The Victim and the Audience’s Pleasure: An Exploration of Carson Kreitzer’s Self Defense and Stefanie Zadravec’s Honey Brown Eyes

Abstract

Itis well-nigh impossible to gauge “how a play works on a spectator,” or so affirmed Una Chaudhuri almost twenty years ago, and the “spectator-oriented criticism” that she then advocated has still not surfaced (“The Spectator” 296). Neither reader-response criticism, nor semiotics nor the cognitive approach recently advanced by Bruce McConachie and others, have as yet made it possible to fathom the mechanism of the spectator’s reactions to what is going on before her. ¹ Presumably, one goes to the theater for the pleasure the experience brings but, reading plays such as Carson Kreitzer’s Self Defense Or Death of Some Salesmen (2001) or Stefanie Zadravec’s Honey Brown Eyes (2008), one is forced to question even the possibility of pleasure. And yet, both plays have won prizes and both had good reviews, and reading them was an experience that if it did not bring me pleasure, it certainly was an “experience” that took me “ through and beyond intellectualism” (Chaudhuri, “The Spectator,” 296; emphasis in original) into a desire for intimate understanding and a rejection not only of what those characters go through but also of the society that makes such events possible. Whatever technical innovations a playwright or a director may introduce onto the stage—and in spite of Kreitzer’s dexterously crafted, fast-paced, extremely mobile text and Zadravec’s emotionally moving, passionate drama—the content of these plays can hardly be pleasing to watch.