Feeling the Loss of Feminism: Sarah Kane's Blasted and an Experiential Genealogy of Contemporary Women's Playwriting

This essay disinters Blasted, the highly controversial debut play by Sarah Kane, from a masculinist cult of "in-yer-face-ism" in order to propose a genealogy of contemporary women's playwriting on the British stage characterized by an experiential drive to feeling the loss of feminism. Taking Blasted as a seminal point of reference, an experiential genealogy of women's writing is constructed by looking back at work by Rebecca Prichard and Judy Upton, and forward to millennial women's drama—in particular to politically angry newcomer debbie tucker green, whose theatre is examined as a savage critique of a world scarred by an acute lack of altruistic feeling for "others." The essay concludes with brief reflections on the efforts made by new women writers to claim a space on the British stage.