You don’t think analytically?

No, I’m not analytical. That’s why my memories of how the work was created are blurred. Decisions are always easier to analyze and explain in retrospect. That doesn’t mean I knew what I was doing every moment I worked on Baby. But at the moment, I’m also observing a movement towards devaluing the intuitive as an approach and trying to analyze everything politically. You can see that there is a moral conflict between word and image. But the eye cannot be moral. 

https://www.fraeulein-magazine.eu/the-brutality-of-nature-an-interview-with-heji-shin/

I walked the streets of Los Angeles and got this horrible haircut that I thought looked really cool," Kahan tells Power. "I don't know if it was Lulu, but I spent a bunch of money on terrible clothing and I was just walking around like a crazy person because I was literally having crazy withdrawals. And so I figured I'd throw that into the song because I thought it was a funny memory — and I wanted to shout out Lululemon.

It also happened at the Mona Hatoum exhibition at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art. In a tiny cylindrical room I watched a projection of a surgical camera disappearing into every orifice of the artist. True, few people could stay in the room as long as me, but I found that the voyage up Mona Hatoum’s arse put me in powerful and direct contact with my feelings about my own mortality. I can’t ask for much more.

Vicky Featherstone, the director of Crave, has done everything in her power to make it a performance in the true sense of the word. And for me, watching the actors perform is a little like watching United – when they fly, they take off together, and when they don’t, the collapse is truly ensemble.

We also had a nasty injury scare. During the second preview, Paul Hickey had to stop the performance due to sudden paralysis on one side of his face. The entire company was aghast, fearing he’d had a stroke. The doctor assured us it was merely hyperventilation (read “overacting”) caused by the ludicrous demands set by my text and Vicky’s insistence on performance.

But it’s only by making such demands that there’s a chance of accurate expression of ideas and emotion, and direct intellectual, emotional and physical contact with the needs of the audience.

There are some wonderful performers in Edinburgh this year who are prepared to take risks in order to meet those demands and needs. But there’s only one David Beckham.

 

Stage directions

The play is notable for its many difficult to achieve stage directions which have been described as "impossible". Examples include: "Tinker produces a large pair of scissors and cuts off Carl's tongue" (Scene Four).^[17] "A sunflower bursts through the floor and grows above their heads" (Scene Six).^[18] "The rats carry Carl's feet away" (Scene Fourteen).^[19]

Sarah Kane said "There's a Jacobean play with the stage direction 'Her spirit rises from her body and walks away, leaving her body behind.' Anyway, Shakespeare has a bear running across the stage in A Winter's Tale, and his stage craft was perfect".^[8]

Sarah Kane's friend and fellow playwright, David Greig, wrote about the play's stage directions in his introduction to Sarah Kane: Complete Plays:

"Theatrically, Cleansed is a daring challenge. It's physicalisation of lyrical imagery raises the same question that dogs Kane's first three plays: how do-able are they? […] This is a question that goes to the heart of Kane's writing. Every one of her plays asks the director to make radical staging decisions […] In a Kane play the author makes demands but she does not make solutions. Kane believed passionately that if it was possible to imagine something, it was possible to represent it. By demanding an interventionist and radical approach from her directors she was forcing them to go the limits of their theatrical imagination, forcing them into poetic and expressionistic solutions. […] With Cleansed, Kane wrote a play which demanded that its staging be as poetic as its writing."^[20]

Director of the 2016 National Theatre production of the play, Katie Mitchell, has said "Kane's stage directions request literal violence […] A tongue is cut off with a pair of scissors. Hands are cut off. So how do you do that in a way that is not symbolic?"^[21]

DH Lawrence, selected essays 

Dr Chris Tuckley, head of interpretation and learning at Jorvik Viking Centre, said the smells are vital to the immersive experience.

“Most famously, the smells of cesspits and their rotting contents produce a sense of filth and squalor by 21st century standards, but other smells carry the message that the Viking-era city was a busy, productive and connected place. 

“For this reason, we have the smell of smoke and fumes created by the city’s metalworkers; of tallow candles that lit the gloomy interiors of workshops and houses; of the incense burned by the priests who served the city’s Christian populace; of the forests and marshy, wild areas that fringed the city; and the fishy smell of a quay on the river Foss where the fishermen landed their catch.

“We know from visitor feedback gathered over the last quarter century that our visitors find Jorvik’s smells one of the most memorable aspects of their visit.”

After twenty years in, I'm so naïve I was under the impression

That everyone wrote their own verses

It's coming back different and, yeah, that shit hurts me

I'm humming and whistling to those not deserving

I've stumbled and lived every word

Was I working just way too hard?

Buñuel) did so many films on the impossibility of sainthood. People trying to be good in Viridiana and Nazarín, people trying to do their thing. In "The Weight" it's the same thing. People like Buñuel would make films that had these religious connotations to them but it wasn't necessarily a religious meaning. In Buñuel there were these people trying to be good and it's impossible to be good. In "The Weight" it was this very simple thing. Someone says, "Listen, would you do me this favour? When you get there will you say 'hello' to somebody or will you give somebody this or will you pick up one of these for me? Oh? You're going to Nazareth, that's where the Martin guitar factory is. Do me a favour when you're there." This is what it's all about. So the guy goes and one thing leads to another and it's like "Holy shit, what's this turned into? I've only come here to say 'hello' for somebody and I've got myself in this incredible predicament." It was very Buñuelish to me at the time.[22]