Sarah Kane Complete Plays

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We decided […] that it was the dream of one character which is Grace, who's a character who's lost her brother. He died of a heroin overdose and she has this amazing dream. And so we just put her there at the centre [of the play]. And then when we worked on it we thought it was more useful to work on it as a genre surrealism than naturalism. Because then we could have a lot of illogical things happening […] A lot of illogical things happen in the play, let alone all the bits of illogic that we added. But doing it as surrealism meant that the actors could be happily inside a dream-landscape committing to what they were doing as opposed to going 'but this doesn't add up. Why is my character doing this and not that?' and asking all of those questions that you normally ask when you're in a realistic genre." [37] Further reading [ edit ] In 1998, Kane was included in the Evening Standard 's list of 'London's Top 100 women', which was a list of "The most influential women in the capital". [38] In the same year she was also featured in the newspaper's list of "London's fifty brightest young things". [39] Saunders, Graham (2002). 'Love Me Or Kill Me': Sarah Kane and the Theatre of Extremes. Manchester University Press. p.93. ISBN 0-7190-5955-0 . Retrieved 20 February 2021. Madeleine Potter in 4.48 Psychosis, staged at the Royal Court in 2000, a year after Sarah Kane’s death. Photograph: Tristram Kenton/The Guardian To me, A was always an older man; M was always an older woman; B was always an younger man and C was always a young woman. I decided not to specify it; I thought there were things the characters said which made it very clear. For example, it would be odd if the man said "When I wake I think my period must have started." That would be very strange. Also it would also be very strange if a man kept on talking about how much he wanted a baby. But, on the other hand, yes it could be done." [2] Themes and allusions [ edit ]

Nathan, John (16 February 2016). "Directors Katie Mitchell and Yael Farber on extreme violence in 'Les Blancs' and 'Cleansed' ". The Independent. In the first scene, a timid Graham approaches Tinker, who appears to be a drug dealer. He says he 'wants out' and also asks for drugs. Tinker refuses. They then have an argument about whether or not they are friends. Tinker eventually injects Graham with drugs and he overdoses and dies. In the script of Crave Kane does not provide context, stage directions or clear descriptions of the play's four characters: A, B, C, and M. The first production of Cleansed was attended by low audience numbers, with it reportedly playing to an average of just 14 per cent of the theatre's audience capacity. [26]Gardner, Lyn (20 February 2008). "Blasted". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077 . Retrieved 21 October 2016. Sixteen years on, McInnes is adamant that 4.48 is infinitely more than a suicide note: “People take her story on and then they infuse her work with that: I find that really frustrating. To me the heart of it is a love story – what does it mean to love, can we love, all those questions.” She points to Kane’s formal experimentalism, the startling urgency and precision of her language, the way the play itself invites the audience to experience a form of psychosis, in which reality dissolves even as it appears. “She understands theatre at such a deep level; in some ways I don’t think we’ve caught up with her yet.”

The play was partly inspired by Roland Barthes' work A Lover's Discourse. [10] Kane commented that "There's a point in A Lover's Discourse when he says the situation of a rejected lover is not unlike the situation of a prisoner in Dachau. And when I read it I was just appalled and thought how can he possibly suggest the pain of love is as bad as that. But then the more I thought about it I thought actually I do know what he is saying. It's about the loss of self. And when you lose yourself where do you go? There's nowhere to go, it's actually a kind of madness. And thinking about it I made the connection with Cleansed." [11]

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By the time Sarah's next play was produced on the London stage, theatres in other countries were paying attention. Cleansed had been triggered in Kane's imagination after reading Roland Barthes's line that "being in love was like being in Auschwitz". She had found his comparison morally repugnant but discovered that it stayed with her, and decided to write a play that explored her reactions to the idea. Cleansed draws a group of characters - a twin brother and sister, a gay couple, a peepshow dancer - into a concentration camp, overseen by the figure of Tinker, who is part Prospero, part Nazi commandant. Even before the play opened in England, there were requests for the script and productions planned across the world. Tabert, Nils (2000). "9". "Conversation with Nils Tabert". 'Love me or kill me': Sarah Kane and the theatre of extremes (Interview). Interviewed by Saunders, Graham. Manchester University Press. p.135. ISBN 0-7190-5956-9. The coroner delivered a verdict of death by suicide. The coroner commented that Kane "was plagued with mental anguish and tormented by thoughts of suicide" and that she "made her choice and she made it at a time when she was suffering from a depressive illness [and while] the balance of her mind was disturbed". [10] Psychosis is composed of twenty-four sections which have no specified setting, characters or stage directions. Its language varies between dialogues, confessions and contemplative poetic monologues reminiscent of schizophasia. Certain images are repeated within the script, particularly that of "hatch opens, stark light"; a repeated motif in the play is " serial sevens" which involves counting down from one hundred by sevens, a bedside test often used by psychiatrists to test for loss of concentration or memory. Sarah Kane interview in Rage and Reason: Women Playwrights on Playwriting by Heidi Stephenson and Natasha Langridge, Methuen, 1997

In the next scene, Rod is crying, still, as Carl crawls up to him. They embrace, and then have sex. Rod vows never to lie to him, never to betray him, and to always love him. Tinker enters the room after they are finished, and slits Rod's throat in front of Carl, who holds him as he dies.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]