Abstract
Although Sarah Kane’s dramaturgy of violence is often compared to Edward Bond’s use of violence in his early plays such as Saved, instead of focusing on the relationship between Kane’s and Bond’s early work, Chen argues that Kane’s plays resonate more with Bond’s later theory of subjectivity and dramaturgy. Through exploring this neglected connection, this chapter clarifies the logic behind Bond’s appreciation of Kane and sheds new light on Kane as a thinker who raises ethical questions through dramatizing violence and madness. Chen contends that Kane’s and Bond’s dramatic imagination of violence and madness can be best understood through the dramaturgy of “accident time,” which reveals the possibilities of ethical subjectivity by demonstrating how humanity as a gap can be defined.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
- 1.
Qtd. in Graham Saunders, About Kane: The Playwright and the Work (London: Faber and Faber, 2009), 48.
- 2.
Edward Bond, “Epilogue: ‘The mark of Kane,’” in Sarah Kane in Context, ed. Laurens De Vos and Graham Saunders (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2010), 209.
- 3.
Edward Bond, “A Blast at Our Smug Theatre: Edward Bond on Sarah Kane,” Guardian, January 28, 1995.
- 4.
Bond, “Epilogue,” 216; original emphasis.
- 5.
Qtd. in Saunders, About Kane, 101.
- 6.
Ibid., 103.
- 7.
Edward Bond, “Commentary of The War Plays,” in Plays: 6 (London: Methuen, 1998), 250.
- 8.
Sarah Kane, 4.48 Psychosis, in Complete Plays (London: Methuen, 2001), 221.
- 9.
Qtd. in Graham Saunders, “Love Me or Kill Me”: Sarah Kane and the Theatre of Extremes (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2002), 114.
- 10.
Edward Bond, “The Third Crisis: The Possibility of a Future Drama,” JCDE 1, no.1 (2013): 17.
- 11.
Ian Stuart, ed., Edward Bond: Letters 5 (New York: Routledge, 2001), 167. Original emphasis.
- 12.
Qtd. in Graham Saunders, “‘Just a Word on a Page and there is the Drama.’ Sarah Kane’s Theatrical Legacy,” Contemporary Theatre Review 13, no.1 (2003): 102. Original emphasis.
- 13.
Ibid., 103, n. 33.
- 14.
Kane, 4.48 Psychosis, 230.
- 15.
Ibid., 22.
- 16.
Bertolt Brecht, Brecht on Theatre, trans. Jack Davis, et al. Ed. Marc Silberman, Steve Giles and Tom Kuhn. 3rd ed (London: Bloomsbury, 2015), 176–181.
- 17.
Edward Bond, “Drama Devices,” in Edward Bond and the Dramatic Child: Edward Bond’s Plays for Young People, ed. David Davis (Stoke on Trent: Trentham Books, 2005), 90.
- 18.
Ian Stuart, ed., Selections from the Notebooks of Edward Bond: Volume Two 1980–1995 (London: Methuen, 2001), 267.
- 19.
Qtd. in Saunders, About Kane, 30–31.
- 20.
See Bond, “Commentary,” 247–251.
- 21.
Jacques Lacan, Écrits: The First Complete Edition in English, trans. Bruce Fink (New York: Norton, 2007), 713.
- 22.
Ibid., 714.
- 23.
Edward Bond, “Afterword: Sarah Kane and Theatre,” in “Love Me or Kill Me”: Sarah Kane and the Theatre of Extremes, by Graham Saunders (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2002), 190.
- 24.
Edward Bond, Coffee, in Plays: 7 (London: Methuen, 2003), 156.
- 25.
Edward Bond, The Crime of the Twenty-First Century, in Plays: 7 (London: Methuen, 2003), 251.
- 26.
Edward Bond, Born, in Plays: 8 (London: Methuen, 2006), 45.
- 27.
Kane, Blasted, in Complete Plays (London: Methuen, 2001), 20.
- 28.
Ibid., 44.
- 29.
Ibid., 45.
- 30.
Ibid., 54.
- 31.
Elaine Aston, Feminist Views on the English Stage: Women Playwrights, 1990–2000 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 90.
- 32.
Laurens De Vos, Cruelty and Desire in the Modern Theatre: Antonin Artaud, Sarah Kane, and Samuel Beckett (Madison: Fairleigh Dickinson University, 2011), 127.
- 33.
Ibid., 134.
- 34.
Kane, Cleansed, in Complete Plays (London: Methuen, 2001), 150.
- 35.
Qtd. in Saunders, About Kane, 76.
- 36.
Kane, 4.48 Psychosis, 229.
- 37.
Theodor W. Adorno, Aesthetic Theory, trans. Robert Hullot-Kentor (London: Continuum, 2002), 196.
- 38.
Karoline Gritzner, “(Post)Modern Subjectivity and the New Expressionism: Howard Barker, Sarah Kane, and Forced Entertainment,” Contemporary Theatre Review 18, no. 3 (2008): 331.
- 39.
Heidi Stephenson and Natasha Langridge, Rage and Reason: Women Playwrights on Playwriting (London: Methuen, 1997), 133.
- 40.
Emmanuel Levinas, Totality and Infinity, trans. Alphonso Lingis (Pennsylvania: Duquesne University Press, 1969), 198.
- 41.
Ibid., 203.
- 42.
Ibid., 271; original emphasis.
- 43.
Elaine Aston, “Reviewing the Fabric of Blasted,” in Sarah Kane in Context, ed. Laurens De Vos and Graham Saunders (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2010), 25.
- 44.
Emmanuel Levinas, Otherwise than Being or Beyond Essence, trans. Alphonso Lingis (Pennsylvania: Duquesne University Press, 1998), 79.
- 45.
Kane, 4.48 Psychosis, 227.
- 46.
Mark Ravenhill, “Obituary: Sarah Kane,” Independent, February 23, 1999.
- 47.
Aleks Sierz, “Still In-Yer-Face? Towards a Critique and a Summation,” New Theatre Quarterly 18, no. 1 (2002): 19.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2020 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Chen, CC. (2020). The Hidden Dialogue Between Sarah Kane and Edward Bond: The Dramaturgy of Accident Time and Ethical Subjectivities. In: Boles, W. (eds) After In-Yer-Face Theatre. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-39427-1_9
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-39427-1_9
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-39426-4
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-39427-1
eBook Packages: Literature, Cultural and Media StudiesLiterature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)