'Love me or kill me’: Sarah Kane & the theatre of extremes

Monograph on the playwright Sarah Kane

Des liaisons dangereuses? Réseaux donnés, réseaux supposés et réseaux déguisés d’une nonne vénitienne au XVIIe siècle

This article deals with Tarabotti's own family, her religious family within her nunnery and her ideal family, the so-called "République des lettres". Despite her permanent denial about her parents and siblings, she has ties with them all: she benifitted from her sister Camilla's and her mother's wills, she had a friendly relationship with one of her brothers-in-law, she took pity of her two sisters who remained spinsters. The same occurred with her religious family, where she developed close friendships with at least two of them. Moreover, her sisters in religion often belonged to patrician, well-off families and it is possible to argue that Tarabotti managed to expand her relationships with very important people via her sisters in religion. But the family she truly cherished, was her family d'election, the one she had been free to choose and to pursue: her literary family. However, this latter one was not a very recomandable family for a nun: therefore she kept silent with the most relevant elements of it, namely with the French priest and astronomer Ismael Boulliau who acted as the go-between for her last book, published abroad two years after her death. The article provides evidence to such connections, ties and knots, explaining at least in part Tarabotti's extraordinary success in life as a proto-feminist and political writer.

Experiences of learning French: a snapshot at Years 11, 12 and 13

This paper considers the attitudes of students in Years 11, 12 and 13 towards French and, in particular, how they view the reasons behind their level of achievement. It reports findings from a small-scale pilot study, conducted in four schools and colleges, involving 83 students in Year 11, 26 in Year 12 and 14 in Year 13. The findings indicate that French is perceived by many Year 11 students to be difficult and uninteresting. These students, furthermore, do not consider that French is of much benefit in terms of their future career. The data suggest that there is a tendency among students in all three year groups to attribute their lack of success in French to their own low ability and to the difficulty of tasks set, which, it is argued, may affect their levels of motivation in a negative way. Few students in the study have any insight into the importance of learning strategies in overcoming difficulties experienced in language learning. Students' attitudes are then discussed in relation to learning strategy training. It is argued that if learners are encouraged to explore the possibility that their achievement in French may be related to the efficacy of the learning strategies they use, rather than to factors such as low ability or task difficulty, their self-concept, motivation and language learning achievements can be enhanced. A brief outline is given of a planned research project which proposes to address these issues further.

'A theatre of ruins'. Edward Bond & Samuel Beckett: theatrical antagonists

The playwright Edward Bond has long made known his antagonism to dramatists allied to Martin Esslin’s Theatre of the Absurd. The work of Samuel Beckett has come in for particular criticism by Bond. Using published writings (and unpublished correspondence between myself and Bond), I hope to trace the development of this antagonism between ‘Bondian’ and ‘Beckettian’ views of theatre. However, this article will also set out to argue that both early work such as The Pope’s Wedding (1962), and more recent work such as Coffee (1995), make use of motifs, characters and ideas from Beckett’s theatre. The article will set out provisional reasons why Bond, despite his misgivings, is not averse to incorporating elements from Beckett’s ‘theatre of ruins’, as he terms it, into his own work.

'Out Vile Jelly': Sarah Kane's 'Blasted' & Shakespeare's 'King Lear'

Sarah Kane's notorious 1995 debut, Blasted, has been widely though belatedly recognized as a defining example of experiential or ‘in-yer-face’ theatre. However, Graham Saunders here argues that the best playwrights not only innovate in use of language and dramatic form, but also rewrite the classic plays of the past. He believes that too much stress has been placed on the play's radical structure and contemporary sensibility, with the effect of obscuring the influence of Shakespearean tradition on its genesis and content. He clarifies Kane's gradually dawning awareness of the influence of Shakespeare's King Lear on her work and how elements of that tragedy were rewritten in terms of dialogue, recast thematically, and reworked in terms of theatrical image. He sees Blasted as both a response to contemporary reality and an engagement with the history of drama. Graham Saunders is Senior Lecturer in Theatre Studies at the University of the West of England, Bristol, and author of the first full-length study of Kane's work: ‘Love Me or Kill Me’: Sarah Kane and the Theatre of Extremes (Manchester University Press, 2002). An earlier version of this article was given as a paper at the ‘Crucible of Cultures: Anglophone Drama at the Dawn of a New Millennium’ conference in Brussels, May 2001. Saunders is currently working on articles about Samuel Beckett and Edward Bond

Edward Bond & the celebrity of exile

A shibboleth has grown up around the work of Edward Bond. The tag ‘controversial dramatist’ has continued to dog both the man and his work. This article will hope to explore some of the contradictory, and sometimes frustrating manifestations that such ‘celebrity’ has produced. Since the reception of The War Plays [1985] by the Royal Shakespeare Company at the National Theatre Bond has largely withdrawn his work from mainstream British theatre. Since the late 1990s he has looked to a new home – La Colline Theatre – in France, to premiere new work and run retrospective seasons of older plays. Here, Bond's celebrity is of a different kind, and has allowed him to enhance and develop his work as a playwright, director and writer about theatre. While this article draws on secondary sources it also uses material based on personal correspondence with Edward Bond.