Sarah Kane Complete Plays

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Sarah Kane interview in Rage and Reason: Women Playwrights on Playwriting by Heidi Stephenson and Natasha Langridge, Methuen, 1997 Since you are here, we would like to share our vision for the future of travel - and the direction Culture Trip is moving in. Her last play, 4.48 Psychosis, was completed shortly before she died and was performed in 2000, at the Royal Court, directed by James Macdonald. This, Kane's shortest and most fragmented theatrical work, dispenses with plot and character, and no indication is given as to how many actors were intended to voice the play. Written at a time when Kane was suffering from severe depression, it has been described by her fellow-playwright and friend David Greig as having as its subject the " psychotic mind". [6] According to Greig, the title derives from the time—4:48a.m.—when Kane, in her depressed state, frequently woke in the morning.

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] 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 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. English, UATV (10 October 2017). "Ukrainian Directors "Take the Stage" at the British Council Theatre Competition". Medium . Retrieved 5 March 2021.In December 2011, the playwright David Eldridge wrote that "For any playwright of my generation the spirit and experiential theatre of Sarah Kane casts a long shadow. Sarah believed passionately that form ought to be expressive and carry meaning as powerfully as the story of a play. Blasted markedly influenced my adaptation of the film Festen for the stage". [45] Kane struggled with severe depression for many years and was twice voluntarily admitted to the Maudsley Hospital in London. [7] By her following play, Crave, Kane is dealing in total desperation and the rawest of unrequited love. Stylistically, it's a departure: Her work has now dissolved into nameless characters and nonlinear poetry; the theme of the pain of love is all-encompassing, with the characters also being haunted by rape, incest, anorexia, mental illness, and other very real demons. The 40 best plays to read before you die". The Independent. 18 August 2019 . Retrieved 9 June 2020.

Eyre, Richard; Wright, Nicholas A. (2001). Changing stages: a view of British and American theatre in the twentieth century. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. pp. 400. ISBN 0-375-41203-4. Bond, Edward (2014). The Hidden Plot. Bloomsbury. p.174. ISBN 9781408171417 . Retrieved 19 September 2021. Sarah Kane (3 February 1971 – 20 February 1999) was an English playwright, screenwriter and theatre director. She is known for her plays that deal with themes of redemptive love, sexual desire, pain, torture—both physical and psychological—and death. They are characterised by a poetic intensity, pared-down language, exploration of theatrical form and, in her earlier work, the use of extreme and violent stage action. Sarah Kane was the best there was, a true poet, and no one has yet taken her throne. Until someone does, she will be celebrated accordingly—with sex, tears, violence, and hearts bleeding across the stage.Kane, Sarah (2001). Sarah Kane: Complete Plays: Blasted, Phaedra's Love, Cleansed, Crave, 4.48 Psychosis, Skin. Bloomsbury Methuen Drama. p.136. ISBN 978-0-413-74260-5. She took antidepressants with reluctance. According to Kane's agent, Mel Kenyon, Kane told her "she didn't like taking pills because they numbed her response to the world, which is, of course, what they're supposed to do. But as an artist, it's extraordinarily difficult if your responsive level is made less intense. What do you do? Take pills and take away the despair? But despair also engenders knowledge in some way, and that knowledge fuels your understanding of the world and therefore your writing, but at the same time you want to exorcise the despair. She tried to weigh it up all the time." [8]

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] Towards the end of the production's run actress Suzan Sylvester was unable to perform as Grace due to being injured. Subsequently, two performances of the play were cancelled but the last three performances went ahead with Sarah Kane portraying the role of Grace instead. [22] 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.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]

Psychosis opera is rawly powerful and laceratingly honest - review". The Telegraph . Retrieved 28 May 2016. Peter, John (25 May 1998). "Cleansed". Theatre Record. Vol.XVIII, no.9. England: Ian Herbert. p.564. ISSN 0962-1792. In 2000 Bond wrote that "Her suicide has to be understood. She was the most gifted dramatist of her generation. It is said that she killed herself because she was clinically depressed. What does that mean of a writer? Not that her death had a cause, but that her life had no inducement. She saw no future for theatre and so none for herself. But it is possible to see such a future for theatre. Her plays present the need for such a theatre." [22] In 2021 Bond wrote "[Kane] had personal problems but she was destroyed by the theatre industry. Drama had been her umbilical lifeline but the theatre industry tuned it into the rope with which she hanged herself." [23] Works [ edit ]

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Saunders, Graham (2002). 'Love Me Or Kill Me': Sarah Kane and the Theatre of Extremes. Manchester University Press. p.90. ISBN 0-7190-5956-9 . Retrieved 20 February 2021. Grace gets a sex change while in the hospital. She arrives onstage with bandages on her groin and breasts. Tinker says she's a lovely man, just like her brother. Carl awakes from the bed behind her, touching his groin. Upon the realization that his genitals were cut off and grafted onto Grace, he starts to cry. Tinker goes and has sex with the Woman, declaring his love for her.