4.48 Psychosis (Methuen Modern Plays)

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If Kane is not exactly part of the establishment – the thought would probably have amused and horrified her – she is now a canonical figure, celebrated in many countries worldwide. The other two stages — “realising that her depression is more serious than what it looks like” and “worried about figuring out how to get through it” — are essayed by actors Durga Venkatesan and Yeshaswini Channaiah respectively. Indian director Arvind Gaur performed this play as a one-woman show with British actress Ruth Sheard in 2005.

Sarah Kane’s life and career came to an abrupt end, when the playwright hanged herself at a London hospital in February 1999. For six weeks in late spring 2000, they hunkered down at the Royal Court rehearsal rooms, trying to find answers. David Greig considered the play to be "perhaps uniquely painful in that it appears to have been written in the almost certain knowledge that it would be performed posthumously. Some of Chicago’s most talented theater artists have brought their unique points of view to our stages as part of the Visiting Company Initiative.View image in fullscreen Alan Williams, Sharon Duncan-Brewster, Ingrid Craigie and Paul Thomas Hickey in Crave at the Traverse, Edinburgh, in 1998.

Experiential theatre," she said, "purposes to make the audience feel as though they have experienced what was presented before them onstage. So, the name comes from that idea, that you can’t pin a person down to a certain idea, to a way of thinking, because human beings are just a lot more complicated than that. Her plays continue to be translated and performed throughout the world today, with a growing awareness of this troubled playwright and her troubling brand of theater. After entering a collaboration with BLT, we further devised and worked on it, before premiering the play in the city on November 13. Ionesco wrote this book, Notes and Counternotes, which is a compilation of essays and interviews and various speeches that he made throughout life, all about theater.

McInnes, who now works as a director, admits that at first she wasn’t sure: “I remember reading it on the train home, I couldn’t get a handle on it.

Psychosis at The Theatre Les Bouffes Du Nord in Paris (2005), Belarus Free Theatre in Minsk (2005), KUFER theatre in Croatia (2005.According to Kane's friend and fellow-playwright David Greig, the title of the play derives from the time, 4:48 a. Other themes that run throughout the script, in addition to depression, are those of isolation, dependency, relationships, and love. Detailing the experience of clinical depression, the play harrowingly reveals, through poetry, anger and dark humour, an individual’s struggle to come to terms with their own psychosis, the numbers in the title referring to the time in the early morning when clarity and bleak despair strike together. In one essay, he’ll contradict what he just said in the previous essay, or he’ll say something completely opposite of anything he’s ever said, and that’s where the idea of Notes and Counternotes derives from.

Psychosis is composed of twenty-four sections which have no specified setting, characters or stage directions.

Psychosis heralds a break with all theatrical conventions–the play reads more like a poem, without character distinctions or stage directions –and even presents much of Kane’s personal medical history–her struggle with antidepressants, suicidal tendencies and her philosophical wrestling with the idea of mortality. In February 1999, she killed herself at King’s College hospital, south London, three days after a previous suicide attempt. The plot demands a deeper analysis of what mental health issues are — what’s the right way to attend to people suffering from depression; how empathetic and compassionate one needs to be; and who decides on the extent of medication and institutional care,” Shatarupa elaborates. It felt like we had a responsibility to give breath and life to this amazing thing that Sarah had created.