Sarah Kane
Encyclopedia
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 extreme and violent stage action. Kane herself, as well as scholars of her work, such as Graham Saunders, identify some of her inspirations as expressionist theatre and Jacobean
tragedy
. Critics, including Aleks Sierz, have seen her work as part of what Sierz calls the In-Yer-Face
style of theatre, a form of drama which broke away from the conventions of naturalist theatre
. Kane's published work consists of five plays, one short film, Skin, and two newspaper articles for The Guardian
.
, 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 playwriting at Birmingham University, led by the playwright David Edgar
.
Kane struggled with severe depression
for many years and was twice voluntarily admitted to the Maudsley Hospital
in London. However, she wrote consistently, if slowly, throughout her adult life. For a year she was writer-in-residence for Paines Plough
, a theatre company promoting new writing, where she actively encouraged other writers. Before that, she had worked briefly as literary associate for the Bush Theatre
, London. Kane died in 1999, when, two days after taking an overdose of prescription drugs, she committed suicide by hanging
herself by her shoelaces in a bathroom at London's King's College Hospital.
of the arts...I keep coming back in the hope that someone in a darkened room somewhere will show me an image that burns itself into my mind."
and 4.48 Psychosis
), Kane's first play was Blasted
. Kane wrote the first two scenes while a student in Birmingham, where they were given a public performance. The agent Mel Kenyon
was in the audience and subsequently represented Kane, suggesting she should show her work to the Royal Court Theatre
in London. The completed play, directed by James Macdonald
, opened at the Royal Court Theatre Upstairs in 1995. The action is set in a room of a luxurious hotel in Leeds
where Ian, a racist
and foul-mouthed middle-aged journalist, first tries to seduce and later rape
s Cate, an innocent, simple-minded young woman. From its opening in a naturalistic –though troubling– world, the play takes on different, nightmarish dimensions when a soldier, armed with a sniper
's rifle, appears in the room. The narrative ultimately breaks into a series of increasingly disturbing short scenes. Its scenes of anal
rape, cannibalism
, and other forms of brutality, created one of the biggest theatre scandals in London since Edward Bond
's Saved
in 1965. Kane admired Bond's work, and he in turn publicly defended Kane's play and talent. Other dramatists whom Kane particularly liked and who could be seen as influences include Samuel Beckett
, Howard Barker
, and Georg Büchner
, whose play Woyzeck
she later directed (Gate Theatre, London 1997).
Blasted was fiercely attacked in the British press. The Daily Mail
drama critic Jack Tinker wrote a review headlined "this disgusting feast of filth." This reaction was shared, if in slightly more muted terms, by most other critics. Blasted was, however, praised by fellow playwrights Martin Crimp
, Harold Pinter
(who became a friend), Caryl Churchill
, who considered it "rather a tender play". It was later seen to be making parallels between domestic violence
and the war in Bosnia, and between emotional and physical violence. Kane said, "The logical conclusion of the attitude that produces an isolated rape in England is the rape camps in Bosnia and the logical conclusion to the way society expects men to behave is war."
Blasted was produced again in 2001 at the Royal Court. The assistant director of this production, Joseph Hill-Gibbins, suggests that "The argument is made through form, through the shifts in styles in Blasted. That's how she constructs the argument, by taking this setting in an English Northern industrial town and suddenly transporting the action to a war zone." The critical realism that the first scene sets up is "literally blasted apart" in Scene Two. The critic Ken Urban says that "for Kane, hell is not metaphysical: it is hyperreal, reality magnified."
, a British TV station, depicting a violent relationship between a black woman and a racist skinhead
. It was first shown at the London Film Festival
in October 1995 and televised by Channel 4 in 1997. The film stars Ewen Bremner
, Marcia Rose, Yemi Ajibade and James Bannon
.
, London, to write a play inspired by a classic text. Phaedra's Love
was loosely based on the classical dramatist Seneca
's play Phaedra
, but given a contemporary setting. In this reworking of the myth of Phaedra's doomed love for her stepson Hippolytus
, it is Hippolytus, rather than Phaedra, who takes the central role. It is Hippolytus' emotional cruelty which pushes Phaedra to suicide
. Kane reversed classical tradition by showing, rather than describing, violent action on stage. The play contains some of Kane's wittiest and most cynical dialogue. Kane described it as "my comedy." Directed by Kane, it was first performed at the Gate Theatre in 1996.
premiered at the Royal Court's theatre downstairs
in April 1998, and was directed by James Macdonald
. This was at the time the most expensive production in the Royal Court's history. Kane had written the play after reading Roland Barthes
' assertion that "being in love is like being in Auschwitz." Cleansed is set in what Kane in her stage directions described as a university but which functions more as a torture chamber or concentration camp, overseen by the sadistic Tinker. It places a young woman and her brother, a disturbed boy, a gay
couple and a peepshow dancer within this world of extreme cruelty in which declarations of love are viciously tested. It pushes the limits of what can be realised in the theatre: stage directions include "a sunflower pushes through the floor and grows above their heads" and "the rat begins to eat Carl's hand."
, which was directed by Vicky Featherstone and presented by Paines Plough at the Traverse Theatre
in Edinburgh in 1998. The play was performed under the pseudonym of Marie Kelvedon, partly because the notion amused Kane, but also so that the play could be viewed without the taint of its author's notorious reputation. "Marie" was Kane's middle name and she was brought up in the town of Kelvedon Hatch
in Essex.
Crave marks a break from the on-stage violence of Kane's previous works and a move to a freer, sometimes lyrical writing style, at times inspired by her reading of the Bible
and T. S. Eliot
's The Waste Land
. It has four characters, each identified only by a letter of the alphabet. It dispenses with plot and unlike her earlier work, with its highly specific stage directions, gives no indication what actions, if any, the actors should perform on stage, nor does it give any setting for the play. As such, it may have been influenced by Martin Crimp
's 1997 play Attempts on Her Life, which similarly dispenses with setting and overall narrative
. Kane had written of her admiration for Crimp's formal innovations. The work is highly intertextual
. At the time, Kane regarded it as the "most despairing" of her plays, written when she had lost "faith in love."
, 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." According to Greig, the title derives from the time — 4:48 a.m. — when Kane, in her depressed state, frequently woke in the morning.
wrote that she was "without doubt the most performed new writer on the international circuit". Fellow-playwright Mark Ravenhill
has said her plays "have almost certainly achieved canonical status." At one point in Germany, there were 17 simultaneous productions of her work. In November 2010, the theatre critic Ben Brantley
of the New York Times described the SoHo Rep's "shattering production" of Kane's Blasted (which had opened two years previously) as "one of the most important New York premieres of the decade."
Sarah Kane interview in 'Rage and Reason: Women Playwrights on Playwriting' by Heidi Stephenson and Natasha Langridge, Methuen, 1997
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
playwright
Playwright
A playwright, also called a dramatist, is a person who writes plays.The term is not a variant spelling of "playwrite", but something quite distinct: the word wright is an archaic English term for a craftsman or builder...
. 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 extreme and violent stage action. Kane herself, as well as scholars of her work, such as Graham Saunders, identify some of her inspirations as expressionist theatre and Jacobean
English Renaissance theatre
English Renaissance theatre, also known as early modern English theatre, refers to the theatre of England, largely based in London, which occurred between the Reformation and the closure of the theatres in 1642...
tragedy
Tragedy
Tragedy is a form of art based on human suffering that offers its audience pleasure. While most cultures have developed forms that provoke this paradoxical response, tragedy refers to a specific tradition of drama that has played a unique and important role historically in the self-definition of...
. Critics, including Aleks Sierz, have seen her work as part of what Sierz calls the In-Yer-Face
In-yer-face theatre
In-yer-face theatre describes drama that emerged in Great Britain in the 1990s. This category coined by British theatre critic Aleks Sierz is the title of his book, In-Yer-Face Theatre, first published by Faber and Faber in March 2001...
style of theatre, a form of drama which broke away from the conventions of naturalist theatre
Naturalism (theatre)
Naturalism is a movement in European drama and theatre that developed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It refers to theatre that attempts to create a perfect illusion of reality through a range of dramatic and theatrical strategies: detailed, three-dimensional settings Naturalism is a...
. Kane's published work consists of five plays, one short film, Skin, and two newspaper articles for The Guardian
The Guardian
The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...
.
Life
Born in BrentwoodBrentwood, Essex
Brentwood is a town and the principal settlement of the Borough of Brentwood, in the county of Essex in the east of England. It is located in the London commuter belt, 20 miles east north-east of Charing Cross in London, and near the M25 motorway....
, Essex
Essex
Essex is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan county in the East region of England, and one of the home counties. It is located to the northeast of Greater London. It borders with Cambridgeshire and Suffolk to the north, Hertfordshire to the west, Kent to the South and London to the south west...
, and raised by evangelical
Evangelicalism
Evangelicalism is a Protestant Christian movement which began in Great Britain in the 1730s and gained popularity in the United States during the series of Great Awakenings of the 18th and 19th century.Its key commitments are:...
parents, Kane was a committed Christian
Christian
A Christian is a person who adheres to Christianity, an Abrahamic, monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth as recorded in the Canonical gospels and the letters of the New Testament...
in adolescence. Later, however, she rejected those beliefs. After attending Shenfield High School
Shenfield High School
Shenfield High School is a Business and Enterprise; and maths and computing specialist state school in Shenfield, Essex. It is widely known as being a school that introduced splitting of boys and girls teaching classes in 1994 for Key Stage 3, and in core curriculum subjects in Key Stage 4 in order...
, she studied drama
Drama
Drama is the specific mode of fiction represented in performance. The term comes from a Greek word meaning "action" , which is derived from "to do","to act" . The enactment of drama in theatre, performed by actors on a stage before an audience, presupposes collaborative modes of production and a...
at Bristol University, graduating in 1992, and went on to take an MA
Master of Arts (postgraduate)
A Master of Arts from the Latin Magister Artium, is a type of Master's degree awarded by universities in many countries. The M.A. is usually contrasted with the M.S. or M.Sc. degrees...
course in playwriting at Birmingham University, led by the playwright David Edgar
David Edgar (playwright)
David Edgar is a British playwright and author who has had more than sixty of his plays published and performed on stage, radio and television around the world, making him one of the most prolific dramatists of the post-1960s generation in Great Britain.He was resident playwright at the Birmingham...
.
Kane struggled with severe depression
Clinical depression
Major depressive disorder is a mental disorder characterized by an all-encompassing low mood accompanied by low self-esteem, and by loss of interest or pleasure in normally enjoyable activities...
for many years and was twice voluntarily admitted to the Maudsley Hospital
Maudsley Hospital
The Maudsley Hospital is a British psychiatric hospital in South London. The Maudsley is the largest mental health training institution in the country...
in London. However, she wrote consistently, if slowly, throughout her adult life. For a year she was writer-in-residence for Paines Plough
Paines Plough
Paines Plough is a London-based British touring theatre company founded in 1974 by writer David Pownall and director John Adams. They named the company after their favourite pub, the Plough, where they would drink pints of Paines....
, a theatre company promoting new writing, where she actively encouraged other writers. Before that, she had worked briefly as literary associate for the Bush Theatre
Bush Theatre
The Bush Theatre is based in Shepherd's Bush, in the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham. It was established in 1972 above The Bush public house by Brian McDermott, and has since become one of the most celebrated new writing theatres in the world. An intimate venue renowned for its close-up...
, London. Kane died in 1999, when, two days after taking an overdose of prescription drugs, she committed suicide by hanging
Hanging
Hanging is the lethal suspension of a person by a ligature. The Oxford English Dictionary states that hanging in this sense is "specifically to put to death by suspension by the neck", though it formerly also referred to crucifixion and death by impalement in which the body would remain...
herself by her shoelaces in a bathroom at London's King's College Hospital.
Works
Kane originally wanted to be a poet, but decided that she was unable to convey her thoughts and feelings through poetry. She wrote that she was attracted to the stage because "theatre has no memory, which makes it the most existentialExistentialism
Existentialism is a term applied to a school of 19th- and 20th-century philosophers who, despite profound doctrinal differences, shared the belief that philosophical thinking begins with the human subject—not merely the thinking subject, but the acting, feeling, living human individual...
of the arts...I keep coming back in the hope that someone in a darkened room somewhere will show me an image that burns itself into my mind."
Blasted
Apart from some early writing which she would dismiss as "juvenilia" (some of it reused in later plays CraveCrave (play)
Crave is a one-act play by British playwright Sarah Kane. It was first performed in 1998 by the theatre company Paines Plough, with which Kane was writer-in-residence for the year, at the Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh...
and 4.48 Psychosis
4.48 Psychosis
4.48 Psychosis is a play by British playwright Sarah Kane. It was her last work, first staged at the Royal Court's Jerwood Theatre Upstairs on June 23, 2000, nearly one and a half years after Kane's February 20, 1999 death...
), Kane's first play was 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...
. Kane wrote the first two scenes while a student in Birmingham, where they were given a public performance. The agent Mel Kenyon
Mel Kenyon
Mel Kenyon is a former midget car driver. He is known as the "King of the Midgets", "Miraculous Mel", and "Champion of Midget Auto Racing." The Motorsports Hall of Fame of America says "Many consider him to be midget car racing's greatest driver ever." -Racing career:He attended his first auto...
was in the audience and subsequently represented Kane, suggesting she should show her work to the Royal Court Theatre
Royal Court Theatre
The Royal Court Theatre is a non-commercial theatre on Sloane Square, in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea. It is noted for its contributions to modern theatre...
in London. The completed play, directed by James Macdonald
James MacDonald
-Politics:*James David Macdonald , City of Calgary alderman and author of Grand Cayman's tax haven law*James Ramsay MacDonald, British Prime Minister*James MacDonald , Secretary of the London Trades Council...
, opened at the Royal Court Theatre Upstairs in 1995. The action is set in a room of a luxurious hotel in Leeds
Leeds
Leeds is a city and metropolitan borough in West Yorkshire, England. In 2001 Leeds' main urban subdivision had a population of 443,247, while the entire city has a population of 798,800 , making it the 30th-most populous city in the European Union.Leeds is the cultural, financial and commercial...
where Ian, a racist
Racism
Racism is the belief that inherent different traits in human racial groups justify discrimination. In the modern English language, the term "racism" is used predominantly as a pejorative epithet. It is applied especially to the practice or advocacy of racial discrimination of a pernicious nature...
and foul-mouthed middle-aged journalist, first tries to seduce and later rape
Rape
Rape is a type of sexual assault usually involving sexual intercourse, which is initiated by one or more persons against another person without that person's consent. The act may be carried out by physical force, coercion, abuse of authority or with a person who is incapable of valid consent. The...
s Cate, an innocent, simple-minded young woman. From its opening in a naturalistic –though troubling– world, the play takes on different, nightmarish dimensions when a soldier, armed with a sniper
Sniper
A sniper is a marksman who shoots targets from concealed positions or distances exceeding the capabilities of regular personnel. Snipers typically have specialized training and distinct high-precision rifles....
's rifle, appears in the room. The narrative ultimately breaks into a series of increasingly disturbing short scenes. Its scenes of anal
Anal sex
Anal sex is the sex act in which the penis is inserted into the anus of a sexual partner. The term can also include other sexual acts involving the anus, including pegging, anilingus , fingering, and object insertion.Common misconception describes anal sex as practiced almost exclusively by gay men...
rape, cannibalism
Cannibalism
Cannibalism is the act or practice of humans eating the flesh of other human beings. It is also called anthropophagy...
, and other forms of brutality, created one of the biggest theatre scandals in London since Edward Bond
Edward Bond
Edward Bond is an English playwright, theatre director, poet, theorist and screenwriter. He is the author of some fifty plays, among them Saved , the production of which was instrumental in the abolition of theatre censorship in the UK...
's Saved
Saved (play)
Saved is a play written by Edward Bond, and was first produced at the Royal Court Theatre in November 1965. It was originally enacted privately, under "club" auspices, since the play was initially censored due largely to the infamous 'stoning of a baby' scene.The play itself is set in London during...
in 1965. Kane admired Bond's work, and he in turn publicly defended Kane's play and talent. Other dramatists whom Kane particularly liked and who could be seen as influences include Samuel Beckett
Samuel Beckett
Samuel Barclay Beckett was an Irish avant-garde novelist, playwright, theatre director, and poet. He wrote both in English and French. His work offers a bleak, tragicomic outlook on human nature, often coupled with black comedy and gallows humour.Beckett is widely regarded as among the most...
, Howard Barker
Howard Barker
Howard E. Barker is a British playwright.-The Theatre of Catastrophe :Barker has coined the term "Theatre of Catastrophe" to describe his work...
, and Georg Büchner
Georg Büchner
Karl Georg Büchner was a German dramatist and writer of poetry and prose. He was the brother of physician and philosopher Ludwig Büchner. Büchner's talent is generally held in great esteem in Germany...
, whose play Woyzeck
Woyzeck
Woyzeck is a stage play written by Georg Büchner. He left the work incomplete at his death, but it has been variously and posthumously "finished" by a variety of authors, editors and translators. Woyzeck has become one of the most performed and influential plays in the German theatre...
she later directed (Gate Theatre, London 1997).
Blasted was fiercely attacked in the British press. The Daily Mail
Daily Mail
The Daily Mail is a British daily middle-market tabloid newspaper owned by the Daily Mail and General Trust. First published in 1896 by Lord Northcliffe, it is the United Kingdom's second biggest-selling daily newspaper after The Sun. Its sister paper The Mail on Sunday was launched in 1982...
drama critic Jack Tinker wrote a review headlined "this disgusting feast of filth." This reaction was shared, if in slightly more muted terms, by most other critics. Blasted was, however, praised by fellow playwrights Martin Crimp
Martin Crimp
Martin Andrew Crimp is a British playwright.Sometimes described as a practitioner of the "in-yer-face" school of contemporary British drama, Crimp though rejects the label...
, Harold Pinter
Harold Pinter
Harold Pinter, CH, CBE was a Nobel Prize–winning English playwright and screenwriter. One of the most influential modern British dramatists, his writing career spanned more than 50 years. His best-known plays include The Birthday Party , The Homecoming , and Betrayal , each of which he adapted to...
(who became a friend), Caryl Churchill
Caryl Churchill
Caryl Churchill is an English dramatist known for her use of non-naturalistic techniques and feminist themes, the abuses of power, and sexual politics. She is acknowledged as a major playwright in the English language and a leading female writer...
, who considered it "rather a tender play". It was later seen to be making parallels between domestic violence
Domestic violence
Domestic violence, also known as domestic abuse, spousal abuse, battering, family violence, and intimate partner violence , is broadly defined as a pattern of abusive behaviors by one or both partners in an intimate relationship such as marriage, dating, family, or cohabitation...
and the war in Bosnia, and between emotional and physical violence. Kane said, "The logical conclusion of the attitude that produces an isolated rape in England is the rape camps in Bosnia and the logical conclusion to the way society expects men to behave is war."
Blasted was produced again in 2001 at the Royal Court. The assistant director of this production, Joseph Hill-Gibbins, suggests that "The argument is made through form, through the shifts in styles in Blasted. That's how she constructs the argument, by taking this setting in an English Northern industrial town and suddenly transporting the action to a war zone." The critical realism that the first scene sets up is "literally blasted apart" in Scene Two. The critic Ken Urban says that "for Kane, hell is not metaphysical: it is hyperreal, reality magnified."
Skin
Skin was an eleven minute screenplay written for Channel 4Channel 4
Channel 4 is a British public-service television broadcaster which began working on 2 November 1982. Although largely commercially self-funded, it is ultimately publicly owned; originally a subsidiary of the Independent Broadcasting Authority , the station is now owned and operated by the Channel...
, a British TV station, depicting a violent relationship between a black woman and a racist skinhead
Skinhead
A skinhead is a member of a subculture that originated among working class youths in the United Kingdom in the 1960s, and then spread to other parts of the world. Named for their close-cropped or shaven heads, the first skinheads were greatly influenced by West Indian rude boys and British mods,...
. It was first shown at the London Film Festival
London Film Festival
The BFI London Film Festival is the UK's largest public film event, screening more than 300 features, documentaries and shorts from almost 50 countries. The festival, , currently in its 54th year, is run every year in the second half of October under the umbrella of the British Film Institute...
in October 1995 and televised by Channel 4 in 1997. The film stars Ewen Bremner
Ewen Bremner
-Early life:Bremner was born in Edinburgh, the son of two art teachers. He attended Davidson's Mains Primary School and Portobello High School. He originally wanted to be a circus clown, but was offered a chance in show business by television director Richard D. Brooks. One of his first notable...
, Marcia Rose, Yemi Ajibade and James Bannon
James Bannon
James Bannon is an Irish Fine Gael politician. He is currently a Teachta Dála for the Longford–Westmeath constituency.A native of Legan, County Longford, he worked as a farmer and auctioneer before entering politics....
.
Phaedra's Love
Kane was then commissioned by the Gate TheatreGate Theatre (London)
The Gate Theatre is a London fringe theatre above the Prince Albert pub in Notting Hill Gate, from which it takes its name. It opened in 1979.-External links:*...
, London, to write a play inspired by a classic text. Phaedra's Love
Phaedra's Love
Phaedra's Love is a play by British playwright Sarah Kane. It was first performed in 1996 at London's Gate Theatre, directed by the author. The play is a modern adaptation of Seneca's Phaedra...
was loosely based on the classical dramatist Seneca
Seneca the Younger
Lucius Annaeus Seneca was a Roman Stoic philosopher, statesman, dramatist, and in one work humorist, of the Silver Age of Latin literature. He was tutor and later advisor to emperor Nero...
's play Phaedra
Phaedra (Seneca)
Phaedra, sometimes known as Hippolytus, is a play by Seneca the Younger, telling the story of Phaedra and her taboo love for her stepson Hippolytus...
, but given a contemporary setting. In this reworking of the myth of Phaedra's doomed love for her stepson Hippolytus
Hippolytus (mythology)
thumb|260px|The Death of Hippolytus, by [[Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema]] .In Greek mythology, Hippolytus was a son of Theseus and either Antiope or Hippolyte...
, it is Hippolytus, rather than Phaedra, who takes the central role. It is Hippolytus' emotional cruelty which pushes Phaedra to suicide
Suicide
Suicide is the act of intentionally causing one's own death. Suicide is often committed out of despair or attributed to some underlying mental disorder, such as depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, alcoholism, or drug abuse...
. Kane reversed classical tradition by showing, rather than describing, violent action on stage. The play contains some of Kane's wittiest and most cynical dialogue. Kane described it as "my comedy." Directed by Kane, it was first performed at the Gate Theatre in 1996.
Cleansed
CleansedCleansed
Cleansed is the third play by the English playwright Sarah Kane. 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...
premiered at the Royal Court's theatre downstairs
Duke of York's Theatre
The Duke of York's Theatre is a West End Theatre in St Martin's Lane, in the City of Westminster. It was built for Frank Wyatt and his wife, Violet Melnotte, who retained ownership of the theatre, until her death in 1935. It opened on 10 September 1892 as the Trafalgar Square Theatre, with Wedding...
in April 1998, and was directed by James Macdonald
James MacDonald
-Politics:*James David Macdonald , City of Calgary alderman and author of Grand Cayman's tax haven law*James Ramsay MacDonald, British Prime Minister*James MacDonald , Secretary of the London Trades Council...
. This was at the time the most expensive production in the Royal Court's history. Kane had written the play after reading Roland Barthes
Roland Barthes
Roland Gérard Barthes was a French literary theorist, philosopher, critic, and semiotician. Barthes' ideas explored a diverse range of fields and he influenced the development of schools of theory including structuralism, semiotics, existentialism, social theory, Marxism, anthropology and...
' assertion that "being in love is like being in Auschwitz." Cleansed is set in what Kane in her stage directions described as a university but which functions more as a torture chamber or concentration camp, overseen by the sadistic Tinker. It places a young woman and her brother, a disturbed boy, a gay
Gay
Gay is a word that refers to a homosexual person, especially a homosexual male. For homosexual women the specific term is "lesbian"....
couple and a peepshow dancer within this world of extreme cruelty in which declarations of love are viciously tested. It pushes the limits of what can be realised in the theatre: stage directions include "a sunflower pushes through the floor and grows above their heads" and "the rat begins to eat Carl's hand."
Crave
A change in critical opinion occurred with Kane's fourth play, CraveCrave (play)
Crave is a one-act play by British playwright Sarah Kane. It was first performed in 1998 by the theatre company Paines Plough, with which Kane was writer-in-residence for the year, at the Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh...
, which was directed by Vicky Featherstone and presented by Paines Plough at the Traverse Theatre
Traverse Theatre
The Traverse Theatre is a theatre in Edinburgh, Scotland. It was founded in 1963.The Traverse Theatre commissions and develops new plays or adaptations from contemporary playwrights. It also presents a large number of productions from visiting companies from across the UK. These include new plays,...
in Edinburgh in 1998. The play was performed under the pseudonym of Marie Kelvedon, partly because the notion amused Kane, but also so that the play could be viewed without the taint of its author's notorious reputation. "Marie" was Kane's middle name and she was brought up in the town of Kelvedon Hatch
Kelvedon Hatch
Kelvedon Hatch is a village and civil parish in the Borough of Brentwood in south Essex, England. It is situated just north of Pilgrims Hatch, approximately to the north of Brentwood and is surrounded by Metropolitan Green Belt. The village today is no longer a rural backwater with a large...
in Essex.
Crave marks a break from the on-stage violence of Kane's previous works and a move to a freer, sometimes lyrical writing style, at times inspired by her reading of the Bible
Bible
The Bible refers to any one of the collections of the primary religious texts of Judaism and Christianity. There is no common version of the Bible, as the individual books , their contents and their order vary among denominations...
and T. S. Eliot
T. S. Eliot
Thomas Stearns "T. S." Eliot OM was a playwright, literary critic, and arguably the most important English-language poet of the 20th century. Although he was born an American he moved to the United Kingdom in 1914 and was naturalised as a British subject in 1927 at age 39.The poem that made his...
's The Waste Land
The Waste Land
The Waste Land[A] is a 434-line[B] modernist poem by T. S. Eliot published in 1922. It has been called "one of the most important poems of the 20th century." Despite the poem's obscurity—its shifts between satire and prophecy, its abrupt and unannounced changes of speaker, location and time, its...
. It has four characters, each identified only by a letter of the alphabet. It dispenses with plot and unlike her earlier work, with its highly specific stage directions, gives no indication what actions, if any, the actors should perform on stage, nor does it give any setting for the play. As such, it may have been influenced by Martin Crimp
Martin Crimp
Martin Andrew Crimp is a British playwright.Sometimes described as a practitioner of the "in-yer-face" school of contemporary British drama, Crimp though rejects the label...
's 1997 play Attempts on Her Life, which similarly dispenses with setting and overall narrative
Narrative
A narrative is a constructive format that describes a sequence of non-fictional or fictional events. The word derives from the Latin verb narrare, "to recount", and is related to the adjective gnarus, "knowing" or "skilled"...
. Kane had written of her admiration for Crimp's formal innovations. The work is highly intertextual
Intertextuality
Intertextuality is the shaping of texts' meanings by other texts. It can include an author’s borrowing and transformation of a prior text or to a reader’s referencing of one text in reading another. The term “intertextuality” has, itself, been borrowed and transformed many times since it was coined...
. At the time, Kane regarded it as the "most despairing" of her plays, written when she had lost "faith in love."
4.48 Psychosis
Her last play, 4.48 Psychosis4.48 Psychosis
4.48 Psychosis is a play by British playwright Sarah Kane. It was her last work, first staged at the Royal Court's Jerwood Theatre Upstairs on June 23, 2000, nearly one and a half years after Kane's February 20, 1999 death...
, 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
David Greig (dramatist)
David Greig is a Scottish playwright and theatre director.Greig was born in Edinburgh in 1969 and was brought up in Nigeria. He studied drama at Bristol University. He has been commissioned by the Royal Court Theatre, the Royal National Theatre and the Royal Shakespeare Company amongst others.His...
as having as its subject the "psychotic
Psychosis
Psychosis means abnormal condition of the mind, and is a generic psychiatric term for a mental state often described as involving a "loss of contact with reality"...
mind." According to Greig, the title derives from the time — 4:48 a.m. — when Kane, in her depressed state, frequently woke in the morning.
Reception
Though Kane's work never played to large audiences in the UK and was at first dismissed by many newspaper critics, her plays have been widely performed in Europe and South America. In 2005, the theatre director Dominic DromgooleDominic Dromgoole
Dominic Dromgoole is an English theatre director and writer about the theatre. He is married with three daughters, and lives in London.-Early life:...
wrote that she was "without doubt the most performed new writer on the international circuit". Fellow-playwright Mark Ravenhill
Mark Ravenhill
Mark Ravenhill is an English playwright, actor and journalist.His most famous plays include Shopping and Fucking , Some Explicit Polaroids and Mother Clap's Molly House . He made his acting debut in his monologue Product, at the 2005 Edinburgh Festival Fringe...
has said her plays "have almost certainly achieved canonical status." At one point in Germany, there were 17 simultaneous productions of her work. In November 2010, the theatre critic Ben Brantley
Ben Brantley
Benjamin D. "Ben" Brantley is an American journalist and the chief theater critic of The New York Times.-Life and career:...
of the New York Times described the SoHo Rep's "shattering production" of Kane's Blasted (which had opened two years previously) as "one of the most important New York premieres of the decade."
External links
- Iain Fisher's Sarah Kane site Includes reviews and in-depth dissertations
- Obituary in British Theatre Guide
- Guardian: Sarah Kane (10/2005)
- A critical essay on Sarah Kane's work (Spanish)
- Video clips from five different productions of Kane's works
- A discussion forum on Sarah Kane
Sarah Kane interview in 'Rage and Reason: Women Playwrights on Playwriting' by Heidi Stephenson and Natasha Langridge, Methuen, 1997