’t; Elel chi’bal!” the first, high-pitched voice of the boy hissed.[1]

           My ears popped, like I was in Ra’s sun boat when it decided to take a nosedive off a waterfall.

           The flames touching Set rippled from orange to a vibrant, whirling turquoise. The effect started to spread—well—like a wild fire, infecting Leo’s flame until the attack reversed course and overtook Leo’s hand.

           Leo shrieked, his eyes widening with panic and disbelief. He dropped the sledgehammer in his other hand and slapped at his arm. “Ay! Oh—ow! Ow! Oh! Fire hot!”

           That wasn’t a standard Set move. And trust me, I knew Set, down to his secret name.

           I rolled my eyes. If I wasn’t in these blasted wrappings, I would have pat Leo’s back and said, “Ah, yes, fire is hot.”

           But then, I remembered why Leo had come: he was fireproof. Leo’s next comment drove the point home. “This is what burning feels like!?!” he yelped.

           “Nicely done, little Lapis,” Set bellowed with laughter.

           Lapis must have been the name of Set’s host body. Anytime Isis took over my head, we communicated through our weird mental bond, like polite members of society. Leave it to Set to be bombastic about it.

           From my memory of our homicidal enemy, he wasn’t the type to let a host talk, let alone compliment them sincerely. Uncle Amos was the most powerful magician in the world and he still struggled to control Set when they shared power.

           “Dude, not cool on the weird fire,” Leo said, glaring fiercely and nursing the scorch marks on his hand. “How did you burn me? The only flames that can burn Admiral Leo are the flames of love.”

           I wanted to ask Set the same question—about the flames, not about his love life—but all I could do was go “MMMM!” still and do my best attempts at the worm dance move.

           Despite discovering a new weakness, I had to give Leo some credit: his eyes were scanning our surroundings like he was examining the blueprints of a car, looking for something to help us.

           From what I understood of Leo’s powers, he needed to be near machinery to be properly useful. He had the tools in his belt, but there weren’t a lot of machines around. Meanwhile, as Leo had summed up from my lecture on the flight over, the desert was like a Cookie Mart of Evil for jerks like Set. If it came down to a Leo versus Set fight, Set was in his element.

           “Oh.” Set waved a hand. “As I learned from some of the other gods that played with Sadie’s friends, you can become much more versatile when you intermix and play nice with others. I may not fully understand the methods for illusion and alteration, but Lapis is quite the Mayan sorceress.”

           His face contorted into a scowl and his posture altered to shift his weight onto one foot. “Sorcerer, you over-inflated ball of hot air!” the boy snarled to himself.  

           This god-to-host-chat was weird and complicated to follow.

           Leo glanced down at me for answers. As my most valuable skill had been taken away from me—my ability to be a brilliant orator—I furiously nodded towards Set, wishing Leo and I had some telepathic link to chat.

           From Leo’s immediate understanding, he must have fought plenty of big-and-tough guys before. Or actually had telepathy.

           “Sadie said you’re supposed to be in the Duat!” Leo protested. He understood: when in doubt, keep the arrogant megalomaniacs talking.

           Lapis’ weight shifted back to two feet to indicate Set had regained control. His vocalpitch dropped. “A god of chaos ignoring the rules? Tsk, Sadie Kane.” Those darks eyes peered down at me with amusement. “I thought we were closer than that. You know there is so much fun to be had in the mortal world.”      

           Something seemed off. The thick rings of charcoal around the boy’s eyes and the wild wideness of them, as though startled, reminded me of someone, and not Set.

           I’ve made a lot of people miffed in my life—I’m quite skilled at it actually—and I found myself wondering where I knew this young magician from. Set had said, “Long time no see.” Maybe that wasn’t just Set talking.

           “What are you doing here?” Leo asked. “A god of deserts and storms in a desert without a storm, beating up tiny demigods. Sounds suspicious.”

           Set belted out a boisterous laugh. “I would never miss one of Eris’s parties! Oh, does that Greek know how to party!” He twirled the Egyptian battle axe in one hand like a staff and pointed it at the unfortunate pile of rocks nearby. “I heard we’re going to execrate a goddess of day and I’ll get to feed off her dying powers. I do love a good picnic on a nice day.”

           “You hid Hemera in Camel Dung Mountain?” Leo asked.

           Either Leo was going to keep surprising me with how much we thought alike, or he really was telepathic. Considering how often I thought about Walt playing basketball shirtless, I was uncomfortable with the latter possibility.

           Set folded his arms and pouted. “It does not look like that.”

           “It really does,” Leo countered.

           “It’s a beautiful desert feature.”

           “Of camel dung.”

           Set glanced down at me again. “Really, Sadie, your friends are so rude. Let’s give you one chance to speak up for them, and if you go to cast a spell, I’ll spill sand into your lungs so fast, you won’t be able to say the word, ‘asphyxiate.’”

           To my surprise, he snapped his fingers. The wrappings shrank away from my mouth. It took every milliliter of my willpower to avoid saying something about camel dung. Instead, I said, “Lapis! Set is using you. He always uses people and will take full control of their bodies at the first chance. Fight him!”

           A devilish half-smile slid onto Set’s countenance. In a two-toned voice, they said, “What makes you think I can’t be a team player?”

           “Um, because you’re Set, god of evil and rockin’ red reaping and white pawn-eating. Remember the whole ‘I don’t do second-in-command’ thing you said to Menshikov?” I said, though my voice seemed to be losing conviction. Funny when that happens.

           Set waved his hand.

           The boy shifted his weight back onto one foot, signaling Lapis was in control. He glared with those terrifying, startled eyes. “Arrogant, rule-poppin’ Kanes think only your stupid family and initiates can come to equilibrium with a god. I mean, Holy Hun-Batz, how many times did that lie-mongering snake, Isis, tempt you to backstab the Sun God and put your brother and Horus on the throne? You don’t think she’d try to take over if she thought she could?”  

           I was rather offended. My initiates may have followed Ma’at and order, but we were quite a mischievous bunch and I wanted to defend our willingness to break rules, not “pop” them like Tic Tacs. Well, except Carter. [Sorry, my dear brother, you’re quite hopeless in the rule-breaking department.]

           On account of Isis, I couldn’t do much to defend her. She, ehem, wasn’t always the most loyal to Ra, having once poisoned him and all that.

           “See?” this time, Set spoke. “I’m rather fond of this little Pax child. Lapis occasionally lets me filet people. A much more enjoyable host than your Uncle Amos.”

           Lapis’ voice resurfaced, fluidly slipping away from Set. I was quite appalled. No one could get along with the god of evil so well and not be evil themselves. “And I had real reason to be here, before that double-crossing Ajaxamamma neglected to protect Tuft Ears or Ajaxapax against Ares.” Lapis kicked at the ground in anger. A mini swirl of red sand whirled up from his foot and spiraled away in a tiny dust storm. If any ants were about, they would surely need to sound the alarm for a tornado warning.  

           “This is getting confusing. Can you please stop with the voice alteration and the nicknames?” Leo asked.

           Lapis scowled down as though he hadn’t heard him. “I just want the Paxes to stick together and maybe kill that tree-romping hippie, Euna. Now, Tuft Ears and Ajaxapax are fucked up and my littlest brother, Dart Face, is well on his way to becoming a sociopathic baby killer.”

           “Yea, you’re setting a great example for him,” Leo said. He took a small step towards my cocoon. I wondered if he had some kind of mythical blowtorch that could cut me out of here without making a roasted Sadie dog.

           Lapis half-heartedly pointed his crossbow at my cocoon and said, “I wanted to meet the stupid person whose cursed, dead-boy boyfriend killed my mom, but Ms. Kane Swaddles is a bit underwhelming in person.”

           To be clear, I am quite impressive, but presentation is a bit difficult when you’re rolled up like a burrito.  

           But, dead-boy boyfriend? That was clearly in reference to Walt and Anubis, unless there were a lot of other dead-boy boyfriends running around. [Jack wanted me to clarify that I was not talking about a bloke named Nico Di Angelo. Apparently the Greeks do have their own supply.]

           “Your mum?” I asked, baffled.

            Lapis’ startled eyes fell onto me. Looking more exhausted than angry, he said, “Sarah Jacobi.”  

           For an instant, I didn’t understand. Lapis’ skin was chocolaty, so much that I would think him a pale African or a tanned islander. To my disgust, I realized my moment of hesitation was the same one people experienced when they saw me with my Dad and brother, because I was so pale and my brother and father were so dark. All those times people thought I couldn’t be related to them. And here I was. I had no idea what her father looked like, but, just because Sarah Jacobi’s skin was milky pale didn’t mean that wasn’t this boy’s mother.

           Shame choked me.

           During the battle in the First Nome, Walt had mummified Jacobi while she was alive and dragged her into the Underworld. But Jacobi had a child? Someone had loved that schizophrenic Wicked Witch of the West enough to have a baby with her?

           Jacobi would have killed me if Walt hadn’t stopped her, but knowing we’d left someone motherless, like I had been motherless, didn’t settle well in my stomach.

           Lapis’ startling eyes were just like hers and I could almost hear Jacobi’s laugh, like metal scrapping through sand. Try to imagine that as a lullaby. No wonder Lapis was a bit mental.

           “Yep,” Leo said, “That’s another name that means nothing to me.” He sidestepped close enough that he could have nudged me with his foot.

           “Sorry,” I said, suddenly unsure of what to say.

           Lapis didn’t look mad at me. Just frustrated with the situation. Although I didn’t know much about it, from what he was saying and what I had gathered from Leo and Jason, he and his siblings lost a lot in the last few months. Weirdly, I found myself feeling sorry for this crazy bloke.

           “You know, rule-poppers—“

           “I am NOT a rule-popper!” I snapped, unable to take that slander any longer.

           “—I don’t even care about this Hemera or any of Eris’ stupid ‘not’ plans anymore,” Lapis muttered, almost to himself. His gaze peered through me, and I had a feeling he wasn’t peeking into the Duat.

           “Then maybe you could not try to kill us, Desert Dude?” Leo suggested. He was right beside me now, two fingers in his toolbelt, hopefully looking for a magical jigsaw to get me out of these stupid restraints.

           Lapis’ expression went blank. He studied us.

           Gods of Egypt, could something that simple have actually worked?

           Then Set took back over. “I have a splendid alternative. See, Lapis did promise I’d get a chance at eating the power of a primordial goddess.” He rubbed his hands together. “Let’s have a fun little gamble. If you can survive me for five minutes and get Hemera, then—ta da!—you win. We’ll even get you a ride to the closest active portal.”

           “Do we need that?” Leo asked, glanced down at me.

           “Em… I may have forgotten to mention that portals have a twelve hour cool down period,” I admitted, a minor overlook. Though there must have been another portal somewhere nearby. Everyone was so obsessed with Egyptian artifacts, I never worried about there being an obelisk or pyramid in proximity, even if it was just an oddly shaped ice cream truck.

           “And if we lose?” I asked.

           “Why, I get to rip you limb-from-limb of course,” Set said with a good-natured laugh. “Lapis can execrate Hemera and I’ll get to feed off her power as the goddess fades to nothing.”

           “So, you’ll try to dismember us either way?” Leo asked.

           “Exactly!” Set exclaimed.

           Leo knelt down beside me.  The wind kicked up sand around us, like a storm was approaching. I had an uncomfortable feeling that Leo and I would not be able to stall much longer.

           “You know why you Egyptian gods are just like Greek ones?” Leo asked, the Latino elf’s face crunching into a grin.

           Set smirked, putting his hands on his hips. He licked his lips, like he was considering switching Leo’s and my head like the tops of canopic jars. “We both have gambling problems?”

           Leo’s grin turned smug.

           “You both like to talk too much.”

           By now, the wind was whipping Leo’s hair all about his eyes and kicking sand into my nostrils. I assumed Set was getting ready to obliterate us, but Leo must have known what was about to happen instead.

           A tornado blasted horizontally through the broken section of the iron fence. Had I been a mortal, I might have thought it hit Set. Instead, through the swirls of dust and sand, I could see Jason Grace propelled at the end. His fist slugged Set’s face.

           Set flew backwards, knocking another hole through the iron fence on the other side. A whirl of red sand followed him. The crossbow clattered away. He skidded to a stop with one knee in the sand, the other leg posed to rise. From the expression, I guessed Lapis was the one glaring at Jason’s hovering form.

           Lapis wiped blood from his mouth with the back of his hand. He smirked. “You’re mine, Pretty Boy.”

           The red sand around him thickened, until there was a swirling vortex of desert, debris, red sparks, and smatters of flame encasing the magician: Set’s combat avatar. Although I could barely make out the image of Lapis’s hands, he twirled the Egyptian battle axe around him.

           “Go get Hemera,” Jason ordered, scowling.

           The son of Jupiter didn’t have to tell us twice.

           Leo scrambled to heft me up into his arms as Set’s spitting red storm thundered into Jason’s white tornado.

 Thanks for reading! I hope you guys enjoyed! :D

 Footnote:

[1] “Roast the fire; burn with pain.”

[botchedandecstatic]

Books Read/Reread, July/August 2022

Elvia Wilk, Death by Landscape Elena Passarello, Animals Strike Curious Poses Helen McDonald, Vesper Flights Christina Tudor-Sideri, Under the Sign of the Labyrinth* Sarah Kane, Blasted Sarah Kane, Phaedra's Love Sarah Kane, 4.48 Psychosis Rebecca Solnit, River of Shadows: Eadward Muybridge and the Technological Wild West Carmen Maria Machado, Her Body and Other Parties* Shannon Mattern, Deep Mapping the Media City Ada Límon, The Carrying Kathryn Schulz, Lost & Found Monica Black, A Demon-Haunted Land: Witches, Wonder Doctors, and the Ghosts of the Past in Post-WWII Germany Robert Glück, Margery Kempe* Sir Wallis Budge, Amulets and Talismans Jim Vandehei, Mike Allen, and Roy Schwartz, Smart Brevity: The Power of Saying More With Less Richard de Mille, The Don Juan Papers: Further Castaneda Controversies Gilles Deleuze, Coldness and Cruelty* Brandon LaBelle, Sonic Agency: Sound and Emergent Forms of Resistance Benjamín Labatut, When We Cease to Understand the World Stendhal, The Red and the Black* Guy Cools, Performing Mourning: Laments in Contemporary Art Michael P. Daley (ed.), Echoes of a Natural World * = reread

[readingtoghosts]

This is great, but hey, listen up.

-Venus and Fur. The best. Do you like mind games? Do you like women having their way with weak-minded men? Does S&M interest you (the terminology literally came from this work)? Check out Venus and Fur.

-In the Next Room, or The Vibrator Play. It’s like Masters of Sex. Kinda. It’s women discovering that hmm, now it all finally makes sense. But wait, what do we need men for again? It’s witty and smart and historically spicy (lol).

-Hedda Gabler. Because it’s Hedda Gabler. A boss.

-The Homecoming. Because it’s a Pinter play. Granted, Pinter is better preformed live, but this play features a dysfunctional family gathering and a strong lady who knows how to take charge when she needs to.

-Literally everything Sarah Kane has ever written. I saw Blasted first. Half the audience walked out because it was so gruesome and brutally honest. THAT’S the type of play I want to see. Give me nightmares. Wreck me, please. Sarah does that. Or did. 4.48 Psychosis was the last play she wrote before she committed suicide. It is a haunting piece of writing that few have dared to stage. I’ve yet to see it preformed. But you can read it and I hope it consumes you the way it consumed me.

It’s on the list, but if you love art, please read John Logan’s play Red. It changed my life.

Saw this and thought of you all. I know we mostly talk about musicals but I love plays and this list is surprisingly inclusive, diverse, and great. 

[newyorktheater]

In a year that has ended so dramatically off-stage, and during which so many people talked dismissively about “political theater” — but they didn’t mean anything actually happening in a work of art —  it’s good to celebrate the memorable moments  that happened nightly on New York stages.

These were moments that were memorable as a visual spectacle or a verbal tickle or an emotional punch, moments that meant something because of off-stage events, or meant nothing but stayed with you nevertheless. Some moments were memorable because they were lovely; some because they were ugly. There were enough memorable moments this year in so many shows (even some one might not otherwise have cared for) that the gallery below is just a sample — as was the one  last year, and the year before that, and the year before that. I’m forced to focus largely on the moments with human actors — leaving out the unforgettable moments involving a live goat, a rabbit, and most of the puppets  (I do mention one.)

Click on any photograph to see it enlarged and to read the extensive caption that explains each moment, which are more or less in the chronological order of the shows’ opening. Some of the moments on stage were so special that the production didn’t provide photographs of them; in such cases, I use a different photograph from that show.

Ruthie Ann Miles as Immigration Judge Craig Zerbe presided over The Courtroom, a re-enactment by Waterwell theater company of actual deportation proceedings, using the transcript. What made this an especially memorable moment was that it marked the Miles first performance in New York after a reckless driver last year killed her four-year-old daughter and caused the loss of her unborn baby.

“4.48 Psychosis,” an opera based on Sarah Kane’s play about her mental illness, featured this exchange, the words projected onto the back wall as the performers sang them: Have you made any plans? With the words projected onto the back wall, the psychiatrist had the following exchange with the patient: Have you made any plans? Take an overdose, slash my wrists then hang myself. All those things together? It couldn’t possibly be misconstrued as a cry for help.

In “Alice By Heart,” the entire colorfully-clad cast turned into a single giant caterpillar

In “The Cake,” Debra Jo Rupp portrayed Della, a good-natured Christian baker in North Carolina who refuses to bake a cake for a lesbian wedding, and then feels guilty about it. Late at night, in bed with her husband Tim, she tries to explore her conscience with him as sounding board. Tim doesn’t want to hear it. He thinks she was right to turn down the lesbians. Tim: It’s – it’s just not natural. Della: Well, neither is confectioner’s sugar!

In “Ain’t No Mo’,” the play by Jordan E. Cooper, making his Off-Broadway debut as both a playwright and an actor, African-American are leaving the United States en masse on flights to Africa. In the final scene, Cooper as pink-garbed stewardess Peaches is left behind. The final stream-of-consciousness monologue, accompanied by the voices of famous black Americans –Bessie and Billie, James Brown, James Baldwin, and Malcolm X — is a metaphor for the black experience in America, as Peaches can’t uproot the bag of black history, and is left defeated, stripped down to a bare black man, shouting “Give it back, give it back.”

“Ashes,” a haunting work of theatre that told the real-life story of an arsonist, was peopled with dozens of characters — all but the narrator are puppets. In one of many astounding moments of magic, the narrator’s father (a puppet) who is dying smokes a cigarette, and exhales the smoke, which then curls up into the air and magically forms the text: “The last thing I did to my father was lie to him.”

Ali Stroker as the fun-loving, oversexed Ado Annie in “Oklahoma!”, teases and kisses, flirts with and sings to the dim Will Parker (James Davis), — and most memorably swings with him gleefully on her wheelchair.

Andre De Shields commands the stage in Hadestown from the get-go. The show begins in complete silence as the rest of the cast watches Hermes, in his elegant, grey silk suit, slide across the stage, pause, and open a button to show a loud and splendid vest, before trombone player Briane Drye lets out a blast from jazz heaven and De Shields launches into the get-down “Road to Hell.” It’s the quietest, and most mesmerizing, opening of any show on Broadway.

“Dragon Spring Phoenix Rise” a kung-fu musical that was the inaugural show in the mammoth McCourt Theater during the inaugural season of The Shed, the arts center that’s part of the gleaming and sterile new Hudson Yards neighborhood. The musical took advantage of the space, when the performers soared up 80 feet in the air for aerial acrobatics and then back down again.

“Moulin Rouge” was thrilling from the moment you entered the theater… until about ten minutes after it began. That’s because the brightest star in this stage adaptation of Baz Luhrmann’s 2001 movie musical is designer Derek McLane’s set. Before we even take our seats, it envelopes us in love, or at least in lots of red – a huge red neon “Moulin Rouge” sign above red lights in the shape of a half a dozen hearts nestled lovingly within each other, a full-sized, red windmill full of lights perched on the box seats above us to our left, a life-sized elephant (which, for variety, is purple) in the box seats to our right…

In an arresting moment in “Deluge,” a tall white dancer dressed in black tossed up a short black dancer dressed in red, accompanied by a score that included recordings of some of the most fulsome public comments by Donald Trump and other politicians (“These are animals…Pocahontas…legitimate rape…”) The dance company whose members wrote, choreographed and performed this remarkable piece is called Loco-Motion Dance Theater for Children, and they were performing as part of the 16th annual Rebel Verses Youth Arts Festival, an exciting and inspiring show presenting artists ages 13 to 19 from some dozen youth theater companies. The festival was almost as impressive for what was not on stage as for what was: There were no teenage cliques, no obsession with popularity. It was not the standard depiction of teenagers in even well-meaning shows on Broadway

“Sincerity Forever,” one of the five plays in Perfect Catatrophes, a festival of Mac Wellman plays, takes place in a fictional Southern town named Hillsbottom. Jesus H. Christ, a black woman, comes visiting and the town’s teenagers, dressed casually in Klu Klux Klan’s outfits, are oblivious. In the first of several memorable moments, two of the teens admit that they are ignorant – “I don’t know why the sky is blue, and I don’t know what ‘blue’ is, and I don’t know why I don’t know,” — but conclude that their ignorance must nonetheless somehow be God’s plan. “the most important thing is not what you know, but whether you’re sincere or not.”

At the end of “Novenas for a Lost Hospital,” which sweeps through the 161-year history of St. Vincent’s Hospital in Greenwich Village, focusing on the cholera and AIDS epidemics, Kathleen Chalfant as Mother Seton leads the audience down the narrow staircase to the street, and then the block and a half over to the so-called St. Vincent’s Triangle, a new park across the street from where the hospital once stood. It’s the site of the New York City AIDS Memorial. The audience stood in a circle for the epilogue, beneath the white steel triangle canopy of the memorial.

In “The Great Society,” which chronicles the final four years of LBJ’s presidency, we get out of the White House in just a handful of scenes. In the most memorable, Jimmy Lee Jackson, a 26-year-old Alabaman tries to register to vote, and is killed doing so, which leads to the confrontations between Civil Rights marchers and Alabama troops on the Edmund Pettus Bridge.

There is one spectacularly funny moment in “Scotland, PA” musical comedy version of “Macbeth,” which is based on Billy Morrissette’s 2001 movie, and is set in a fast-food restaurant in the “podunk town” of Scotland, Pennsylvania in 1975. After married couple Mac and Pat Kill Duncan, they take over his restaurant. All the fast-food workers are dressed in construction jumpsuits and the establishment is covered with canvas. Suddenly, all the workers strip off their outfit, and simultaneously all the canvas falls off, and we see red and gold costumes, red and gold décor, a huge yellow M sign, and the new name of the restaurant: McBeth’s. This is one of the two shows this year in New York that featured a funny scene involving McDonald’s. The other was Soft Power — which opened the same week!

At the end of Tina, The Tina Turner Musical, Adrienne Warner — dressed in trademark tight red leather mini-dress, highest of heels and tallest of wigs, ascending a staircase of flashing lights backed by a raucous band each in his own Hollywood Square — delivers Tina Turner’s greatest hits – Nutbush City Limits, Proud Mary ( “Rollin’, rollin’ rollin’ on the river…”) – and we all rise as one, ecstatic, and swoon.. I’m not sure what it says – but it says something – that this greatest moment in the musical’s nearly three hours occurs after the curtain call.

This sexy scene in The Inheritance is not actually the most memorable in the play. That comes at the end of the first part of this two-part play, when the young gay men who died during the peak of the AIDS epidemic walk from the back of the theater one by one to the stage to shake hands with the living.

In “You Oughta Know,” the exhilarating show-stopping number from Jagged Little Pill, Jo confronts her girlfriend Jackie, whom she had discovered in bed with a new boy in their high school named Phoenix: “Every time you speak his name, does he know how you told me you’d be there until you died. Til you died, but you’re still alive….you, you, you oughta know. You, you,you,you…” As Jo, Lauren Patten’s delivery of the song is so forceful and electric that it prompted a standing ovation.

Memorable Moments on Stage in 2019 In a year that has ended so dramatically off-stage, and during which so many people talked dismissively about "political theater" -- but they didn't mean anything actually happening in a work of art --  it's good to celebrate the memorable moments  that happened nightly on New York stages.

[ioanacurelea]

Blasted: Design Process Analysis

Overall concept

The principle decision we had to make was where to place the design on a scale from film-set naturalism to dream-like surrealism. A lot of the critical discussion around the play talks about a transition from reality to nightmare, but when we began to collect images, we found that the instructions in the text-- the anonymity of luxury, the imagery of sunlight pouring through hotel curtains, leant itself to a dreamlike strangeness, whereas the instructions for after the blast- mortar bomb damage and crumbling buildings, led us to images of stark reality; reportage and documentary footage. We then felt like the transition should be from subtly dreamlike to absolutely unflinchingly real.

The frame

When you look at a hotel from the outside, the grid-like layout of hotel rooms is really striking. This spatial repetition gives the sense that the things that are happening inside the hotel rooms could be happening over and over again, anywhere in the world. The description in the text that the room is ‘so expensive it could be anywhere in the world’ lends itself to this idea of repetition. The violence committed in this hotel room is not an exceptional event- it’s happening repeatedly in rooms around the world. The stackable box frame reinforces this idea.

           In addition, the black border with a pink interior guides the eye to the action of the play, as in the work of painters like Titian, who use dark backgrounds and white collars to guide the eye to a specific point in a painting. The audience has no choice but to watch what’s happening in this room. Descriptions of the premiere upstairs at the Royal Court talk about the visceral and confrontational experience of being right on top of the action of the play and we wanted to retain a sense of that. Of course, this is much harder to achieve in a proscenium arch theatre, where the audience is ‘let off the hook’ by the security of the fourth wall, so we wanted to find a way to concentrate the viewer’s gaze on the action of the play.

           Also, there is something soft and delicate about this pink opening, and its delicateness reinforces the violence that is committed against Ian and Cate. The contrast between the black panels and the soft, pink interior reinforces the paradox of the play- something delicate and human engulfed by something dark and harsh- the impossibility of love in a brutal world.

 We also talked about the act of watching people in a hotel room, and the inevitable voyeurism of this act. The box layout gives a sense that the audience is engaging in a kind of illicit act, and questions the complicity of sitting by and watching atrocious acts, by forcing the audience to peer in on Ian and Cate in the hotel room.

 The hotel room itself

We wanted the hotel room to be laden with the expectation of romance, which led us to the pink colour scheme, like its pinkness is hoping for some kind of generic notion of romance and seduction, which is violently inverted by the action of the play. A kind of grim dramatic irony between what the room wants to happen inside it, and what does happen. On a research trip to The Dorchester, we were struck by the absurdity of small details of luxury, which is where the idea for the

  After the blast

We wanted ‘after the blast’ to feel real. Of course there are lots of different kinds of real in theatre- there is film-set naturalism and then there is the reality of acknowledging being in a theatre space. Sarah Kane talked about wanting the experience of the audience to be ‘facing something actual and true and ugly and painful’. Our initial idea was for the black panels to come away, revealing the structure of the Dorfman, a kind of visual ‘direct address’, where the audience is forced to confront that the violence is happening in the same world as them, i.e. the world of the National Theatre, not a fictional one. We decided against it because giving the audience something else to look at lets them off the hook in a sense and gives them the option of looking away. Instead, we decided to bring the room forward as close to the audience as we could, in order to confront them with the action of the second half as starkly as possible. We kept the idea of showing the theatre space, by revealing the back wall through the bomb blast.

[jenmedsbookreviews]

So this is the blog post that isn’t meant to happen but I had a couple of hours in between events so here we are. What a week this has been, what a rare mood I’m in. Why it’s almost like being … contented I think is the word. After an all to brief round trip to Dublin on Monday to deliver a bit of training, I have finished off my week up in Dundee and Aberdeen combining necessary annual work trips with a touch of blogger heaven a.k.a. Granite Noir.Now I may at some stage regale you all with my tales of what I did and saw but then again I may not. I attended many panels (well a few) spoke to and hugged many authors (well a few) and got some signed books (less than a few). The panels I attended were fabulous and the authors and speakers highly engaging and entertaining including Thomas Enger, Mari Hannah, Sarah Ward, Val McDermid, Karen Sullivan, MJ Arlidge Stefan Ahnhem, Craig Sisterson, Johana Gustawsson, Clare Carson, James Oswald and Will Dean. I also attended a workshop on creating compelling characters with Melanie McGrath which was really informative and made you think about the importance of clarity and coherence in character. The weekend has been, in a word, awesome.

The weekend was made ever more special by my getting to spend time with some truly fabulous people, namely Alison Baillie, Sharon Bairden, and Mary Picken and to meet Claire MacLeary and Kate Noble. Yes … I finally got to meet The (Not So) Quiet Knitter. She is sooooo lovely (if a little shy) and actually very chatty.

As I write this I have two more events left, Words and Music with Thomas Enger and Noir at the Bar. I am looking forward to both of them but hoping I don’t have too late a night as I am due up at 05:00 to be in Portlethen by around 06:15. Then it is the small matter of the 8+ hour drive home with a small diversion to Airdrie. I am so lucky. Actually I am but don’t tell work that. They may think I want to be there …

The best news of the evening – Granite Noir will be back on 24th February 2019. Watch this space folks. And for those of you wanting a much better flavour of what this weekend has been all about then check out Granite Noir TV for some of the panels that were recorded over the weekend.

Signed book wise I was very restrained. Only the two. Killed by Thomas Enger and Eeny Meeny by MJ Arlidge. I still have some more to buy this coming week though as I attend the Orenda Roadshow in Warwick on Wednesday. Cannot wait. To those poor Orenda authors who have been at Granite Noir this weekend, I am not stalking you (much) I am acting as chauffeur for my sister. Honest.

All this travel has been both good and bad for reading and book buying. Aside from the two books above, I may have bought a couple of other titles and I might have received a teeny bit more book post … Book post wise I have received The Lost Girl by Carol Drinkwater and The Language of Secrets by Ausma Zehanat Khan so thank you to Penguin and No Exit Press for those.

Book purchase wise, clearly being at a literary festival has curtailed my spending. As a result I have only bought Letters To My Daughters by Emma Hannigan; Dark Pines by Will Dean (seemed rude not to); The Devil’s Dice by Roz Watkins; The Lincoln Rhyme Collection Books 1-4 and 5-8 by Jeffrey Deaver (possibly inspired by watching The Bone Collector the other evening – I do love Denzel …); Hold My Hand by MJ Ford; The Bone Keeper by Luca Veste; The Sweetheart Killer by Arlene Hunt; Lucky Ghost by Matthew Blakstad; Anatomy of a Scandal by Sarah Vaughan; In Bitter Chill by Sarah Ward and Sewing the Shadows Together by Alison Baillie. Not a lot of books at all really.

Whoops. Reading wise it’s not been too bad I suppose. I’ve managed a few books and an audio book so I can’t really complain.

Books I have read

Silent Victim – Caroline Mitchell

Emma’s darkest secrets are buried in the past. But the truth can’t stay hidden for long.

Emma is a loving wife, a devoted mother…and an involuntary killer. For years she’s been hiding the dead body of the teacher who seduced her as a teen.

It’s a secret that might have stayed buried if only her life had been less perfect. A promotion for Emma’s husband, Alex, means they can finally move to a bigger home with their young son. But with a buyer lined up for their old house, Emma can’t leave without destroying every last trace of her final revenge…

Returning to the shallow grave in the garden, she finds it empty. The body is gone.

Panicked, Emma confesses to her husband. But this is only the beginning. Soon, Alex will discover things about her he’ll wish he’d learned sooner. And others he’ll long to forget.

A dark and tense thriller with a protagonist with a very terrible secret. I blasted through this in a day as it was the kind of read which just compelled you onwards. It is released on 1st March and you can order a copy here.

…

Bring Me Flowers – DK Hood

She didn’t know he was watching. Until it was too late.

She’d walked this path hundreds of times before, she knew every twist and turn. But today was different. She didn’t know someone was waiting for her, hidden away from view. She didn’t know this was the last time she’d walk this path.

Hidden deep in the forest, schoolgirl Felicity Parker is found carefully laid out on a rock with nothing but a freshly picked bunch of flowers next to her lifeless form. Detective Jenna Alton is called in to investigate the gruesome discovery.

With the body found just off a popular hiking route, Jenna believes the killer is a visitor to the town… until a second local girl is discovered.

Within days, Kate Bright, a school friend of Felicity’s, is found brutally murdered at the local swimming pool and once again, the killer has displayed his victim in a terrifying manner and left flowers at the scene. 

The town is gripped with fear and Jenna and her deputy, David Kane, now know that the killer is living amongst them, and that he’s picking off school girls one by one. But they don’t know who is next on the list.

As the trail goes cold, Kane and Alton are forced to sit and wait for the killer to make his next move. But now he has a new victim in his sights, and he’s looking much closer to home …

If you love Robert Dugoni, Karin Slaughter and Rachel Abbott you’ll love this nail-biting thriller from D.K. Hood.

This is the second in the series and I think it will help readers to have consumed book one, but is not essential. Set in small town America there is a chilling and merciless killer on the loose in a story which will have you locking up your daughters. You can preorder a copy here.

…

The Visitor – KL Slater

He’ll make sure she never wants to leave…

Holly never thought she’d move back to her home town, but then something terrible happened. She doesn’t know if she can recover. But she knows she can never tell another soul.

People say her neighbour, David, is “different”. He doesn’t go out much, and never after dark. But in David Holly finds just what she needs: a friend. Someone who’s always there.

No one knows Holly’s secret, or where she lives. She has left the past behind. She is sure of it. So why does she feel as though she’s in terrible danger?

An absolutely unputdownable psychological thriller, from the bestselling author of Blink and The Mistake. Perfect for fans of The Girl on the Train and The Couple Next Door. 

A gripping thriller which has you wondering just which way is up. So many possible outcomes in this book and an undercurrent of unease which will have readers in a spin. You can preorder a copy here.

…

The Babysitter – Sheryl Browne

You trust her with your family. Would you trust her with your life?

Mark and Melissa Cain are thrilled to have found Jade, a babysitter who is brilliant with their young children. Having seen her own house burn to the ground, Jade needs them as much as they need her. Moving Jade into the family home can only be a good thing, can’t it?

As Mark works long hours as a police officer and Melissa struggles with running a business, the family become ever more reliant on their babysitter, who is only too happy to help. And as Melissa begins to slip into depression, it’s Jade who is left picking up the pieces.

But Mark soon notices things aren’t quite as they seem. Things at home feel wrong, and as Mark begins to investigate their seemingly perfect sitter, what he discovers shocks him to his core. He’s met Jade before. And now he suspects he might know what she wants …

Mark is in a race against time to protect his family. But what will he find as he goes back to his family home?

A true cuckoo in the nest kind of thriller this may well have you losing your mind. Tense and occasionally skin crawling if you are a cat lover you may want to look away … You can preorder a copy here.

,,,

Anatomy of a Scandal – Sarah Vaughan

A high-profile marriage thrust into the spotlight. A wife, determined to keep her family safe, must face a prosecutor who believes justice has been a long time coming. A scandal that will rock Westminster. And the women caught at the heart of it. 

Anatomy of a Scandal centres on a high-profile marriage that begins to unravel when the husband is accused of a terrible crime. Sophie is sure her husband, James, is innocent and desperately hopes to protect her precious family from the lies which might ruin them. Kate is the barrister who will prosecute the case – she is equally certain that James is guilty and determined he will pay for his crimes.

Oh my life this is such a brilliant book. I’ve had it on my biggest regrets pile for a while so the long drive up to Scotland gave me just the excuse I needed to ‘read’ it at long last. Clever, observant and so brilliantly topical this is a fabulous book which you can order here.

…

Blog has been busy enough, all things considered, and you can find the highlights below (or links to the posts even). I did take part in a Writing Challenge as part of Rachel Abbott’s blog tour so if you are really bored, do go and take a look. You’ll have a chance to vote on your favourite challenge entries soon so keep an eye on Rachel’s Twitter and Facebook feeds for more details.

Guest Post: CJ Harter author of Fitful Head

#BlogTour: The Little Cottage on the Hill by Emma Davies

#BlogTour: Come a Little Closer by Rachel Abbott

#BlogTour: #TheLastLaugh by Tracy Bloom

Review: Before I Let You Go by Kelly Rimmer

Clearly as I am cutting back on the blogging this year, I have nothing in the diary for the week ahead. Well … apart from blog tours for SE Lynes’ The Pact; BK Duncan’s Found Drowned; Peter Ritchie’s Evidence of Death; Aidan Conway’s A Known Evil; Caroline Mitchell’s Silent Victim; DK Hood’s Bring Me Flowers and KL Slater’s The Visitor. It seems to be all about the initials this week. Do join me if you can.

I am looking forward to another brilliantly bookish week. See you all again soon…

Jen

Rewind, recap: Weekly update w/e 25/02/18 So this is the blog post that isn't meant to happen but I had a couple of hours in between events so here we are.

[lela-steep-blog]

Literary References in Lela & Co

“Imagination, fiction and fantasy are important to me. I have respect for verbatim theatre but that’s not personally how I write. It does come down to what’s happening in the world around me? What am I reading? What am I listening to? What’s inspiring me? And then how does all that go into my head and make a play?” - Cordelia Lynn

Lela & Co. is an unusually referential play, filled with direct quotations and stylistic allusions, spanning from 16th century poetry to the modern novel. This befits a metatheatrical text like Lela & Co., which is examining and deconstructing the way we think about storytelling. It also seems to be the result of Cordelia Lynn’s extensive background in English literature - she majored in English lit at University of Bristol and received her masters in Modern Literature at University College London. What follows is a brief catalogue and analysis of the way Cordelia Lynn uses literary reference throughout the play.

King Lear/Shakespeare

“I put her in the bath, and I took her out of the bath again and I held her close and I said ‘Never never never never.’ Never. Is a very long word.” (pg 43, Lela & Co)

“And my poor fool is hang’d! No, no, no life! Why should a dog, a horse, a rate, have life, And thou no breath at all? Thou’lt come no more, Never, never, never, never, never! Pray you, undo this button: thank you, sir. Do you see this? Look on her, look, her lips, Look there, look there!” (5.3 324-330, King Lear)

In final scene of Shakespeare’s King Lear, the title title character repeats the word “never” five times over the dead body of his daughter. Lela also repeats “never” five times to her child, but in this case it signifies her resolution to keep her daughter alive. Cordelia Lynn takes an infamously existential moment in Shakespeare’s writing and makes it affirmative.

Blasted/Sarah Kane

“I would kill all of you. I would take out your eyes and eat them. I would eat. Your eyes.” (pg 44, Lela & Co.)

“The soldier grips Ian’s head in his hands. He puts his mouth over one of Ian’s eyes, sucks it out, bites it off and eats it. He does the same to the other eye.” (pg 50, Blasted)

In one of the most infamous stage directions in modern drama, the protagonist of Sarah Kane’s Blasted is gruesomely blinded by a soldier. Cordelia Lynn has said that Sarah Kane is one of her favorite writers, and it seems she borrowed that image from Blasted for the moment Lela banishes the male voice from the stage. In other less direct ways, Kane’s influence can be felt throughout Lela and Co. Kane frequently sets her plays in nebulous spaces - a space can be a luxury hotel room in England, a war zone, and a Beckettian hellscape all at once - and that sense of dislocation can be strongly felt in Lela & Co., which deliberately avoids being set in a single time or place. Her influence can also be felt in the formal transformation that Lela and Co. undergoes as it descends into it’s much darker second half, and in its interest in the way interpersonal violence and political violence are connected. As Cordelia Lynn wrote in an article for the Guardian, her world’s characters “have been, and are being, shattered by violence, and they helplessly recreate what happens on a vast public scale within the walls of their homes, in the minutiae of their relationships.”

Who’s Afraid Of Virginia Woolf?/Edward Albee

“So, yes, all in all bad to...better...best...bested.” (pg 26, Lela & Co.)

“Dashed hopes and good intentions. Good, better, best, bested! How do you like that for a declension? You didn't answer my question. Don't condescend. I asked you how you liked that declension. Good; better; best; bested. Hm?”

“What do you want me to say? Do you want me to say it’s funny, so you can contradict me and say it’s sad? Or do you want me to say it���s sad so you can turn around and say no, it’s funny. You can play that damn little game any way you want to!” (Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?)

Cordelia Lynn makes a direct allusion to Edward Albee’s iconic 1962 play Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf. In the above passage from Albee’s play, Nick expresses frustration at the inevitable humiliation that will occur if he agrees to take part in George’s games.  George creates the game, so George makes the rules. In Lela & Co., Lynn brings back “Good, better, best, bested” when Lela’s husband explains the business of selling Lela’s body, interrupting the monologue structure to assert his dominance and control over Lela’s life and body. Her husband makes the rules. In an interview about the creation of Lela & Co., Lynn cites a quote from Albee as a guiding philosophy for her - “since art must move, or wither – the playwright must try to alter the forms within which his precursors have had to work.”  This desire for formal innovation can clearly be seen in Lynn’s writing.

Fight Club/Chuck Palahniuk/David Fincher

“Every week, Tyler gave the rules that he and I decided. Gentlemen, welcome to Fight Club. The first rule of Fight Club is you do not talk about Fight Club. The second rule of Fight Club is you do not talk about Fight Club.”

“The first rule of Lela & Co. Limited is you don’t talk about Lela & Co. Limited or we’ll break your legs...We’ll probably break your legs anyway.” (pg 32, Lela & Co.)  

Lynn references Chuck Palahniuk’s novel Fight Club (which later became a film directed by David Fincher) in the section where the husband outlines Lela & Co. Limited’s “rules and regulations.” In a disturbing and darkly comedic back and forth, the husband establishes Lela as the company property, and Lela interjects when she can, assuming the husband’s vocabulary of violence used previously in the play. This scene from Fight Club is a popular pop culture reference and extremely fitting for Lela & Co. in the irony that something so dehumanizing and vicious has “rules,” as well as the themes of patriarchal power present in both texts.

The Giaour/Byron

“Oh! who young Leila’s glance could read And keep that portion of his creed Which saith that woman is but dust, A soulless toy for tyrant’s lust?” (The Giaour)

Cordelia Lynn might have derived her protagonists name from Lord Byron’s poem The Giaour, which was written in 1813 after Byron became aware of the Turkish custom of throwing a woman found guilty of adultery into the sea wrapped in a sack. The poem has a Rashomon-esque structure in which three characters tell a single story from different perspectives. In it’s depiction of the political repression of women, as well as multiple storytellers fighting to control a narrative, one can see several connections to Lela & Co.

Westron Wynde

“Oh Western Wind, when wilt thou blow? The small rain down can rain. Christ, if my love were in my arms, and I in my bed again.” (pg 49, Lela & Co.)

Throughout Lela & Co. the title character tries to sing the song quoted above, but is always interrupted by the male voice. This song was written in the 16th century, originally in Middle English. It’s been set to many different melodies over years (including the original melody our sound designer Thomas Dixon created for this production), and has been the basis for several religious Masses and a movement of Stravinsky’s Cantata. Several writers have quoted it, mostly notably Virginia Woolf in her novel The Waves, as well as Thomas Pynchon, who used a lyric from the song as the title for his first published short story, “The Small Rain”.

Angela Carter

“When I saw him look at me with lust, I dropped my eyes but, in glancing away from him, I caught sight of myself in the mirror. And I saw myself, suddenly, as he saw me, my pale face, the way the muscles in my neck stuck out like thin wire. I saw how much that cruel necklace became me. And, for the first time in my innocent and confined life, I sensed in myself a potentiality for corruption that took my breath away.” (The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories)

“I was shy of him, he seemed very distinguished, in his suit with his little trimmed moustache, a quiet sort of man with a very steady gaze, and nearly ten years my senior. I’d catch him looking at me, very steady and it made me shudder inside, when I caught him looking at me. A funny little shudder that was like something dropping out of me, an emptiness forming all the sudden deep inside, so deep it hurt” (pg 14, Lela & Co.)

When discussing finding Lela’s voice, Cordelia Lynn described “reading Angela Carter in the evenings to take [her] mind off [the play], [and] everything clicked...of course [Lela] can speak in this quite baroque and poetic and lyrical and excitable way.” Angela Carter is an English novelist who wrote fairy tales in prose informed by modern influences such as psychoanalysis and surrealist poetry. In the above quotes, you can clearly see the similarities in the narrative voices.

Ismail Kadare

“At street corners, where walls join, I thought I could see some familiar features, like outlines of human faces, the shadows of cheekbones and eyebrows. They are really there, caught in stone for all time, along with the marks left by earthquakes, winters and scourges wrought by men.” (Chronicle in Stone)

“I walked out the door... It was very noisy and very dirty and there were broken buildings and bullet holes in the walls, the walls were like pockmarked faces, like the skin of the city the whole city was diseased, and all around were foreign police and soldiers and officials and immigrants and refugees and homeless and homecoming and there it was this felled city and these felled peoples and the dust and the dirt...” (pg 45, Lela and Co.)

Lynn references Albanian novelist Ismail Kadare as an inspiration during the writing of Lela & Co.  She says, “I had the initial story as a basis, did research and was reading Ismail Kadare who writes about conflict.”

[gkelseyunit4]

Sarah Kane

Sarah Kane is a playwright who writes plays based on redemptive love, sexual desire, pain, torture (both physical and psychological) and death. She was born February 3rd 1971, in Brentwood. She was then a fervent born-again Christian at the age of 17. She hated what was going around in South East London due to some things that was not allowed to happen and the amount of abuse and corruption taken place. Sarah Kane studied Drama and was awarded a first there at University of Bristol and attended university of Birmingham to study David Edgar’s Ma in playwrighting. Kane died on 20th February 1999 due to committed suicide. She was found dead in King’s college Hospital hanging herself on a door in the hospital toilet. Whilst she was at the hospital, the doctors were told that she wanted to take her own life after trying to overdose herself couple of days before she died by swallowing nearly 1150 antidepressants tablets and 50 sleeping pills when she was suffering from depressive illness. The doctors did not realise that Kane needed extra care and constant monitoring. She had a long history on serve depression and two years before she committed suicide she had been in and out of medical care and taking anti-depressant drugs.

There are four books she wrote which are Sarah Kane, Ansia, 4.48 psicosis/Anixety, 4.48 psychosis, Crave/ 4.48 psicosis and Nana’s Royal Mess, she had written five plays which are Blasted, 4.48 psychosis, Cleansed, Crave and Phaedra’s love and she has appeared in a movie called “Skin”.

Theatres that use Sarah Kane’s work are Stage Theatre, IN-YER-FACE Theatre and The National Theatre.

The reason of researching Sarah Kane because from looking at her way of describing what is like to have mental health, it provide better understanding of it. Along side this, looking at the books and work she had made allow use to apply to our piece of mental health work.

But focusing on our performance piece, we need to ensure that we have enough information on the trigger, what it is like to have mental health, who are more likely to suffer from it and how to deal with it to be able to present to our target audience effectively and ensure that it not offensive so it is not seen as stereotype but seen as it is happening now.

[markalbueba]

The show’s Facebook page ran a live event where fans could help find out the hotly anticipated start date – by helping to melt an ice block with fire.

Not that the HBO show isn’t hot enough.

Fans could comment ‘Fire!’ to set off the flames to try and mount the icy structure.

FIRREEEE (Picture: Facebook)

If they commented ‘DRACARYS!’ they got two flames.

And in between the blasts of fire, cast and crew appear to give away a few little secrets from the set.

Over 130,000 people worldwide watched the even unfold.

You can watch the action unfold here:

But not everyone was in the mood to watch ice melt:

Me waiting for this #GOT ice block to melthttp://pic.twitter.com/qhwChdbOe4

— MrSteveBob (@MrSteveBob) March 9, 2017

I just watched a block of ice melting for 7 minutes.#GoT

— Yasser Srour (@YSrour) March 9, 2017

Me watching the #GoT livestreamhttp://pic.twitter.com/6dld4KBvP3

— lexa deserved better (@danversxgriffin) March 9, 2017

Me, to .@GameOfThrones now.#GameOfThrones #GoT#GOTS7 http://pic.twitter.com/OLbnal1CSQ

— Lana Kane's Nooope! (@aerynsunx) March 9, 2017

wait is the fire melting ice meaning the wall is going to fall down this season?! #GoT http://pic.twitter.com/vBznvZ7VIp

— Lisa Michelle (@vivalalisa23) March 9, 2017

HBO Exec: How we going to announce S7 date? Exec: how about an unnecessary publicity stunt, or freeze it in ice? HBO exec: BRILLIANT! #GoT

— Ryan Hensel (@dieseldda) March 9, 2017

This proves that we are lit willing to watch paint dry or ice melt in this case for #GoTSeason7 #gothttp://pic.twitter.com/moDBrBSG5T

— Sarah (@CaffeineColors) March 9, 2017

The seventh series will return on July 16 – much sooner than thought.

But did Ser Davros let slip the secret after hinting it could return in July ‘or September’ ?

The show will return on July 16 (Picture: Facebook)

And HBO celebrated by releasing a new teaser for the show.

The minute-and-a-half clip shows a series of scary creatures with our favourite characters from past, present and future speaking in the background – as they all turn into dust.

And there’s also a lot of screaming before Jon Snow says: ‘The Great War is here’.

Ooooh exciting.

The great war is here. #GoTS7 premieres 7.16.http://pic.twitter.com/1Jna10kNuQ

— Game Of Thrones (@GameOfThrones) March 9, 2017

The poster for the seventh series has already been released – and it confirms what we all were thinking.

Released at the South By South West film conference in Austin, Texas, the poster gets very literal, teasing the battle of ice vs fire with an image of, well, ice and fire.

And seeing as we saw Daenerys set sail for Westeros at the end of season 6, could this teaser poster be suggesting a battle between dragons and the White Walkers?

We think so.

Ohhh… a little #GameofThrones S7 #InProduction love tonight. @WatchersOTWall #Oathkeeperhttp://pic.twitter.com/9lwTLvUKi6

— Oz (@OzofThrones) March 4, 2017

But interestingly, the first teaser for the series shows a very important sword – and it’s not whose you think it is.

The HBO show could be back sooner than you think after the teaser hinted production was well underway already.

Source: http://ift.tt/2mFMogn

Read More

[justinharst]

The show’s Facebook page ran a live event where fans could help find out the hotly anticipated start date – by helping to melt an ice block with fire.

Not that the HBO show isn’t hot enough.

Fans could comment ‘Fire!’ to set off the flames to try and mount the icy structure.

FIRREEEE (Picture: Facebook)

If they commented ‘DRACARYS!’ they got two flames.

And in between the blasts of fire, cast and crew appear to give away a few little secrets from the set.

Over 130,000 people worldwide watched the even unfold.

You can watch the action unfold here:

But not everyone was in the mood to watch ice melt:

Me waiting for this #GOT ice block to melthttp://pic.twitter.com/qhwChdbOe4

— MrSteveBob (@MrSteveBob) March 9, 2017

I just watched a block of ice melting for 7 minutes.#GoT

— Yasser Srour (@YSrour) March 9, 2017

Me watching the #GoT livestreamhttp://pic.twitter.com/6dld4KBvP3

— lexa deserved better (@danversxgriffin) March 9, 2017

Me, to .@GameOfThrones now.#GameOfThrones #GoT#GOTS7 http://pic.twitter.com/OLbnal1CSQ

— Lana Kane's Nooope! (@aerynsunx) March 9, 2017

wait is the fire melting ice meaning the wall is going to fall down this season?! #GoT http://pic.twitter.com/vBznvZ7VIp

— Lisa Michelle (@vivalalisa23) March 9, 2017

HBO Exec: How we going to announce S7 date? Exec: how about an unnecessary publicity stunt, or freeze it in ice? HBO exec: BRILLIANT! #GoT

— Ryan Hensel (@dieseldda) March 9, 2017

This proves that we are lit willing to watch paint dry or ice melt in this case for #GoTSeason7 #gothttp://pic.twitter.com/moDBrBSG5T

— Sarah (@CaffeineColors) March 9, 2017

The seventh series will return on July 16 – much sooner than thought.

But did Ser Davros let slip the secret after hinting it could return in July ‘or September’ ?

The show will return on July 16 (Picture: Facebook)

And HBO celebrated by releasing a new teaser for the show.

The minute-and-a-half clip shows a series of scary creatures with our favourite characters from past, present and future speaking in the background – as they all turn into dust.

And there’s also a lot of screaming before Jon Snow says: ‘The Great War is here’.

Ooooh exciting.

The great war is here. #GoTS7 premieres 7.16.http://pic.twitter.com/1Jna10kNuQ

— Game Of Thrones (@GameOfThrones) March 9, 2017

The poster for the seventh series has already been released – and it confirms what we all were thinking.

Released at the South By South West film conference in Austin, Texas, the poster gets very literal, teasing the battle of ice vs fire with an image of, well, ice and fire.

And seeing as we saw Daenerys set sail for Westeros at the end of season 6, could this teaser poster be suggesting a battle between dragons and the White Walkers?

We think so.

Ohhh… a little #GameofThrones S7 #InProduction love tonight. @WatchersOTWall #Oathkeeperhttp://pic.twitter.com/9lwTLvUKi6

— Oz (@OzofThrones) March 4, 2017

But interestingly, the first teaser for the series shows a very important sword – and it’s not whose you think it is.

The HBO show could be back sooner than you think after the teaser hinted production was well underway already.

Source: http://ift.tt/2mFMogn

[grabey]

The show’s Facebook page ran a live event where fans could help find out the hotly anticipated start date – by helping to melt an ice block with fire.

Not that the HBO show isn’t hot enough.

Fans could comment ‘Fire!’ to set off the flames to try and mount the icy structure.

FIRREEEE (Picture: Facebook)

If they commented ‘DRACARYS!’ they got two flames.

And in between the blasts of fire, cast and crew appear to give away a few little secrets from the set.

Over 130,000 people worldwide watched the even unfold.

You can watch the action unfold here:

But not everyone was in the mood to watch ice melt:

Me waiting for this #GOT ice block to melthttp://pic.twitter.com/qhwChdbOe4

— MrSteveBob (@MrSteveBob) March 9, 2017

I just watched a block of ice melting for 7 minutes.#GoT

— Yasser Srour (@YSrour) March 9, 2017

Me watching the #GoT livestreamhttp://pic.twitter.com/6dld4KBvP3

— lexa deserved better (@danversxgriffin) March 9, 2017

Me, to .@GameOfThrones now.#GameOfThrones #GoT#GOTS7 http://pic.twitter.com/OLbnal1CSQ

— Lana Kane's Nooope! (@aerynsunx) March 9, 2017

wait is the fire melting ice meaning the wall is going to fall down this season?! #GoT http://pic.twitter.com/vBznvZ7VIp

— Lisa Michelle (@vivalalisa23) March 9, 2017

HBO Exec: How we going to announce S7 date? Exec: how about an unnecessary publicity stunt, or freeze it in ice? HBO exec: BRILLIANT! #GoT

— Ryan Hensel (@dieseldda) March 9, 2017

This proves that we are lit willing to watch paint dry or ice melt in this case for #GoTSeason7 #gothttp://pic.twitter.com/moDBrBSG5T

— Sarah (@CaffeineColors) March 9, 2017

The seventh series will return on July 16 – much sooner than thought.

But did Ser Davros let slip the secret after hinting it could return in July ‘or September’ ?

The show will return on July 16 (Picture: Facebook)

And HBO celebrated by releasing a new teaser for the show.

The minute-and-a-half clip shows a series of scary creatures with our favourite characters from past, present and future speaking in the background – as they all turn into dust.

And there’s also a lot of screaming before Jon Snow says: ‘The Great War is here’.

Ooooh exciting.

The great war is here. #GoTS7 premieres 7.16.http://pic.twitter.com/1Jna10kNuQ

— Game Of Thrones (@GameOfThrones) March 9, 2017

The poster for the seventh series has already been released – and it confirms what we all were thinking.

Released at the South By South West film conference in Austin, Texas, the poster gets very literal, teasing the battle of ice vs fire with an image of, well, ice and fire.

And seeing as we saw Daenerys set sail for Westeros at the end of season 6, could this teaser poster be suggesting a battle between dragons and the White Walkers?

We think so.

Ohhh… a little #GameofThrones S7 #InProduction love tonight. @WatchersOTWall #Oathkeeperhttp://pic.twitter.com/9lwTLvUKi6

— Oz (@OzofThrones) March 4, 2017

But interestingly, the first teaser for the series shows a very important sword – and it’s not whose you think it is.

The HBO show could be back sooner than you think after the teaser hinted production was well underway already.

Source: http://ift.tt/2mFMogn

[londontheatre]

Hannah Murray – Photo by Jason Alden

Hannah Murray, star of Game of Thrones and Skins to lead an all-female cast in a thrilling new production of Posh. Press night is Monday 3 April at 7.30pm.

OLD MONEY. NEW PROBLEMS. DIFFERENT GENDER. Hannah Murray (Skins, Game of Thrones, Untitled Detroit Project) is to lead the cast for the world premiere of an all-female version of Posh. Full casting for the production has been announced today.

This thrilling new production, which will run at London’s Pleasance Theatre from 29th March, gives Laura Wade’s play a new, topical voice by allowing women to take centre stage in roles originally written for men. The production will be directed by Off West End Award winner Cressida Carré.

Darkly comic, and disgracefully entertaining, Laura Wade’s universally acclaimed Posh, burst to life at the Royal Court theatre in 2010 with a cast that featured future stars Kit Harrington and James Norton, before transferring to the West End. Receiving a fanfare of plaudits, Posh became a huge hit with critics and audience alike.

Now the riotous story of Oxford student dining club, a fictionalised version of the infamous Bullingdon Club, will be reinvented for the first time by a company of all-female actors.

In the private dining room of a gastro pub, 10 young bloods with cut-glass vowels and deep pockets are meeting, intent on restoring their right to rule. As members of an elite student dining society, they’re bunkering down for a wild night of debauchery, decadence and bloody good wine.

This thrilling new production has a topical voice. However, this isn’t just a jolly: these women are planning a revolution. Welcome to the Riot Club.

Posh was long-listed as Best New Play in the Evening Standard Awards and nominated Best New Play in the Whatsonstage Awards. It was filmed in 2014 for cinema release as The Riot Club, directed by Lone Scherfig and starring Max Irons, Sam Claflin, Freddie Fox and Douglas Booth.

Hannah Murray, named Best Actress at the Tribeca Film Festival for her portrayal of ‘Sara’ in the Danish film Bridgend, was last seen on stage in London in Martine at the Finborough Theatre, for which she was nominated ‘Best Female Performance’ at the Off West End Awards. Hannah made her West End debut in Polly Stenham’s That Face at the Royal Court and her breakthrough role was playing ‘Cassie’ in E4’s cult series Skins, before going on to star in features Chatroom, God Help The Girl, Lily and Kat and The Chosen. She will next be seen reprising the role of ‘Gilly’ in the final series of HBO/SKY series Game of Thrones and in August she will take on one of the lead roles in Katherine Bigelow’s Untitled Detroit Project, set in 1967, about one of the largest citizen uprisings in the United States’ history.

Hannah Murray said: “I am so excited to be a part of this production, it’s a fascinating opportunity to explore and investigate the nature of privilege – a topic I feel there is an increasing urgency to examine and discuss. Working with an all-female ensemble cast is a brilliant opportunity to collaborate with a fantastic company of talented women, which is not something that happens often enough.”

The rest of the cast features Lucy Aarden (Juliet in Romeo and Juliet, 1st Witch, Macbeth, Helena in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Greenwich Theatre); Cassie Bradley (at the National Theatre, Husbands and Sons and Nurse in Sam Mendes’ King Lear); Alice Brittain (Trevor Nunn’s The War of the Roses at the Rose, Kingston); Molly Hanson (Hermia, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Windsor); Verity Kirk (Cate in Sarah Kane’s Blasted at STYX); Macy Nyman (Wendy in Peter Pan, Exeter Northcott), Toni Peach (Beetles From The West, Barbican Theatre, Plymouth; Jessica Siân (White Lead at Hampstead Theatre); Sarah Thom (Tom Hardy’s Taboo, Bette Davis in Bette & Joan – The Final Curtain, St James Theatre); Gabby Wong (West End includes understudied and played Mephistopheles in Doctor Fautus at the Duke of York’s, and for the Royal Shakespeare Company, Volpone,The Jew of Malta, Love’s Sacrifice. She was Gold Nine in the Star Wars film Rogue One); Amani Zardoe (has just finished filming Victoria & Abdul with Judi Dench. She is also filming Will for TNT. Her stage roles include The Spoils at Trafalgar 1 and Measure for Measure at Shakespeare’s Globe).

Creative team: Director Cressida Carré Set & Costume Designer Sara Perks Co-Costume Designer Sarah Mills Lighting Designer Derek Anderson Sound Designer Harry Barker Producer Tom Harrop for Can’t Think Theatre Company

Cressida Carré (Director) Cressida won the Off West End Award for Best Choreography for the UK premiere of Titanic. The production opened at Southwark Playhouse, transferred to Toronto, Canada and was then restaged at Charing Cross Theatre. As a director, her other work includes: Avenue Q (UK tour 2014/15/16 & Hong Kong), Spear (Courtyard Theatre Hereford), The Lost Christmas (Trafalgar Studios), Betwixt (Edinburgh Festival), Marry Me A Little (Etcetera Theatre).

Cressida Carré said: “I am so looking forward to exploring the play with this fantastic all-female cast. We are in a very exciting time in theatre where existing works are being turned on their head giving us so much more potential to play with and the reinvention of many are opening up our perceptions in so many ways. Gender equality, privilege and class are certainly topics which are prevalent today and it will be exciting to see what happens when these historically male characters are played by women.”

Laura Wade (Writer) Laura Wade’s plays include Posh (Royal Court Theatre and West End), Tipping the Velvet (Lyric Theatre, Hammersmith), Alice (Crucible Theatre, Sheffield), Kreutzer vs. Kreutzer (Globe Theatre, Sydney Opera House and Australian tour), Other Hands (Soho Theatre), Colder Than Here (Soho Theatre and MCC Theatre New York), Breathing Corpses (Royal Court Theatre), Catch (Royal Court Theatre, written with four other playwrights), Young Emma (Finborough Theatre), 16 Winters (Bristol Old Vic Basement) and Limbo (Crucible Studio Theatre, Sheffield). Films include The Riot Club. Laura Wade trained with the Royal Court Theatre’s Young Writers Programme in London, and was a Writer on Attachment at Soho Theatre. Awards include the Critics’ Circle Award for Most Promising Playwright, the Pearson Best Play Award and the George Devine Award. Laura Wade’s plays have been performed in the UK, USA, Australia, Ireland, Sweden, Norway, Germany, the Netherlands and Mexico.

Laura Wade said: “It’s always interesting to see a new cast take on Posh, but it’ll be fascinating to see what light an all-female company can throw on the play’s world of power and privilege. I’m often asked what Posh would have been like if there were women in the Riot Club instead of men. Perhaps now I get to find out.”

LISTINGS INFORMATION Tom Harrop for Can’t Think Theatre Company presents the all-female production of POSH by Laura Wade

Pleasance Theatre Carpenters Mews North Road LONDON N7 9EF

Box Office 020 7609 1800 www.pleasance.co.uk

http://ift.tt/2kUHBmz LondonTheatre1.com