Masterpieces

Description

You are not at liberty to avenge the pornography industry in this country. We have the censorship laws for that. Masterpieces opens on three couples having dinner in a restaurant, exchanging sexist jokes. The response is varied: some of them laugh uproariously, some of them uncomfortably, and one is deeply unhappy. Their domestic discussion about the morality of pornography is suddenly amplified a thousand-fold in the next scene in which Rowena is on trial for murder. She had just been to see a 'snuff' film in which a porn actress is actually mutilated and killed on screen, and on her way home is approached threateningly by a man who she ends up pushing under a train because he was harassing her. The play is the story of Rowena's journey, through seeing a porn magazine for the first time to a thwarted attempt to help an unhappy prostitute, from uncomfortable laughter to radical and disgusted protest at female subjugation. Masterpieces is an angry and defiant play, first staged in 1983, at the Royal Exchange Theatre, Manchester, before transferring to the Royal Court Theatre, London. It earned Daniels a London Theatre Critics Award for Most Promising Playwright. This edition introduces Sarah Daniels into the Modern Classics series and features an introduction by Elaine Aston, Professor of Contemporary Performance at Lancaster University.

Sarah Daniels's plays include Ripen Our Darkness; Ma's Flesh is Grass; The Devil's Gateway; Masterpieces; Neaptide, winner of the 1982 George Devine Award; Byrthrite; The Gut Girls; Beside Herself; Head-Rot Holiday; The Madness of Esme and Shaz; Blow Your House Down, based on the novel by Pat Barker; Dust and Flying Under Bridges.

A very powerful evening of theatre . . . Miss Daniels has established herself as a distinct voice with real theatrical flair. -- Michael Coveney * Financial Times * Ultimately powerful and deeply disturbing . . . I came out overwhelmed by the sincerity of Sarah Daniels's writing in her play Masterpieces, a play that finally adds up to the most persuasive argument I've heard for banning pornography. * Manchester Evening News * Almost three decades after its premiere, British playwright Sarah Daniels' daring dark comedy Masterpieces remains pertinent and powerful if occasionally overwrought. In its audacious treatment of controversial sexual themes, Daniels' play might be considered a descendant of Frank Wedekind's once-scandalous 1891 German classic "Spring Awakening," which went unproduced until 1906 because it investigated sexual discovery by children. Both works met with widespread outrage upon their debuts. Daniels casts a lacerating eye on the porn industry, suggesting its potentially devastating effects on individuals and society. * LA Theater Review * The play has bite, anger and tenacity and many of its arguments are true . . . The supreme merit of Ms Daniels's combative work is that it makes me want to argue back. -- Michael Billington * Guardian * A writer with a natural talent for disturbance * Observer * The only radical lesbian feminist to have made it into the mainstream -- Carole Woddis * Bloomsbury Theatre Guide *