Sarah Kane Complete Plays

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Psychosis is the final play by British playwright Sarah Kane. It was her last work, first staged at the Royal Court's Jerwood Theatre Upstairs on 23 June 2000, directed by James Macdonald, nearly one and a half years after Kane's death on 20 February 1999. The play has no explicit characters or stage directions. Stage productions of the play vary greatly, therefore, with between one and several actors in performance; the original production featured three actors. According to Kane's friend and fellow-playwright David Greig, the title of the play derives from the time, 4:48a.m., when Kane, in her depressed state, often woke. [1] Subject [ edit ] a b Greig, David (1998). "Introduction". Sarah Kane: Complete Plays. p.90. ISBN 0-413-74260-1. ISBN 0-413-74260-1 ISBN 978-0-413-74260-5

At one point Kane planned for Cleansed to form the second part of a loose trilogy on the subject of war, with the first part being Blasted. [10] Kane explained in a 1997 interview that "The link between [ Blasted and Cleansed] is thematic rather than narrative for the simple reason that everyone at the end of Blasted is dead. [ Cleansed is] a completely different play in every way. The trilogy will eventually amount to three responses to war." However, she then said to the interviewer "I've changed my mind about what the trilogy is about just in that second. They are not about war at all but about faith, hope and love in the context of war […] Blasted is about hope. Cleansed is about love. Scrap the bit before the war. It's suddenly become clear to me." [4] Sarah Kane interview in Rage and Reason: Women Playwrights on Playwriting by Heidi Stephenson and Natasha Langridge, Methuen, 1997Pip Donaghy and Kate Ashfield in Blasted at the Royal Court in 1995. Photograph: Tristram Kenton/The Guardian

It is impossible, of course to dissociate such despair from Sarah Kane's later suicide, yet the play ends on a pretty positive note. Crave runs for about 55 minutes. Bench are performing it in repertoire with another piece of 'in-yer-face theatre', Philip Ridley's 'Ghost From a Perfect Place', until July 26. A, B, C and M to me do have very specific meanings, which I am prepared to tell you: which is A was (A is many things) which is the Author, Abuser (because they are the same thing: author and abuser). Aleister as in Aleister Crowley, who wrote some interesting books which some of you might like to read. Antichrist. My brother came up with Arsehole, which I thought was quite good. And there was also the actor who I originally wrote it for who was called Andrew. So that was how A came about. M was simply Mother. B was Boy. And C was Child. But I didn't want to write those things down because then I thought then they'll get fixed in those things forever and never ever change." [2] The pseudonym "Marie Kelvedon" was based on the village of Kelvedon Hatch, where Kane grew up. Kane included the following fictitious biography in the programme notes: a b c d e f g h i j Quinn, Sue (23 September 1999). "Suicidal writer was free to kill herself". The Guardian . Retrieved 26 February 2021.Grace's line directed at Graham "Love me or kill me" is taken from John Ford's tragedy 'Tis Pity She's a Whore. The line is said in Ford's play by the characters Bologna and Annabella who, like Grace and Graham in Cleansed, are siblings that are engaged in an incestuous relationship with each other. [15] He had thought it unnecessary to assign a psychiatric nurse to monitor her, but "took it as read" she would be "constantly observed" by a staff nurse in accordance with Dr Mujic's medical notes. Born in Brentwood, Essex, and raised by evangelical parents, Kane was a committed Christian in adolescence. Later, however, she rejected those beliefs. After attending Shenfield High School she studied drama at Bristol University, graduating in 1992, and went on to take an MA course in play writing at the University of Birmingham, led by the playwright David Edgar. [1] [4] One thing everyone can agree on: nearly two decades after it was written, and as the circumstances of Kane’s own death recede, 4.48 deserves to be seen as the astonishing piece of theatre it is – as playful as it is confessional, simultaneously precise and improvisatory, roaring with life and wit and energy as it gazes unblinkingly at depression and death. Even as it invites us inside, it hangs on to its mysteries. Like everything Kane wrote, it will not be categorised. Kane sent a draft of the script to the playwright Edward Bond. In a letter that Bond sent to Kane in September 1997, he wrote how he suspected that " Cleansed is even more powerful than [ Blasted] because it takes any two or three minutes of Blasted and subjects them to great pressure." [6]

Director James MacDonald said that while rehearsing with Kane in the role they had reworked "the bit in which the actress used to be thrown up against the wall and beaten up" as "we couldn't risk a writer". [22] Bench Theatre capture these qualities well under what seems to be inspired direction by Damon Wakelin. With no stage directions or even punctuation to help him and the four actors, he often avoids the obvious in terms of movement and inter-reaction, yet his decisions generally seem effortlessly right. No-one is likely to understand every word at a first hearing, but every shade of meaning appears to be burnt into the minds and souls of actors Terry Smith, Jeff Bone, Robin Hall and Julie Wood. Her first, and most controversial, work Blasted is being directed by the actor Richard Wilson at the Sheffield Theatres Studio. Dromgoole, Dominic (2002). The Full Room: An A-Z of Contemporary Playwriting (2002ed.). Great Britain: Methuen. pp.163–165. ISBN 0-413-77134-2. a b "Blasted at The Royal Court Theatre". Royalcourttheatre.com. Royal Court Theatre Productions Limited. 12 January 1995 . Retrieved 16 April 2012.It is hard to know how the contemporary audience will receive a stage work where so much of the effect hinges on being genuinely terrified by simulated rape, or theatrical cannibalism. The 1990s were, in some ways, a simpler and more naïve time.