Blasted (Kane)

Over the past few lessons, we have been looking at Blasted by Sarah Kane. The detailed description of the play can be found here and here.

READING THE PLAY

The violence within the play is extreme and becomes more so with every layer that is added, however, towards the end of the play the shock value appears to be lost. Maybe this was because we were reading the play so weren't watching the violence unfold onstage, although an audience could feel this and thus Kane could be suggesting that when someone sees violence often they become immune to it. This can certainly be seen in Cate's character as at the end of the play when she sees Ian without eyes and gives a sexual favour to a soldier for food, she doesn't appear to be as affected as she may have been at the start of the play.

Ian's character arc is inferred to be the loss of power as at the start of the play he seems controlling of Cate and very racist/homophobic/misogynistic. This personality is stereotypically what men in power tend to have.  The loss of power at the end is shown as he has to rely on Cate to come back and bring him food and is shown as he appears to be losing his sanity in the final scene. Cate is shown as innocent and childlike throughout the play despite her age and thus it could be implied that she has a disability of some kind but she is determined and can defend herself against Ian's sexual attempts. At the beginning of the play Cate has limited power over Ian but at the end of the play she is the only thing that Ian can count on - it is in this way that Ian and Cate's relationship is switched in terms of power. Ian and Cate's relationship is toxic as I have mentioned in a previous blog. This can be seen as not only does Ian rape Cate, Cate bites Ian's penis. The lack of words after this has happened suggests that this is normal repetitive behaviour. Moreover, it is implied that Ian is a sexual predator and had preyed on Cate from a young age most probably because of her inferred disability.

The Soldier serves the purpose of bringing more foul language into the piece alongside physical violence which is typical of Kane's style. He shows how the effects of war can impact a person. Moreover, the lack of name given to the Soldier suggests that he and other soldiers are nothing but pawns to bigger power sources - which makes it ironic that he is able to overpower the most powerful person in the play thus far (Ian) - and thus lose their identity.

Kane wouldn't be Kane without the juxtaposition of tenderness which can be seen in the final scene of the play where Cate feeds Ian food even after the events of the play. This is very typical for Kane's style and could represent how humanity can continue to flourish even after horror.

THEMES

The major themes within the play are:

1. Loss of power of those who were once in control - this can be seen by the first and last words spoken by Ian. The first line spoken by Ian is "I've shat in better places than this" which not only shows Ian's arrogance but is also ironic because in the last scene he does defecate in the hotel. The first line shows that Ian isn't grateful for good things but at the end of the play he says "Thank you" for being fed by Cate which he wouldn't have done in the first part of the play. 
2. The effects of war. 
3. How people can lose their identity due to violence. 
4. How youth and innocence can be destroyed by violence. 
5. Toxic relationships. 

TASK

In a group of two, we were asked to come up with what the main theme is and how we would show this if we were to direct the piece. With Bella, the theme that we chose was the loss/transfer of power and the three moments that we thought show this are:

1. At the beginning of the play when Ian shows himself naked to Cate which shows he believes he has the major power over Cate as he wouldn't do that if he felt confident which comes with having a large amount of power over the situation. 
2. When the Soldier rapes Ian and gouges his eyes out which shows that Ian is under the will of the Soldier. This begins Ian's loss of power and transfers it to the soldier who does have more power in this scene. More power being a bigger gun. 
3. When Ian says "Thank you" to Cate at the end. Ian relies on Cate and has to be polite otherwise she would most probably leave. However, he does still have some power over Cate and thus the roles haven't been fully reversed nor has there been a full transfer of power. This can be seen as Cate still does as he asks - or maybe this is because she doesn't know what else to do because she has been so well sexually groomed by Ian. 

PORTION OF THE PLAY WE CHOSE

The images below show the part of the play we chose with annotations. We chose this part of the play because it shows how Ian has little power but does have some power as Cate does what he says. However, Cate does have major power in this scene because she denies him from taking his own life.

The video below shows our final performance:

The following videos show the analysis of the final performance:

Forced Entertainment and Meta Theatre

For the majority of this lesson, we looked further at Forced Entertainment's methods for devising. We were told to go around the school and find words/phrases that could be used in a piece of theatre fitting Forced Entertainment's style. After doing this for around 15 mins, we came back to the class and discussed the texts that we had found and to give them a title such as An Empty Text which could represent an empty room, as suggested by Forced Entertainment in Tim Etchell's book Certain Fragments (which we are basing most of the work of Forced Entertainment on). The following images are the words/phrases that we Izzy, Joel, and I used in the piece that we developed:

A text to tell a story - Izzy's book. 

A fictional text found by Joel. 

A geographical text found on the humanities corridor.

A vandalised text found on a ladder outside the common room.

An instructive text found outside the library

A harsh text found on the maths corridor.

The video below shows our final performance using these words and phrases:

The video below shows an analysis of the above piece: 

I do think that the piece would need to be developed much further in order for it to be viewed by an outside audience, but given the time constraints and stimulus we found, the performance is good as it shows humour and does have a political message. However, I do think that it needed to be in a style that is much more similar to that of Forced Entertainment's pieces such as Speak Bitterness where the actors are stating things where it is undefined as fact or fiction. This piece didn't have that element but other pieces did and were much more like the play that the previous Y13s did for Director's Challenge last year -  Status Update.

Meta Theatre

Meta Theatre is a type of theatre that knows it is a piece of theatre and therefore all the characters are aware of this. This is mostly done in sitcoms, such as Miranda, and in children's TV, such as Dora the Explorer. Not only does it allow the audience to feel more comfortable, but it also allows for better interaction and for children to stay watching the TV as they are being directly spoken to and have the opportunity to answer questions. It can also be seen in pantomimes, and in some musicals - especially those that poke fun at the theatre itself. It can be seen in the play Antigone, the analysis of which can be found below:

Forced Entertainment

On Thursday's lesson, we looked further into Forced Entertainment. A previous blog on this subject can be found here. This blog, however, should provide a better insight into the Sheffield based company, their style and who they are influenced by.

Academic Article

The first thing that we did in the lesson was read the below academic article, categorising and highlighting key quotes into the sections: facts, style, and past performances. I found the article easy and interesting to read, mostly because I have read academic articles for coursework and EPQ work and because I really like the style of Etchells/Forced Entertainment. I would be very happy if I got a play by Forced Entertainment in either this unit (contemporary theatre) or in the Director's Challenge unit as I want to experiment with how this style works and how it can be improved - I am also inspired because of the company's Sheffield based background.

The major style that is evident when watching a Forced Entertainment style or by reading the article is that their plays are powered by society. Moreover, their plays don't appear to follow any real storyline. Most of the time they are stating truths or lies (as shown in Speak Bitterness) which are all presented as fact. Not only is what they do onstage improvised, as it is said in the article, Forced Entertainment can be seen as "avant-garde", that is, ahead of their time which I think is clearly true as shown by their "1994 piece entitled, A Decade of Forced Entertainment" where they plotted world events onto a map of the UK. Additionally, the influence of other contemporary practitioners can be seen with a suggestion of Boal where an audience member is expected to be an active participant; this is also similar to Brecht because an audience member has to think about what Brceht is trying to suggest which is certainly done with a form of spass in Forced Entertainment. Forced Entertainment does differ slightly from Brecht - Forced Entertainment does have a political vibe, but it's certainly not as in-yer-face as Brecht did with his play entitled The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui which is most definitely seen as a parable as Hitler's rise to power. Forced Entertainment differs in style to Stanislavski as well; Stanislavski has characters, a visible plotline, and said that an audience member should enjoy themselves when watching a piece of theatre - he is much more about finding a way to connect to an audience by making them emotional by distancing them through an actor's circles of attention and by allowing a character's story arc to be similar to that of an audience. Forced Entertainment and Etchells, however, want an audience member to have an active part in the piece, which can be summarised by the comment that when an audience is witnessing something traumatic on stage, they aren't living it.


Speak Bitterness

"The essence of Speak Bitterness is a line of people making confessions from behind a long table. Occupying a brightly lit space, the performers take turns reading from the text that is strewn across the table. The litany of wrongdoing to which they confess ranges from the big time of forgery, murder or genocide to nasty little details, such as reading each other’s diaries and refusing to take the dogs out for a walk.

First presented in 1994, Speak Bitterness has subsequently been shown in both theatre and durational versions, the latter lasting up to six hours and allowing the public to arrive, depart and return at any point. An exhaustive catalogue, the text draws on the diverse cultures of confession in, for example, contemporary chat shows, churches and show trials. Dressed in suits, the performers compete to confess the most horrific, amusing or convincing things. Speaking softly, they meet the gaze of the audience (who are partly illuminated), drawing them into direct and intimate contact."

https://www.forcedentertainment.com/project/speak-bitterness/

The major theme, I believe, that is present in Speak Bitterness is that of the need to confess as highlighted under themes in the academic article above. The play feels as though it is improvised especially as actors appear to speak and move in whatever way whenever they feel like it. There's a feeling that the play is personal because an audience member has probably read someone else's diary or not taken the dogs for a walk as suggested in the quote above. Not only does that make an audience member feel guilty about the actor, it makes them feel guilty about their actions. This perfectly shows their style as they are actively involving audience members in order to make them connect with the actor and potentially more with themselves. The video below is a five-minute clip from the play: 

The video below is our own interpretation of an extract from the play:

Most of what is shown in the video is improvised - when we would say lines and what line we would say which allowed for people to speak over each other and showed people's actual reactions to what was going on. We wanted the section to feel as though it was a group of people simply reading off a script with no predetermined movements and to seem as casual as possible in order to relate to more audience members. This can be shown by the casual entrances and exits, the sparing humour that we use, and in the use of scripts as props. I do think that we expressed the politicalness of the piece too much and made it too obvious with Joel's line at the end: "We're guilty. We confess" which although does show the theme, it makes the theme too obvious and too in-yer-face but certainly not as much as Brecht. Personally, I really enjoyed this performance as I felt comfortable and natural and it allowed me to experiment with a theatre that I don't feel I fully understood when we did our first lesson on Forced Entertainment at the start of last year.

Tabletop series

"In Complete Works six performers create condensed versions of each and every Shakespeare play, comically and intimately retelling them, using a collection of everyday objects as stand-ins for the characters on the one-metre stage of an ordinary tabletop.

Forced Entertainment have long had an obsession with virtual or described performance, exploring in different ways over the years the possibilities of conjuring extraordinary scenes, images and stories using language alone. In a brand new direction for the group, Complete Works: Table Top Shakespeare explores the dynamic force of narrative in relation to Shakespeare’s comedies, tragedies, histories and late plays. What follows is simple and idiosyncratic, absurd and strangely compelling as, through a kind of lo-fi, home-made puppetry, the stories of the plays really do come to life in vivid miniature.

Forced Entertainment’s Complete Works is the first time they’ve approached dramatic literature and the Shakespearean legacy. The result is a kind of levelling of the plays – a gently comic re-casting of them via objects from the kitchen cabinet and grocery store shelves – as well as a celebration of their power as stories, and the act of storytelling and theatre itself."

https://www.forcedentertainment.com/project/complete-works-table-top-shakespeare/

Below is a video of  myself and Maya's version of the tabletop series based off the musical West Side Story:

I think that we didn't take the piece/style as seriously as what Forced Entertainment did, but I do think the piece was somewhat effective largely because we used props that we'd found moments before in the Drama Office.

Easy Taboo (Kane) - Final Performance

In the lesson last Thursday, we watched the Easy Taboo performances. They all certainly broke a social taboo - with variations of suicide and selling organs thrown in - but most didn't cause shock to me. Maybe this was because I was expecting a taboo to be broken and thus didn't feel as shocked as I would have done if this was part of a full show. Moreover, if the taboo was in the context of a play, then it may have been more shocking based on the overall storyline.

There were two taboos however that were visibly shocking. The first was the taboo done by Hannah1, Bella, and Lauren; they showed someone being drowned. Not only did they 'properly' drown someone (the person who was being 'drowned' had complete control over the actions), they used racist language which put it in context and made it a social taboo as well as a visible one. The second and definitely most shocking was done by Leah who was sick (by pouring a liquid banana on the floor) with audible retching sounds, and then picked it up and ate the 'sick' again off the floor. This was pretty shocking because not only was she turning round to eat it, she was eating it off the floor which is not completely clean.

The performance that was not visibly shocking more audibly shocking was Kathryn's due to her choice of language. She talked about how her character was brutally raped and how she wanted to get revenge. The fact that she had her back to the audience gives the impression that rape victims are often left invisible and people don't know who they were. I think it enhanced the storytelling massively.

Unfortunately, there wasn't time in the lesson to perform our piece so we performed it on Monday instead. This allowed me to create the following monologue over the weekend which enhanced the piece greatly:

"I remember the first time I ate. It was Easter and Father Thomas had asked me - me  - to help him with something rather important. Of course, I followed. He sat me down, told me I was going to close my eyes, and then he was going to introduce me to the Flesh of Christ. Of course, when he said this, I thought he was going to offer me some special kind of bread but what he placed in my mouth... well, I think you understand exactly what I ate. 

The first time I killed was a much more torrid affair. I'd found some Islamic bastard on the side of a road. Pissed. Which, for an Islamic bastard, is basically treason or some shit. Anyway, he stumbled into the car thinking it was a fucking taxi or something. He'd sobered up by the time I'd got him set up. Then he began to shout for his God - can you imagine? Calling out to something that doesn't actually exist. He kept screaming about Allah and it was driving me fucking insane. 
I chopped his dick off first and oh how he begged for mercy with his bollocks dripping red. The cock still trembled in my hand as I traced it along his jaw. Of course, he began to scream curses at me then: 

Fuck you! Fucking what kind of sadistic fucking monster are you?

That was when I was chopping the sad, limp prick into pieces. I did many things to him - with his corpse - but his taste was exquisite. I'm sure I will never taste another like him, but I suppose you will have to do."

In this monologue, I was trying to get Kane's style of writing down. I feel that I did achieve this somewhat especially as I did accompany the vile language at the end with the somewhat tender language at the start as my character talks about religion. I also feel that I managed to channel the character of Ian (a character in Blasted) through the racial slurs that I use because Ian is racist within the play. The language also goes hand in hand with violent movement such as myself sharpening a knife and eventually stabbing Izzy. I do feel, however, that I could have added more graphic language into the monologue, either through the use of better description and adjectives or through the use of more slurs.

Overall, I think that the performance on Monday was average at best and could have been improved greatly. A major positive that we did have from the performance was that there were multiple taboos broken onstage - such as the stabbing, the racial slurs, and the use of religion. This, I think, encompasses Kane's style as she would attempt to cram as many taboos into a scene as possible which I tried to do with the use of the monologue. However, the monologue was not properly learnt by myself due to the lack of time I had to write it and thus all the graphicness was not included as I had not remembered it which I think affected my performance as I felt that I was too panicked and not reserved enough for the characterisation that I was attempting to achieve. There was a technical issue with the water balloon prop as it became unstuck from Izzy halfway through and thus the effect of the stabbing portion of the scene was lost because Izzy had to burst the balloon. Myself and Izzy had different meanings for what the scene meant which impacted on the overall perception of the piece in the discussion at the end of the piece. It would be beneficial that in future, the meanings behind something are properly discussed with the other members within my cast.

Easy Taboo (Sarah Kane)

What is an Easy Taboo? 
An action that is done onstage that normally wouldn't be shown. It is done to shock the audience but also to allow them to understand greater social issues such as war in Kane's Blasted. 

How does it link to Kane? 
Most of Kane's plays and scenes include some form of violence/torture that an audience member wouldn't usually pay to see onstage as it is so shocking.

What did we think were taboos? 
The range of things that we thought were taboos to show onstage include:

• nudity 
• anything sexual 
• someone actually being hurt 
• defacating

What is the task? 

To create our own easy taboo with a meaning behind it. We have restrictions due to the school context we will perform in: 

• no nudity/sex
• nothing that hurts anyone

Initial Ideas

I personally found this task quite hard as I found that all ideas that I came up with by myself were not as taboo as I would have liked them to be as I could either imagine them being performed onstage either by myself or by someone else or I found that they couldn't be performed in the school context. Moreover, trying to find a meaning behind each idea was hard. The following list details some of the initial ideas that I had or myself, Izzy, and Alex had: 

1. The use of a polythene screen to portray a sex scene (which was done by Peter at the start of last year when we were studying Brecht) so we wouldn't have to actually do anything. However, this broke one of the restrictions and thus this idea was abandoned almost immediately. 
2. A lesbian kiss/relationship - this was the first idea that I had by myself. In the context of media, lesbians are often excluded from having meaningful relationships whereas gay men especially are shown in various settings. For an audience who aren't as accepting as those in my class, this would be seen as taboo, but as our class is largely accepting, this wouldn't be a taboo. 
3. Disassembling dolls in a line and singing a nursery rhyme to potentially show how girls often mature quicker more than boys. But this felt too creepy and too much like an Artaud performance. We decided to add some violence to the background but before we could practise the scene, Alex fell ill and so me and Izzy had to come up with the following idea which we have kept and will perform next lesson. 

Final Idea

The final idea that we had due to Alex's illness was to keep the portion of violence from the last idea and expand on that. The scene opens with Izzy strapped to an overturned cross in the back of the room that we open in. Then I walk in holding a napkin, sharp knife, and a set of cutlery. After sharpening the knife, I stab Izzy - the blood is provided as I stab a water balloon filled with red squash or potentially a blood capsule - which doesn't kill her. I then lick the 'blood' off the knife, dab myself with a napkin, and wield the knife and fork upwards. To be honest, this violence doesn't seem too taboo and would have seemed not all that good if we had performed it last lesson. Now, after seeing other people's taboos, the thing that makes a taboo is the use of language that is similar in style to when the Soldier is speaking in Kane's Blasted. The language that I plan on using in rehearsal Monday morning to see whether it works is a combination of descriptors and swear words that will add onto this. 

The meaning that we're trying to include in this piece is that of cannibalism and religion because I am literally drinking the Blood Of Christ and eating the Flesh of Christ (as suggested in the Catholic Eucharist) as Izzy is strung across a cross. It suggests that religion (especially with Christianity in the USA for example) has a free reign of doing what they want due to the combination of church and state. This is evident in how the USA's government is currently being criticised as they refuse to separate state and church. The added derogatory language that I intend to use about other religions shows religious discrimination that is often present, especially in America. 

Sarah Kane

Sarah Kane was a playwright who lived from 1971-1999. As a teenager she was a committed Christian but later rejected those beliefs. Originally, Kane wanted to be a poet but felt she was unable to convey her thoughts and feelings in this way and thus turned to play-writing. In 1992 she graduated from Bristol University with a BA in Drama and then graduated from University of Birmingham with an MA in play-writing. She was diagnosed with clinical depression and on occasion voluntarily admitted herself to Maudsley Hospital in London. She took her own life in 1999. The video below is a news report from when she died: 

A major playwright that Kane takes inspiration from is Edward Bond. His first play was written in 1962 and showed violence often, taking inspiration from current events at the time such as the Cold War. After reading Saved, Kane was deeply affected by it saying: "You can learn everything you need to know about the craft of play-writing from Saved." Bond's plays were seen as obscene and thus some critics believed that Kane was trying to copy from Bond. She then had to show her own distinct style to show political issues and did it in a much more shocking way. This pushed her to writing Blasted which has layer upon layer of obscene images and thus can be described as in-yer-face theatre similar to that of Berkoff. Her plays were much more shocking and said initially they were to just shock the audience rather than imply much more impressive themes. Kane's work deals with very controversial issues that wouldn't be talked about or shown especially on stage - such as male rape, someone having their eyeballs sucked out, and the violent effects of war as seen in Blasted. Her major themes are redemptive love, sexual desire, pain, torture (physical and psychological) and death which were characterised by a poetic intensity and pared-down language. Some critics believe that the unusual nature of her plays were only due to her mental illness and clinical depression whereas others are eager to show that the themes of violence are always joined (and juxtaposed) by other themes of gentleness. 

Blasted

The video below shows an extensive synopsis and analysis of Blasted which I think is to the detail that is needed to explain Kane and her style: 

The definite abusive relationship between Cate and Ian - confirmed by the demonstration of rape, emphasised by a suggestion that Cate has a disability or has been molested by Ian for years - is certainly toxic but is juxtaposed by the lack of large language in the script except their duologue which never really deals with the various rapes within the play. The initial reception of the play was mixed with some audience members being irritated or move by the horror/psychological accuracy of the relationships portrayed. However, it is clear to some critics that the play has a lack of realism and has structural weakness.

4.48 Psychosis

4.48 Psychosis is the final play that Kane wrote before her death and was performed one year after he death. The title derives from the time 4.48am, when Kane, in a depressed state, would often wake. It is often played by a person with clinical depression. the text says that its a subjective presentation of depression and discusses suicide with a lack of timeline or narrative. It is composed of 24 sections with no specified setting, stage direction, or characters. Some critics have trouble distinguishing the play from Kane's own life. The video below shows excerpts from the play:

Caryl Churchill

One playwright in the Contemporary Theatre Unit is Caryl Churchill. She was born in 1938 in London, moving to Canada after WW2 with her family. She is most known for dramatising the abuses of power, for her non-naturalistic techniques, exploring sexual politics and for her feminist themes which can most certainly be seen in her play Top Girls. She was inspired by Brecht's use of Epic Theatre as she could use his style to explore gender and identity, but from the 1980s onward was more inspired by Artaudian techniques as shown by her experimentation in dance theatre. 

In 1960 she graduated from Lady Margaret Hall, a woman's college at Oxford University where she gained a BA in English Literature. This is potentially where her feminist themes began to develop as she was constantly surrounded by women who wanted to make a better life and thus needed some feminist theory to help get them there due to misogyny. It is at Oxford that she began to write plays with her first four being performed by a student theatre ensemble from the university. 

In the 1960s/70s, she wrote short radio dramas for BBC Radio and TV plays for the BBC. Between 1974-5 she was the resident dramatist at the Royal Court Theatre which shows that she was experimental as the Royal Court allows young experimental playwrights (such as Alice Birch who wrote AOAS) to write plays for them. 

It was in 1979 that she began to receive wide notice for her play Cloud Nine which is the play that we looked at in school. The play, renowned in the US and Britain, explores the effects of colonialist/imperialist mindset on intimate personal relationships and uses cross-gender casting for comic and instructive effect. The first act is set in Africa whereas the second act is set in London one hundred years after the first act and is, in its simplest form, a massive love hexagon - with some relationships that aren't strictly legal. The actors switch roles between acts as previously mentioned characters are played by the opposite gender or race. For example, when a character needs to be more masculine they are played by a woman. The main themes that I can pick out are the confusion of gender/sexuality, the idea of the past in the present, and the oppressive nature of violence. Brechtian techniques that I spotted is the use of songs and the episodic structure. The play won an Obie Award in 1981. Churchill is still writing. 

The video below shows an extract from Cloud Nine and shows the relationship between the lady of the house and her child's nanny: 

This is a good first attempt at Churchill's style, although the casting choice was not very wise as the character that I played should be played by an overly effeminate man in order to stick to her style truly. I did try and display this by being overly dramatic as would be expected but I think this fell flat due to lack of knowledge of the script and the kiss towards the end of the scene - I had never done stage kisses in AOAS, which many of the other class members had done, and thus felt a bit put out by the action.

This scene certainly shows the confusion of sexuality as my character clearly has issues about her own hence why she kisses the nanny. However, she exclaims that she is in love with a man, so either she is very confused, is being manipulated by Harry, the man in question, or is manipulating the nanny.

Below is the synopsis that I got from Wikipedia:

Act I
Clive, A British colonial administrator, lives with his family, a governess and servant during turbulent times in Africa. The natives are rioting and Mrs Saunders, a widow, comes to them to seek safety. Her arrival is soon followed by Harry Bagley, an explorer. Clive makes passionate advances to Mrs Saunders, his wife Betty fancies Harry, who secretly has sex with the servant, Joshua, and Clive's son, Edward. The governess Ellen, who reveals herself to be a lesbian, is forced into marriage with Harry after his sexuality is discovered and condemned by Clive. Act 1 ends with the wedding celebrations; the final scene is Clive giving a speech while Joshua is pointing a gun at him.

Act II
Although Act II is set in 1979, some of the characters of Act I reappear – for them, only 25 years have passed. Betty has left Clive, her daughter Victoria is now married to an overbearing Martin, and Edward has an openly gay relationship with Gerry. Victoria, upset and distant from Martin, starts a lesbian relationship with Lin. When Gerry leaves Edward, Edward, who discovers he is in fact bisexual, moves in with his sister and Lin. The three of them have a drunken ceremony in which they call up the Goddess, after which characters from Act I begin appearing. Act II has a looser structure, and Churchill played around with the ordering of the scenes. The final scene shows that Victoria has left Martin for a polyamorous relationship with Edward and Lin, and they are sharing custody of their son Tommy. Gerry and Edward are on good terms again, and Betty becomes friends with Gerry, who tells her about Edward's sexuality.

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloud_9_(play)