A play about what happens when domestic and war-related violence intersect. Are you ready to be Blasted?

Sarah Kane’s first full-length play Blasted, opened at the Royal Court Theatre in London in 1995. It became the cause célèbre of the theatrical year, making front-page headlines, selling out houses and outraging critics.

Pi will be marking the 20th anniversary of Blasted’s first production by bringing Kane’s seminal play to life in Vancouver in April 2015. This will be the second professional production of Blasted seen in this country. Twenty years after it first hit the London stage with incendiary force, Blasted now seems more at home in the present than it ever has in the past. Scenes that were thought of as exaggerated to the point of absurdly have taken on an uncomfortable familiarity in the face of contemporary events.

In her iconic play, Sarah Kane has created an unforgettable theatrical experience that illustrates how war is no more than the natural extension of the personal violence that can be found behind the locked doors of homes everywhere. History has shown humans to be capable of acting without mercy, while we have, at the same time, an innate need to love and be loved. Kane explores this paradox in an uncompromising play.

What begins as the sordid  story of a dysfunctional relationship soon takes on a classical almost operatic dimension as the all-too-common realities of domestic brutality become inverted and Kane pushes her characters across the threshold of the familiar into the surreal nightmare of a world shattered by war.