About the Play:

Blasted has long been a favourite of acting teachers for Female/Male Scenes and Male/Male Scenes.

Blasted is a full-length drama by Sarah Kane. A middle-aged man, Ian, and young woman, Cate, enter a hotel room. As private and public violation collide their world fragments around them. Acknowledged as the most provocative and influential British playwright of her generation, the author's debut play Blasted forges a potent theatrical vision of destruction, collapse, and ultimately, redemption and love.

Blasted is an indictment of the priorities of tabloid journalism. A lavish hotel room, an apocalyptic war raging outside, Ian and his ex-lover Cate struggle to reconstruct the fragments of a romantic connection they once shared. An intruder tests Ian's limits by exposing him to the torturous reality of wartime terror. Blasted's canonical status reflects the raw beauty and terror of Sarah Kane's writing. Probing the brutality people inflict upon one another, the suffering and violation, the play also looks at the role of love and the redemption it offers. Unafraid to delve into darkness, this is a provocative, fragmenting piece full of significance and power.

Blasted was first staged in 1995 at the tiny Theatre Upstairs at the Royal Court in London. The debut of a 23-year-old playwright in a fringe theatre caused a media storm, making front-page headlines and outraging audiences with its depiction of rape, torture and violence in civil war. At the time, it was fiercely attacked by critics, who viewed it as an immature attempt to shock the audience. However, when the Royal Court revived the play on the main stage in 2001, it was drastically reassessed and has since been praised as a powerful statement about the parallel between domestic and war-related violence. The play has become a favourite scene study vehicle in acting classes and workshops and is now considered a seminal work of European theatre, the play has defined an entire era of stage writing.

Cast: 1 female, 2 male

What people say:

"Blasted is undoubtedly a landmark of modern theatre, its moral force at once uncanny and explosive." — Evening Standard (London)

"Kane's play is wild, but artful too." — Evening Standard (London)

"...this is a play of exceptional power and prescience." — Daily Telegraph (London)

"...now rightly regarded as a milestone in British theatre." — Daily Express (London)

"Fifteen years on from that explosive world premiere, what is alarming now is how prescient Blasted seems. It was written out of an attempt to synthesise two nations' horrors; the ethnic cleansing that Kane saw in the catastrophe of the Bosnian civil war, and racism and sexual abuse in Britain. Now such horrors seem far closer to us. Where once images in the play were received as being heightened almost to the point of absurdity, now they have the smoke of realism about them." — The Guardian (London)

About the Playwright:

Sarah Kane (1971-1999) was a controversial English playwright. Her plays dealt uncompromisingly with sensational and shocking themes such as death, sex, violence and mental illness. Despite initial critical hostility and outrage, she is now recognized as one of the most influential voices in modern European theatre. She wrote five plays that are now regarded as modern classics and have had hundreds of productions around the world.