Cleansed is the third play by the English playwright Sarah Kane

Sarah Kane

Sarah Kane was an English playwright. Her plays 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...

. It was first performed in 1998 at the Royal Court Theatre Downstairs in London. The play is set in a university which has been converted into some form of bizarre institution under the rule of the sadistic Tinker. When the play premiered at the Royal Court in April 1998, Kane played the part of Grace for the last three performances because of an injury that the original actress suffered.

It is sometimes claimed that Tinker was named after the theatre critic for British newspaper The Daily Mail, Jack Tinker, whose review of Kane's first play Blasted

Blasted

Blasted is the first play by British author Sarah Kane. It was first performed in 1995 at the Royal Court Theatre Upstairs in London. This performance was highly controversial and the play was fiercely attacked by most newspaper critics, many of whom regarded it as a rather immature attempt to...

was headlined "this disgusting feast of filth", but there does not appear to be any evidence of Kane confirming this.