Superfluities Redux
A Theatre Surrounds a City:
Vienna's Burgtheater
Superfluities Redux |
A Theatre Surrounds a City: |
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Friday, 26 December 2008 Sarah Kane: SkinThe self- A comparison of the final film with the screenplay as published in the Complete Plays is instructive. The most interesting difference is the cutting of an unnecessary and mute commentary by the old black man who appears very briefly in the beginning, middle and end of the film: his compassion is less forced in the film than in the script, and a particularly unnecessary sentimentalism is excised; the compassion here is gentler, more subtle and more powerful. (I also note the mordant commentary on "communication," here rendered as a satire on the cellphone and answering machine, a few years before cellphones became ubiquitous; that the skinheads use them to coordinate a violent racist brawl is a dark commentary on the technology. So much for the "text swarm.") Though produced in 1995, it received its television debut only in 1997 on the BBC's Channel 4. Due to the depiction of violence and racism in Skin, the Daily Mail called it "one of the most violent and racially offensive programmes ever to be made for television in this country." Despite this, director Vincent O'Connell was nominated for a Golden Bear award for the film at the 1996 Berlin International Film Festival. More on Sarah Kane. Posted in /Dramatists/Sarah_Kane |