'Blasted' Shocks as In-Your-Face Theater

Last Tuesday night, I sat in a dark hotel room near Union Square and watched through the slits in my ski mask as a man had his eyes gouged out at my feet. A single flashlight lit up the rubble that the bomb blast had scattered about the room. A masked soldier came at me, and I pinned myself as close to the wall as I could, but there was nowhere to run. It sounds like hell, but it was only theater. British theater.

The show was a 19;29 company production of Sarah Kane's "Blasted" as it has never been done before, in a room at the Mosser Hotel rather than in a theater. In the hotel's lobby the audience donned the undertaker-style masks and crammed into the elevator. We were 15 hooded theatergoers traveling to the third floor, along with one highly uncomfortable hotel patron.

Kane was a playwright who dealt in darkness. When "Blasted" premiered in London in 1995, many critics rejected and dismissed it as a gratuitous attempt at shocking and horrifying. Although it does revolve around awful happenings -rape, murder, crazed masturbation, the devouring of a dead baby-"Blasted" carries more important themes that take longer to shake off than a cheap thrill.

We shuffled into room 319, and the phone rang. Not knowing what else to do, someone answered, and proceeded to repeat the caller's instructions. Turn off cell phones. Help yourselves to water in the fridge. You are "more than welcome" to leave the room if an audience member reacts "strangely" or "violently" to the performance. I suddenly became aware of the tall hooded man standing next to me. I shifted deeper into my armchair.

"Blasted" is important for its merciless depiction of war and hunger and their effect on the human mind and soul, a topic so removed from American daily life. Even as we see grotesque images in films or on the news, they are remote enough that we can ignore or escape them before they seep too deeply into our consciousness. When the horror is close enough to smell, emotional escape is not so easy. At the movies, you don't have to jump out of the way when a screaming character is pinned to the floor with a gun to his face. This production terrified in a way that horror films only wish they could terrify an audience.

The experience of mingling with the scene was extraordinary. I couldn't help but imagine myself in Dumbledore's pensieve, witnessing things not meant for my eyes and unable to change the character's fates. Whenever the action turned to horror, some onlookers would hide their faces in their hands, others would cringe and others would step across the room for a better view. We were all the anonymous onlookers to Kane's sinister world and were given fascinating access to her severely depressed and eventually suicidal mind.

Back in the lobby after the finish of the play, I thought I would never laugh again. Shortly after, though, I was nervously chuckling with other audience members as we discussed what an intense ordeal we had all been through. None of us had ever experienced art like that before. I recovered and was safe to leave the building and return to the real world-or at least, what was my real world, sans eye gouging and the blast of bombs. 19;29 is taking "Blasted" to New York in the near future. For anyone who will be in the area, it a once in a lifetime show that cannot be missed, so long as you have the stomach for it. Don't bring a bag, be ready to move around and feel free to leave the room if anyone reacts "violently."