Writing Plays Is an art Form - Essay Example

Playwrights Dont Give Answers, They Ask Questions (Caryl Churhill) Art imitates life, and in life, as in art, there are no clichéd happy endings, no sudden unraveling of the tangle of life to reveal a clear picture, no falling of the puzzle pieces into place when you least expect it. Play-writing is an art, and playwrights, being artists, portray life as they see it, an amalgam of extreme joy and absolute sorrow, of hope and despair, of love and hate, so closely enmeshed in one another that it becomes impossible to tell where one ends and another begins. Unlike the happily- ever- after ending of most fairy tales, life rarely ever explains the whys and the whats of the events that beset us. The same is the case with plays. When u watch one, when you read one, you frequently walk away with a heavy burden of questions on your heart. If this is so, then the playwright has managed to do what he set out to achieve. No play demonstrates with greater efficacy the unrest a masterful writer can create in the breast of the spectators than Sarah Kane’s debut, “ Blasted”. The play has only one act, divided into five scenes. It starts in a posh hotel room where a misogynistic, xenophobic middle aged reporter Ian brings a young family friend, Cate. He attempts to seduce her, failing which he rapes her, clearly demonstrating his power over her by pointing his gun at her during the act. The next morning Cate escapes trough a bathroom window, just before a mortar explodes in the room. A soldier enters the room and tell Ian about how he lost his girlfriend to the war. He then sodomizes Ian and sucks out his eyes, before shooting himself with Ian’s revolver. Cate come back holding a baby that a woman handed to her, but the baby dies and Cate buries it under the floor boards in the room, from where it is later cannibalized by a starving Ian. She leaves again and prostitutes herself for money to buy food. The play ends with her coming back to the room and sharing her food with Ian. The stark horror and naked brutality of the play have led to much criticism by reviewers. Jack Tinker from the Daily Mail commented on it, saying: “…for utterly and entirely disgusted I was by a play that appears to know no bounds of decency, yet has no message to convey by way of excuse.” The haunting imagery from the play burns itself into the viewers mind, and often the nightmarish quality of the play is so great that the underlying message gets lost somewhere in the depths of revulsion. The viewer is forced to ask himself a number of questions at the end of the play. There are no heroes, no villains. There is no causation, only effects. Everyone is a perpetrator and everyone is a victim. Does being a victim justify victimization of others? Is it random acts of mindless violence like a rape in a hotel room that are a perpetuating the cycle of violence that envelops our whole world today? Is humanity just a thin veneer that is dropped in the face of any strife? Can we still even dare to call ourselves human when we are capable of inflicting such agony on others? And finally, what are love, hope , forgiveness? What makes Cate come back to her tormentor, to the man she calls “ a night-mare” twice in the play, and feed him? With the last words of the play, a simple “ thank you” from Ian’s lips, all the fragility and uniqueness of humanity comes rushing back into a play that seems to be nothing more than an “ open drain, a loathsome sore, unbandaged, a dirty act done publicly.” (Daily telegraph, commenting on Henry Ibsen’s “Ghosts.”14 march 1981) Kane herself describes the motivation behind writing “ Blasted” in these words: “So I thought what could possibly be the connection between a common rape in a Leeds hotel room and what’s happening in Bosnia? And suddenly the penny dropped and I thought of course, it’s obvious. One is the seed and the other is the tree. I do think that the seeds of full- scale war can always be found in peace time civilization.”(Saunders, pg 38) The other play I’ll discuss in this essay is also a debut, by 18 year old British playwright, Shelagh Delaney. The questions posed by this play however, are of a very different nature. In comparison to “ Blasted.” The play is a social commentary, and was a part of the emerging genre known as “kitchen sink drama.”(Strenlicht, pg 203) In two acts, the play tells the story of the dysfunctional relationship between a mother and her daughter. The play opens with them discussing the new apartment they have moved into. The tone of the conversation is hostile and mutually antagonistic. The daughter, Jo, is a bright young girl but wants to leave school and start working so that she can be independent of her mother, Helen, who lives mostly off money given to her by her suitors. A young suitor, Peter, enters the scene and asks Helen to marry him. In her search for affection, Jo agrees to marry a young black sailor, and spends Christmas eve with him after being told Helens wedding plans. She gets pregnant and the sailor leaves. She starts living alone in the same apartment and makes friends with a young homosexual artist, Geoff, who provides her emotional support and consoles her, until her mother, kicked out by Peter returns to the apartment and drives Geoff away, leaving Jo all alone to go through labor. The play questions our ideal of worldly happiness. All the characters in the play are offered hope, a glimpse of a better tomorrow, “a taste of honey,” which is then withdrawn, leaving their lives as bereft of joy as it was before. This glimmer of hope makes many appearances throughout the course of the play: when Helen is offered marriage, when Jo is made an offer of marriage by the sailor, when Jo finally finds contentment if not happiness with Geoff, at all these junctures, you’re led to believe that things will end happily now… but just as in real life, they never do. They characters of the play are forever dangling in-front of one another promises of impossible things, which they can never give. One of the most hard hitting moments in the play comes when Helen sees some drawings made by her daughter and, recognizing her talent, asks her not to drop out of school as she would be wasting herself. Jo replies, “So long as I don’t waste anybody else”, thus reflecting her belief that her mother’s inept parenting had already laid Jo’s own life to ruin. The play draws attention to domestic strife in everyday life, and the consequences it can have in the life of children starved of affection at home. In Jo, we see a character with wit and talent, who ends up bogged down by circumstances and pushed into a life very similar to her mothers’, a life that she always wanted to escape, thus perpetuating the cycle of misery. Neither one of these plays tries to provide answers to the issues of human brutality or social injustice. They just bring these issues to the limelight in innovative ways, forcing people to think about things they would much rather disregard. They force people to question the norms of their everyday lives and think out of the tidy self-made boxes that they inhabit. A good playwright makes us question ourselves and what we believe. The answer has to come from deep with in us. References 1. Tinker, Jack. “The Daily Mail”, 19 Jan 1995. 2. “Daily Telegraph,” commenting on Henry Ibsen’s “Ghosts.”14 March 1981. 3. Saunders, Graham. “Love me or Kill me: Sarah Kane and the extremes of Theatre.” Pg 37( 2002) 4. Sternlicht, Sanford V. “A Readers Guide to Modern British Drama.” Pg 203.( 2004) Read More