Surrender
Date
2025
Authors
Fouracre, Grace
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
University Of Victoria
Abstract
Surrender is based on and written using the works of British playwright Sara Kane. The project began as an attempt to find ways to stage Kane’s famously “unstageable” work, but through the process of its creation it became a reflection on what I believe to be the core idea of her unfinished war trilogy comprised of Cleansed and Blasted:
“The logical conclusion of the attitude that produces an isolated rape in England is the rape camps in Bosnia and the logical conclusion to the way society expects men to behave is war.”
Kane constantly draws parallels between violence and control in intimate relationships and the mass-scale violence of war. Using Kane’s own dialogue and the two main characters of Cleansed I created Surrender with the goal of doing justice to the brutality of Kane’s work while forcing audiences to confront the reality of authoritarian control. While some may view the piece as extreme I followed Kane’s own guiding principle of only depicting things based on real events.
I hope people who view Surrender gain a greater appreciation for Kane’s work and an understanding of the ways in which authoritarian control is established on political, social, or inter-personal scales.
Description
Keywords
theatre, performance, Sara Kane, war, authoritarianism, control