Blasted

"Blasted" is Sarah Kane's first full-length play which opened in 1995 and was the sensation of that year's theatre season, making front-page headlines and outraging some critics who thought her premise that there was a connection between a rape in a Leeds hotel room and the hellish devastation of civil war was simply an attempt to shock audiences. The questions raised in this play about violence are at the heart of Kane's writing.

Sarah Kane (1971-1999) was an English dramatist. She is best known for the extraordinary public controversy over "Blasted," her first play which, like subsequent works from her, were shocking and defining moments in theater: explosive, theatrical, lyrical and laced with emotional power and bleak humor.

"Blasted" is Sarah Kane's first full-length play which opened in 1995 and was the sensation of that year's theatre season, making front-page headlines and outraging some critics who thought her premise that there was a connection between a rape in a Leeds hotel room and the hellish devastation of civil war was simply an attempt to shock audiences. The questions raised in this play about violence are at the heart of Kane's writing. "Blasted" is Sarah Kane's first full-length play which opened in 1995 and was the sensation of that year's theatre season, making front-page headlines and outraging some critics who thought her premise that there was a connection between a rape in a Leeds hotel room and the hellish devastation of civil war was simply an attempt to shock audiences. The questions raised in this play about violence are at the heart of Kane's writing.

"I do not think I've yet seen a play that can beat Sarah Kane's sustained onslaught on the sensibilities for sheer unadulterated brutalism."--"Evening Standard"