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Sarah Kane: Complete Plays
When Sarah Kane's first play, Blasted, was staged at the Royal Court Theatre, London in 1995 it was hailed both as a "masterpiece" and as a "disgusting piece of filth" (Daily Mail). That play, and the others that followed, have been produced all over the world. This anthology includes Kane's never-before-published Channel 4 screenplay, Skin. Complete Plays include Blasted, Phaedra's Love, Cleansed, Crave, 4.48 Psychosis, and Skin.
286 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2000
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About the author
Sarah Kane
34 books731 followersSarah 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 stylized violent stage action. Kane battled with depression, and her life was brought to a premature end when she committed suicide at London's King's College Hospital. Her published work consists of five plays and one short film, Skin.
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October 23, 2025
PAESAGGIO CON ROVINATI
Si tratta dei cinque testi teatrali scritti da Sarah Kane, la sua intera produzione, con l’ultimo uscito postumo. Tutti portati sul palcoscenico, non solo nel Regno Unito.
Una lettura tutt’altro che facile, carica di spigoli e inceppi: perché questi testi è particolarmente importante sentirli recitare per comprenderli – sempre che si riesca – perché il ritmo viene fuori solo con la recitazione, perché vanno immaginati a volte incalzanti e sovrapposti, una voce sopra l’altra, sovrapposte.
E perché l’intensità emotiva è pazzesca e le parole sulla pagina la restituiscono solo parzialmente.
Si comincia con Blasted tradotto saggiamente in “Dannati” invece che dilaniati, scoppiati, esplosi. Il senso del titolo sta nell’idea di esplosione distruttiva dei corpi e delle anime.
Segue L’amore di Fedra che la Kane porta ai giorni nostri con Ippolito che passa le sue giornate davanti a un megaschermo abbuffandosi di junkfood e giocando a video game.
Il terzo testo è Cleansed, in italiano “Purificati”, che contiene al contempo una sanguinante ustione di ferite morali e fisiche e una forte allusione a un’idea di pulizia etnica
Il quarto è Crave, in italiano “Febbre”. Oppure potrebbe essere bisogno, desiderio, fame di, sete di, voglia, ansia, bramosia, frenesia, smania: è un testo sul bisogno d’amore e sul desiderio. Complicato seguire sulla pagina invece che sul palcoscenico l’alternarsi delle voci, indicate dalla semplice iniziale, A, B, C, M, le prime due voci maschili, le seconde due femminili.
Quello postumo è 4.48 Psychosis, e così arriva in scena il tema del suicidio: il titolo allude all’ora notturna che secondo le statistiche è il momento di maggiore attrazione verso il suicidio.
Una produzione intensa, più di un nuovo testo all’anno, considerato che la sua carriera è durata soltanto quattro anni, conclusa dal suicidio nel 1999 (prima domestico on pillole; il coinquilino la salva e la porta in ospedale: dove, pochi giorni dopo, si uccide con i lacci delle scarpe).
Al limite della crociata e dell’invocazione di censura (il titolo di una delle stroncature: Una disgustosa sagra della schifezza), è facile capire le reazioni dei critici a questi testi estremi e visionari, completamente antirealistici, carichi di eccessi scenici e verbali, di contenuti scioccanti, spesso di natura sessuale, di sangue e orrori. Facile capirli, ben meno condividerli.
E giustamente la Kane ai critici che la tacciarono dell'uso di un'eccessiva crudeltà nei suoi drammi rispose: La lettura che ho fatto nei miei anni formativi è stata l'incredibile violenza della Bibbia. Era piena di stupri, mutilazioni, guerre e pestilenze.
Con dialoghi che si offrono a molteplici interpretazioni, l’abbondante uso di metafore, l’intensità emotiva che Sarah Kane è capace di suscitare è cosa rara.
La scena si trasforma quasi dal principio in un ring o campo di battaglia. Il corpo è bello ma è fragile e vulnerabile, il sesso è argomento primario: nudità a go go, ninfomania, dipendenza, pornografia, incesto, prostituzione, stupro, sesso orale, castrazione…
Ma è l’amore, le vittime, il dolore, il disagio che emergono, mai nessun cedimento allo scandalo, alla pruderie.
I riferimenti al teatro classico (quello elisabettiano per primo) sono chiari ed espliciti, ma la sensibilità di chi scrive è ben diversa: acuta attenzione per la violenza fisica e psicologica, il disagio interiore, la malattia mentale, il suicidio.
E tuttavia gli ultimi due testi sviluppano una scrittura ancora più scarna e poetica. Anatomia della passione.
Francis Bacon: Studio per un ritratto.
Si tratta dei cinque testi teatrali scritti da Sarah Kane, la sua intera produzione, con l’ultimo uscito postumo. Tutti portati sul palcoscenico, non solo nel Regno Unito.
Una lettura tutt’altro che facile, carica di spigoli e inceppi: perché questi testi è particolarmente importante sentirli recitare per comprenderli – sempre che si riesca – perché il ritmo viene fuori solo con la recitazione, perché vanno immaginati a volte incalzanti e sovrapposti, una voce sopra l’altra, sovrapposte.
E perché l’intensità emotiva è pazzesca e le parole sulla pagina la restituiscono solo parzialmente.
Si comincia con Blasted tradotto saggiamente in “Dannati” invece che dilaniati, scoppiati, esplosi. Il senso del titolo sta nell’idea di esplosione distruttiva dei corpi e delle anime.
Segue L’amore di Fedra che la Kane porta ai giorni nostri con Ippolito che passa le sue giornate davanti a un megaschermo abbuffandosi di junkfood e giocando a video game.
Il terzo testo è Cleansed, in italiano “Purificati”, che contiene al contempo una sanguinante ustione di ferite morali e fisiche e una forte allusione a un’idea di pulizia etnica
Il quarto è Crave, in italiano “Febbre”. Oppure potrebbe essere bisogno, desiderio, fame di, sete di, voglia, ansia, bramosia, frenesia, smania: è un testo sul bisogno d’amore e sul desiderio. Complicato seguire sulla pagina invece che sul palcoscenico l’alternarsi delle voci, indicate dalla semplice iniziale, A, B, C, M, le prime due voci maschili, le seconde due femminili.
Quello postumo è 4.48 Psychosis, e così arriva in scena il tema del suicidio: il titolo allude all’ora notturna che secondo le statistiche è il momento di maggiore attrazione verso il suicidio.
Una produzione intensa, più di un nuovo testo all’anno, considerato che la sua carriera è durata soltanto quattro anni, conclusa dal suicidio nel 1999 (prima domestico on pillole; il coinquilino la salva e la porta in ospedale: dove, pochi giorni dopo, si uccide con i lacci delle scarpe).
Al limite della crociata e dell’invocazione di censura (il titolo di una delle stroncature: Una disgustosa sagra della schifezza), è facile capire le reazioni dei critici a questi testi estremi e visionari, completamente antirealistici, carichi di eccessi scenici e verbali, di contenuti scioccanti, spesso di natura sessuale, di sangue e orrori. Facile capirli, ben meno condividerli.
E giustamente la Kane ai critici che la tacciarono dell'uso di un'eccessiva crudeltà nei suoi drammi rispose: La lettura che ho fatto nei miei anni formativi è stata l'incredibile violenza della Bibbia. Era piena di stupri, mutilazioni, guerre e pestilenze.
Con dialoghi che si offrono a molteplici interpretazioni, l’abbondante uso di metafore, l’intensità emotiva che Sarah Kane è capace di suscitare è cosa rara.
La scena si trasforma quasi dal principio in un ring o campo di battaglia. Il corpo è bello ma è fragile e vulnerabile, il sesso è argomento primario: nudità a go go, ninfomania, dipendenza, pornografia, incesto, prostituzione, stupro, sesso orale, castrazione…
Ma è l’amore, le vittime, il dolore, il disagio che emergono, mai nessun cedimento allo scandalo, alla pruderie.
I riferimenti al teatro classico (quello elisabettiano per primo) sono chiari ed espliciti, ma la sensibilità di chi scrive è ben diversa: acuta attenzione per la violenza fisica e psicologica, il disagio interiore, la malattia mentale, il suicidio.
E tuttavia gli ultimi due testi sviluppano una scrittura ancora più scarna e poetica. Anatomia della passione.
Francis Bacon: Studio per un ritratto.
December 29, 2020
Non si recensisce Sarah Kane, ci si arrende a Sarah Kane.
Commentando la prima rappresentazione di Dannati, un critico scrisse che i soldi spesi per la messa in scena sarebbero stati meglio investiti per pagare un terapista all'autrice. Probabilmente non aveva tutti i torti: la produzione artistica di Kane è inscindibile dalla malattia mentale che permea la sua scrittura, dagli esordi fino al monologo lirico e disperato che è Psicosi delle 4.48 (la scelta dell'orario è perfetta: non può accadere nulla di buono alle 4.48 del mattino).
Il suo teatro è un'elegia al dolore, il prodotto di una mente stremata che rielabora la violenza interiore ed esteriore attraverso dialoghi efficacissimi nella loro efferatezza. Ti attacca, ti sbrana, ti perseguita in sogni ed incubi come un amante violento dal quale non riesci a non tornare. Scava dentro di te, mette a nudo il marcio, riflette la tua disperazione meglio di uno specchio; e ogni volta che pensi di non poterne più, sfodera la sua arma letale regalandoti uno spiraglio di amore purissimo raccontato con le parole che avresti sempre voluto trovare, ma che si formano, perfette e complete, solo in bocca a questa ragazza dell'Essex.
Sono contenta di non poterla incontrare di persona, Sarah Kane; perché altrimenti credo sarei andata sotto casa sua, le avrei scritto lettere d'amore, e insomma mi sarei resa ridicola più di quanto non stia già facendo con questa recensione troppo sentimentale. La amo per ciò che l'ha distrutta, e perché riesce a parlare di me meglio di quanto non faccia io stessa.
Commentando la prima rappresentazione di Dannati, un critico scrisse che i soldi spesi per la messa in scena sarebbero stati meglio investiti per pagare un terapista all'autrice. Probabilmente non aveva tutti i torti: la produzione artistica di Kane è inscindibile dalla malattia mentale che permea la sua scrittura, dagli esordi fino al monologo lirico e disperato che è Psicosi delle 4.48 (la scelta dell'orario è perfetta: non può accadere nulla di buono alle 4.48 del mattino).
Il suo teatro è un'elegia al dolore, il prodotto di una mente stremata che rielabora la violenza interiore ed esteriore attraverso dialoghi efficacissimi nella loro efferatezza. Ti attacca, ti sbrana, ti perseguita in sogni ed incubi come un amante violento dal quale non riesci a non tornare. Scava dentro di te, mette a nudo il marcio, riflette la tua disperazione meglio di uno specchio; e ogni volta che pensi di non poterne più, sfodera la sua arma letale regalandoti uno spiraglio di amore purissimo raccontato con le parole che avresti sempre voluto trovare, ma che si formano, perfette e complete, solo in bocca a questa ragazza dell'Essex.
Sono contenta di non poterla incontrare di persona, Sarah Kane; perché altrimenti credo sarei andata sotto casa sua, le avrei scritto lettere d'amore, e insomma mi sarei resa ridicola più di quanto non stia già facendo con questa recensione troppo sentimentale. La amo per ciò che l'ha distrutta, e perché riesce a parlare di me meglio di quanto non faccia io stessa.
May 19, 2010
The darkest of the darkest dark. Shocking. Often asked myself did that just happen?
NOT to be read all in one sitting.
NOT to be read after 10 pm.
NOT to be read when you are low (on energy &/or sun).
Crave is my favorite. I blogged a quote from it here.
NOT to be read all in one sitting.
NOT to be read after 10 pm.
NOT to be read when you are low (on energy &/or sun).
Crave is my favorite. I blogged a quote from it here.
August 3, 2008
From Crave: And I want to play hide-and-seek and give you my clothes and tell you I like your shoes and sit on the steps while you take a bath and massage your neck and kiss your feet and hold your hand and go for a meal and not mind when you eat my food and meet you at Rudy's and talk about the day and type your letters and carry your boxes and laugh at your paranoia and give you tapes you don't listen to and watch great films and watch terrible films and complain about the radio and take pictures of you when you're sleeping and get up to fetch you coffee and bagels and Danish and go to Florent and drink coffee at midnight and have you steal my cigarettes and never be able to find a match and tell you about the the programme I saw the night before and take you to the eye hospital and not laugh at your jokes and want you in the morning but let you sleep for a while and kiss your back and stroke your skin and tell you how much I love your hair your eyes your lips your neck your breasts your arse your and sit on the steps smoking till your neighbour comes home and sit on the steps smoking till you come home and worry when you're late and be amazed when you're early and give you sunflowers and go to your party and dance till I'm black and be sorry when I'm wrong and happy when you forgive me and look at your photos and wish I'd known you forever and hear your voice in my ear and feel your skin on my skin and get scared when you're angry and your eye has gone red and the other eye blue and your hair to the left and your face oriental and tell you you're gorgeous and hug you when you're anxious and hold you when you hurt and want you when I smell you and offend you when I touch you and whimper when I'm next to you and whimper when I'm not and dribble on your breast and smother you in the night and get cold when you take the blanket and hot when you don't and melt when you smile and dissolve when you laugh and not understand why you think I'm rejecting you when I'm not rejecting you and wonder how you could think I'd ever reject you and wonder who you are but accept you anyway and tell you about the tree angel enchanted forest boy who flew across the ocean because he loved you and write poems for you and wonder why you don't believe me and have a feeling so deep I can't find words for it and want to buy you a kitten I'd get jealous of because it would get more attention than me and keep you in bed when you have to go and cry like a baby when you finally do and get rid of the roaches and buy you presents you don't want and take them away again and ask you to marry me and you say no again but keep on asking because though you think I don't mean it I do always have from the first time I asked you and wander the city thinking it's empty without you and want want you want and think I'm losing myself but know I'm safe with you and tell you the worst of me and try to give you the best of me because you don't deserve any less and answer your questions when I'd rather not and tell you the truth when I really dont' want to and try to be honest because I know you prefer it and think it's all over but hang on in for just ten more minutes before you throw me out of your life and forget who I am and try to get closer to you because it's a beautiful learning to know you and well worth the effort and speak German to you badly and Hebrew to you worse and make love with you at three in the morning and somehow somehow somehow communicate some of the overwhelming undying overpowering unconditional all-encompassing heart-enriching mind-expanding on-going never-ending love I have for you.
Yes - if you're still there - genius.
Yes - if you're still there - genius.
July 12, 2021
fuuuuuccccckkkkkkk put my mind into a blender, add a hamster wheel and put it onto liquify speed make sure NIN or Swans is playing at an erratically dense volume in the background and forget about the off switch. that’s the gist of this one
Strong 4.5 stars
Strong 4.5 stars
September 29, 2012
La vita succede.
Come i fiori,
Come la luce del sole,
Come il tramonto.
Un movimento per allontanarsi,
Non per avvicinarsi.
Non è colpa mia.
Come se la direzione fosse importante.
Chi lo sa.
Ho il cuore spezzato.
Non è mai stata colpa mia.
Hai continuato a ritornare.
Ora e per sempre.
Non lotto più per te.
La visione.
La perdita.
Il dolore.
La perdita.
La conquista.
La perdita.
La luce.
Se tu morissi sarebbe come se le mie ossa venissero rimosse. Nessuno capirebbe perché, ma avrei un crollo.
Quando io scrivo, non riesco a dire tutto quello che voglio dire. A volte perché non vengono le parole giuste, altre volte perché ho paura di dire certe cose. Mettermi troppo a nudo. Urlare quello che ho dentro. Quanti di noi ci riescono? A voce forse nessuno, o quasi. Ma scrivendo dovrebbe essere più facile. Vi assicuro che non è così. Sarah Kane ci riesce, e noi ci facciamo male. Restiamo feriti dalla sofferenza altrui, perché è raccontata nella sua verità totale ed è priva di censure. I tabù sono spogliati e non sono più tali, ma quotidianità. È coraggio, è dolore. Chi ha sofferto come questa donna lo sa. Non riuscire a vivere, essere bisognosi d'amore ma sapere che neanche quello riesce a salvarti. Non capire perché si debba vivere per forza. Psicosi delle 4 e 48 è l'apoteosi del dolore. Credetemi, fa molto male.
Come i fiori,
Come la luce del sole,
Come il tramonto.
Un movimento per allontanarsi,
Non per avvicinarsi.
Non è colpa mia.
Come se la direzione fosse importante.
Chi lo sa.
Ho il cuore spezzato.
Non è mai stata colpa mia.
Hai continuato a ritornare.
Ora e per sempre.
Non lotto più per te.
La visione.
La perdita.
Il dolore.
La perdita.
La conquista.
La perdita.
La luce.
Se tu morissi sarebbe come se le mie ossa venissero rimosse. Nessuno capirebbe perché, ma avrei un crollo.
Quando io scrivo, non riesco a dire tutto quello che voglio dire. A volte perché non vengono le parole giuste, altre volte perché ho paura di dire certe cose. Mettermi troppo a nudo. Urlare quello che ho dentro. Quanti di noi ci riescono? A voce forse nessuno, o quasi. Ma scrivendo dovrebbe essere più facile. Vi assicuro che non è così. Sarah Kane ci riesce, e noi ci facciamo male. Restiamo feriti dalla sofferenza altrui, perché è raccontata nella sua verità totale ed è priva di censure. I tabù sono spogliati e non sono più tali, ma quotidianità. È coraggio, è dolore. Chi ha sofferto come questa donna lo sa. Non riuscire a vivere, essere bisognosi d'amore ma sapere che neanche quello riesce a salvarti. Non capire perché si debba vivere per forza. Psicosi delle 4 e 48 è l'apoteosi del dolore. Credetemi, fa molto male.
February 10, 2012
Sarah Kane was called a Brutalist, an aggressor, part of a movement of loosely aligned punk playwrights who wanted to blow the world’s brains out and then show it the picture. She was vicious, unsentimental, lashing BDSM poetry onto the backs of her pages and giggling while unsuspecting audiences everywhere ran from the theaters in tears. What a mean-spirited rat bastard of a writer.
Naturally she was brilliant, and I don’t agree with any of this Brutalist crap. If anything her work shows intense sympathy, each play searching for redemption and the possibility of vision in a bitter, cynical world. After her suicide her plays became more popular, probably for the same reason people slow down to watch car wrecks. One understands instinctively that her work is dangerous.
An example of her sympathy is the play “Blasted,” a mortality tale literally staged in a pile of rubble and dead bodies, a situation so grotesque that it’s funny. The story centers on a rapist being destroyed in most of the possible ways, as we watch him go from grim indifference to becoming childlike in his pain. And there’s no other way of saying this: It has a feel-good ending. There is hope. Perhaps not for the world, but who cares what happens to that awful thing, anyway.
Kane’s dialogue is terse and her stage directions lush. She liked to amuse herself, and she used descriptions designed to either bring the best out of directors or cull them from the herd, surreal interpretable hard-to-show events, such as “The rats carry Carl’s feet away.” She felt constrained by her reputation as a savage, but was still compelled to write about savage things. This sense of being stuck could make her plaintively ophidian, as when she describes a gigantic sunflower growing through the floor of an insane asylum.
Kane once said that the theatre has no memory. She looked for something in the darkness of the stage to bring back to an audience that is lost and threatened. It’s doubly a shame that Kane killed herself, indicating as it does that she did not ultimately find what she sought. But it’s still there in her work, even if it wasn’t there enough for her.
Naturally she was brilliant, and I don’t agree with any of this Brutalist crap. If anything her work shows intense sympathy, each play searching for redemption and the possibility of vision in a bitter, cynical world. After her suicide her plays became more popular, probably for the same reason people slow down to watch car wrecks. One understands instinctively that her work is dangerous.
An example of her sympathy is the play “Blasted,” a mortality tale literally staged in a pile of rubble and dead bodies, a situation so grotesque that it’s funny. The story centers on a rapist being destroyed in most of the possible ways, as we watch him go from grim indifference to becoming childlike in his pain. And there’s no other way of saying this: It has a feel-good ending. There is hope. Perhaps not for the world, but who cares what happens to that awful thing, anyway.
Kane’s dialogue is terse and her stage directions lush. She liked to amuse herself, and she used descriptions designed to either bring the best out of directors or cull them from the herd, surreal interpretable hard-to-show events, such as “The rats carry Carl’s feet away.” She felt constrained by her reputation as a savage, but was still compelled to write about savage things. This sense of being stuck could make her plaintively ophidian, as when she describes a gigantic sunflower growing through the floor of an insane asylum.
Kane once said that the theatre has no memory. She looked for something in the darkness of the stage to bring back to an audience that is lost and threatened. It’s doubly a shame that Kane killed herself, indicating as it does that she did not ultimately find what she sought. But it’s still there in her work, even if it wasn’t there enough for her.
August 9, 2018
O Amor de Fedra (1996)
de Sarah Kane - Inglaterra (1971-1999)
Esta versão da tragédia de Fedra e Hipólito, além de mais moderna é muito cruel e perversa. Aqui Teseu não encomenda a Neptuno a morte do filho, trata ele do assunto. E tudo acaba no meio de um festivo churrasco.
Sarah Kane nasceu em 13 de Fevereiro de 1971. Depressiva e esquizofrénica, enforcou-se (aos 28 anos) no dia 20 de Fevereiro de 1999, na casa de banho do hospital psiquiátrico onde estava internada.
A sua obra é reveladora do seu sofrimento interior, recorrendo, por vezes, a uma violência extrema e obscena que choca e repugna.
A primeira peça que li, foi Craven e fascinou-me pela originalidade, pela beleza das palavras e na qual li a mais linda declaração de amor do mundo (só quem nunca esteve apaixonado ficará indiferente).
Depois li 4:48 Psychosis que me incomodou por se tratar do texto de uma suicida.
Apesar de ter decidido não ler mais Sarah Kane, um dia numa livraria encontrei este livro, com o Teatro Completo, que se me colou às mãos. Escondi-o muito bem atrás de outros mas fui buscá-lo, agora, para ler a sua versão de Fedra e compará-la com a de Euripides, de Seneca e de Racine. Claro que as personagens principais e o seu destino são os mesmos mas a de Kane é mais ousada pelas descrições de sexo, incesto e morte. Mas aguenta-se.
Ainda tentei ler Cleansed mas desisti nas primeiras cenas sob pena de ficar nauseada, insone, ou/e doida de vez.
De Blasted nem sequer vou ler a lista de personagens.
Lista das peças e datas em que foram escritas:
— Blasted (Ruínas), 1995
— Phadra's Love (O Amor de Fedra), 1996
— Cleansed (Purificados), 1998
— Crave (Falta), 1998
— 4:48 Psychosis (4:48 Psicose), 1999
Todas foram representadas em Portugal. Não vi nenhuma, nem pretendo. Apesar de ser corajosa tenho os meus limites. Se comparar o Teatro de Sarah Kane com os contos cruéis, recolhidos por Aníbal Fernandes n'O Festim da Aranha, estes são histórias para adormecer crianças.
de Sarah Kane - Inglaterra (1971-1999)
Esta versão da tragédia de Fedra e Hipólito, além de mais moderna é muito cruel e perversa. Aqui Teseu não encomenda a Neptuno a morte do filho, trata ele do assunto. E tudo acaba no meio de um festivo churrasco.
Sarah Kane nasceu em 13 de Fevereiro de 1971. Depressiva e esquizofrénica, enforcou-se (aos 28 anos) no dia 20 de Fevereiro de 1999, na casa de banho do hospital psiquiátrico onde estava internada.
A sua obra é reveladora do seu sofrimento interior, recorrendo, por vezes, a uma violência extrema e obscena que choca e repugna.
A primeira peça que li, foi Craven e fascinou-me pela originalidade, pela beleza das palavras e na qual li a mais linda declaração de amor do mundo (só quem nunca esteve apaixonado ficará indiferente).
Depois li 4:48 Psychosis que me incomodou por se tratar do texto de uma suicida.
Apesar de ter decidido não ler mais Sarah Kane, um dia numa livraria encontrei este livro, com o Teatro Completo, que se me colou às mãos. Escondi-o muito bem atrás de outros mas fui buscá-lo, agora, para ler a sua versão de Fedra e compará-la com a de Euripides, de Seneca e de Racine. Claro que as personagens principais e o seu destino são os mesmos mas a de Kane é mais ousada pelas descrições de sexo, incesto e morte. Mas aguenta-se.
Ainda tentei ler Cleansed mas desisti nas primeiras cenas sob pena de ficar nauseada, insone, ou/e doida de vez.
De Blasted nem sequer vou ler a lista de personagens.
Lista das peças e datas em que foram escritas:
— Blasted (Ruínas), 1995
— Phadra's Love (O Amor de Fedra), 1996
— Cleansed (Purificados), 1998
— Crave (Falta), 1998
— 4:48 Psychosis (4:48 Psicose), 1999
Todas foram representadas em Portugal. Não vi nenhuma, nem pretendo. Apesar de ser corajosa tenho os meus limites. Se comparar o Teatro de Sarah Kane com os contos cruéis, recolhidos por Aníbal Fernandes n'O Festim da Aranha, estes são histórias para adormecer crianças.
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September 25, 2020Non riesco a valutare questi testi: è difficile separare la vita di Sarah dalla sua opera e io non posso dare il voto a una vita.
Rabbia, odio, autodistruttività e bisogno d’amore gridato in mille modi. Questo è un teatro delle viscere, una discesa agli inferi scandita da violenze, amputazioni, incesti, stupri, malattia psichica, suicidio… una discesa inarrestabile in cui, a tratti, si intravvedono squarci di speranza, destinata però ad essere sempre disillusa. Testi agghiaccianti, disturbanti, ossessivi e desolanti, ma troppo veri per non essere anche dolorosi.
Una ragazza dal cuore di tenebra.
ed esco alle sei di mattina e inizio a cercarti. se ho sognato qualcosa su una strada o un pub o una stazione vado là. e ti aspetto. (da Psicosi delle 4.48)
Rabbia, odio, autodistruttività e bisogno d’amore gridato in mille modi. Questo è un teatro delle viscere, una discesa agli inferi scandita da violenze, amputazioni, incesti, stupri, malattia psichica, suicidio… una discesa inarrestabile in cui, a tratti, si intravvedono squarci di speranza, destinata però ad essere sempre disillusa. Testi agghiaccianti, disturbanti, ossessivi e desolanti, ma troppo veri per non essere anche dolorosi.
Una ragazza dal cuore di tenebra.
ed esco alle sei di mattina e inizio a cercarti. se ho sognato qualcosa su una strada o un pub o una stazione vado là. e ti aspetto. (da Psicosi delle 4.48)
January 29, 2016
Da brivido. -La mia ossessione, che tengo sul comodino e ho riempito di segni.-
Ti toglie il fiato per quanto è bello e per quanto fa male.
Ti graffia ad ogni pagina per l'umanità, la disperazione e lo sfacelo che ne trasudano.
CATE Prima ti amavo
IAN E cos'è cambiato?
CATE Tu.
FEDRA Ti amo.
IPPOLITO Perché?
FEDRA Sei difficile. Volubile, cinico, amaro, grasso, decadente, sfatto. Stai a letto tutto il giorno e guardi la Tv tutta la notte, barcolli qua e là per la casa con gli occhi assonnati e senza un pensiero per nessuno. Soffri. Ti adoro.
IPPOLITO Non è sensato.
FEDRA Nemmeno l'amore.
IPPOLITO C'è gente a cui piace, credo. Quella roba lì. Avere una vita.
FEDRA Anche tu hai una vita.
IPPOLITO No. Io riempio le giornate.
"Dannati", "L'amore di Fedra" e "Purificati" sono superbi. Bellissimi.
Che gran peccato aver perso Sarah Kane così giovane.. Aveva molto da offrire.. Moltissimo.
Ti toglie il fiato per quanto è bello e per quanto fa male.
Ti graffia ad ogni pagina per l'umanità, la disperazione e lo sfacelo che ne trasudano.
CATE Prima ti amavo
IAN E cos'è cambiato?
CATE Tu.
FEDRA Ti amo.
IPPOLITO Perché?
FEDRA Sei difficile. Volubile, cinico, amaro, grasso, decadente, sfatto. Stai a letto tutto il giorno e guardi la Tv tutta la notte, barcolli qua e là per la casa con gli occhi assonnati e senza un pensiero per nessuno. Soffri. Ti adoro.
IPPOLITO Non è sensato.
FEDRA Nemmeno l'amore.
IPPOLITO C'è gente a cui piace, credo. Quella roba lì. Avere una vita.
FEDRA Anche tu hai una vita.
IPPOLITO No. Io riempio le giornate.
"Dannati", "L'amore di Fedra" e "Purificati" sono superbi. Bellissimi.
Che gran peccato aver perso Sarah Kane così giovane.. Aveva molto da offrire.. Moltissimo.
August 12, 2025
A Mr. James Review: Notes in the Margins
Sarah Kane
February 3, 1989
AUDIO
The hum of a fluorescent bulb. The intensity progresses as Sarah walks downstage; when she reaches the stage apron the hum is loud, incessant, and filled with cracks and pops. The hum falls silent when Sarah speaks her line.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gTEn-...
SETTING
The stage is empty except for a WOODEN BABY HIGH CHAIR with cracked blue paint. It’s center stage with SCISSORS on the tray.
-----------------------
Sarah (18 years old) enters stage left reading a black book with gold lettering on the front and back cover; she wears a blue turtleneck maxi dress with a slim green belt; her hair is tied back. She has pronounced black lipstick, heavy eyeliner, and her cheeks are heavily blushed. She slowly walks downstage, turning the pages, playing with her hair, stopping, reflecting, and occasionally muffles giggles with her hands.
When she passes the HIGH CHAIR she picks up the SCISSORS with one hand -- never taking her eyes off the book -- and slips them into the front of her belt.
Sarah comes to the edge of the stage; her smile fades. The HUMMING increases in intensity. She continues to flip through the book and her face falls. After a few beats she’s noticeable distraught; she spits into the book, smears it with her hand, tears some pages out, and lets them fall to the floor.
She stuffs a page into her mouth, chews and spits it out. She spits into her hand and wipes it across her face, smearing her makeup.
She swears under her breath followed by bursts of outrage. She throws the book on stage and repeatedly smashes it with her shoes. She raises her skirt, squats over the book and urinates.
She stands, pulls at her dress, scratches at her throat, pulls at the turtleneck, pulls at her hair -- the ponytail comes undone, pulls at her turtleneck with both hands, smears her makeup, pulls harder on the turtleneck -- stretching it until it hangs loose, and continues to smear her makeup. She takes the scissors and cuts her hair, then attempts to cut her turtleneck but fails. After she finishes she drops the scissors and kicks the remains of the book into the audience.
She breathes heavily; the humming is loud, filled with cracks and pops. Sarah covers her ears trying to block it out. She falls to her knees, glances to her left, then right, and looks back at the audience with defiance. She sits on the floor emotionally spent; the spotlight narrows into a small circle to Sarah's right -- illuminating an empty space. When she looks right, addressing the circle, only her lips should catch the light. The humming stops.
-------------------------------
Sarah (calmly, addressing the empty space): Fuck this up and I haunt you for the rest of your fucking life.
-------------------------------
Blasted : When you flinch, don't inadvertently break your neck. When you laugh, choke on your tongue.
Phaedra's Love (an image): Love laughed and tore her heart: not in the traditional way -- through the chest, parting the rib cage; but in an abrasive way, through her back -- severing the thoracic vertebrae.
The Prince laid comfortably on a frayed couch, watching her, trying his best to feign interest. He managed a bombastic yawn, followed by droopy eyes. He wanted her heart; it would keep him company when he watched sitcoms -- Three’s Company was his favorite.
The queen bowed, coughed, and spat up blood -- some dribbled from her chin onto her collar. Despite her distress and agony, she turned and walked out of her son’s chamber. Her face was wet with tears; her back covered in blood. She glanced at her son; he had picked up her heart and squeezed it like a stress ball -- his eyes never looking away from the TV. He was focused: content.
As soon as she was in the hall she collapsed onto a dirt floor. She pulled herself across, leaving a trail of blood. Margret, the maid, would be livid. The queen imagined her saying, “These past two weeks blood has shit on my floor five fucking times. Clean is a bitch to blood!”
The Queen dragged herself to her bedroom door and reflected, Love is Dirt’s bitch.
Cleansed : "Upon injection you will experience the following: burning in the groin, incontinence, nose bleeding, hemorrhaging in the urinary tract, bleeding gums, loss of teeth, distorted vision, auditory hallucinations, Tongue-tie/loss of tongue, inflated ego, vomiting of blood, and an overwhelming sense of love, passion, hate, and once again... love… Any questions? Ask now… What? You’re unintelligible with that sock in your mouth."
Crave : Continue. Shit. Sleep. Stretch. Consume. Fuck. Sleep. Speak. Eat. Fear. Crave. Sacrifice. Forget. Inflict. Feed. Sleep. Cuddle. Smell. Abandon. Return. Abandon. Return. Fuck. Shit. Drink. Accept. Blame. Accept. Fail. Leave. Return. Survive. Reflect. Suffer. Suffer. Suffer. Remember. Suffer. Surfer. Suffer. Pause. Repeat.
4.48 Psychosis : The fluorescent bulb blinks with a twist of the wrist: a floor of cockroaches scatter. Your naked body watches a black mass scurry up your legs and across your chest -- midnight organic armor. The sun tears through the bay window; the roaches run: abandon. You hesitate, then fall forward onto a metal spike, impaling yourself before the afternoon picnic. (No one asked for poetry.)
Skin (an image): Grace’s dreadlocks were pulled into a ponytail with a red rubber band; it rested neatly between her shoulder blades. Her exaggerated hand gestures complemented her energetic conversations. Today her fingernails were fluorescent orange -- perfectly manicured. She had worked at Tiny’s Hair Salon for over a decade; her clients were mostly black women of all ages. Sam was the exception: a middle aged white man.
Tiny's was located in a black community fifty miles from the Kentucky border. Every fifth of the month at 1pm for the past eight years, Sam came through the door of Tiny’s Salon. Initially, Sam was an unsightly blemish -- a splash of bleach on a black dress.
But Sam’s agreeability was quickly embraced; Mrs. Ower, an eighty year old woman, called him “adorable.”
He’d wait, smile, nod, and read beauty magazines. He was patient, and tapped his feet to the old time jazz and blues that played on a Pioneer record player.
Grace got so comfortable with Sam that she’d playfully tease him as she worked. Grace traditionally slapped him on the shoulder and said his head was a test to the trade. She skillfully concealed Sam’s bald spot where his hair naturally parted. “Thanks Grace,” was his only reply.
Today Sam wore blue jeans and a button up black short sleeve shirt, one size too small, which exaggerated his lean and muscular frame.
“Hey,” Sam said, sitting in the chair.
“Sammy… Same?” Grace said with a wink and a smile.
“No.”
“No?”
“Yeah.”
“Really?” she turned his chair around to face the mirror.
“Shave it,” he said, running his fingers through his thick black curls.
“Shave it…? What? No.” Grace said, looking at Sam through the mirror.
“Yeah. Shave it.”
“Right… that’s what you said. But I think you're messed up.”
“No. Just shave it… Close.”
“You don’t want that.”
“Tired off the bald spot, Grace.”
“Don’t you worry about that. Just part it like I showed you… you look sophisticated,” she said with a genuine laugh.
“Shave it,” he said flatly.
They looked at each other in the mirror. Grace nodded, took up her scissors and cut it down. As she prepared the clippers she asked, “How short?”
“To the skin.”
“Skin?”
“Yeah skin.”
“Don’t you want something nice like --” she started.
“Skin Grace; I’m tired of asking.”
Grace looked around the salon, Betty, a fellow beautician -- who was working on Mrs. Hayden -- just shook her head and clicked her tongue.
“Yeah,” Grace said. “Your head.”
Grace set the clipper guard to zero; his bald spot looked like a broken X. She removed the remaining hair evenly, starting at his right temple and pulling the clipper towards her. She passed over the bald spot and her face grew stern and focused. Betty walked over, tapped Grace’s shoulder and went back to her chair.
Grace turned the clippers off, Betty was talking on her cell phone -- customers started leaving. She went to the counter and picked up the scissors and put them in her pocket. She turned Sam around so he could look in the mirror. He was expressionless.
Grace rubbed jojoba oil into his scalp, repeatedly going over the swastika tattoo. She applied more oil, this time she rubbed it in with her nails, until the swastika had red gashes. Sam was motionless.
“Thank you Grace,” Sam said with closed eyes. Grace bent and whispered into his ear; a fluorescent orange fingernail touched Sam’s Adam's apple.
----------------------------------
Sarah Kane
February 20, 1999
Sarah (28 years old) sits at the end of the stage, knocking her boots together. She wears jean pants, a red shirt, and dark brown leather jacket. She takes a drag of her cigarette: exhales, pauses, takes another drag, exhales, pauses, takes a third drag and holds it in; finally smoke slowly exits her nostrils. She scratches her throat and looks at the audience, closes her eyes, and flicks the cigarette into the audience. She opens her eyes, rubs her throat with both hands and scans the audience.
Sarah (tight): Open the curtains.
Blackout.
Sarah Kane
February 3, 1989
AUDIO
The hum of a fluorescent bulb. The intensity progresses as Sarah walks downstage; when she reaches the stage apron the hum is loud, incessant, and filled with cracks and pops. The hum falls silent when Sarah speaks her line.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gTEn-...
SETTING
The stage is empty except for a WOODEN BABY HIGH CHAIR with cracked blue paint. It’s center stage with SCISSORS on the tray.
-----------------------
Sarah (18 years old) enters stage left reading a black book with gold lettering on the front and back cover; she wears a blue turtleneck maxi dress with a slim green belt; her hair is tied back. She has pronounced black lipstick, heavy eyeliner, and her cheeks are heavily blushed. She slowly walks downstage, turning the pages, playing with her hair, stopping, reflecting, and occasionally muffles giggles with her hands.
When she passes the HIGH CHAIR she picks up the SCISSORS with one hand -- never taking her eyes off the book -- and slips them into the front of her belt.
Sarah comes to the edge of the stage; her smile fades. The HUMMING increases in intensity. She continues to flip through the book and her face falls. After a few beats she’s noticeable distraught; she spits into the book, smears it with her hand, tears some pages out, and lets them fall to the floor.
She stuffs a page into her mouth, chews and spits it out. She spits into her hand and wipes it across her face, smearing her makeup.
She swears under her breath followed by bursts of outrage. She throws the book on stage and repeatedly smashes it with her shoes. She raises her skirt, squats over the book and urinates.
She stands, pulls at her dress, scratches at her throat, pulls at the turtleneck, pulls at her hair -- the ponytail comes undone, pulls at her turtleneck with both hands, smears her makeup, pulls harder on the turtleneck -- stretching it until it hangs loose, and continues to smear her makeup. She takes the scissors and cuts her hair, then attempts to cut her turtleneck but fails. After she finishes she drops the scissors and kicks the remains of the book into the audience.
She breathes heavily; the humming is loud, filled with cracks and pops. Sarah covers her ears trying to block it out. She falls to her knees, glances to her left, then right, and looks back at the audience with defiance. She sits on the floor emotionally spent; the spotlight narrows into a small circle to Sarah's right -- illuminating an empty space. When she looks right, addressing the circle, only her lips should catch the light. The humming stops.
-------------------------------
Sarah (calmly, addressing the empty space): Fuck this up and I haunt you for the rest of your fucking life.
-------------------------------
Blasted : When you flinch, don't inadvertently break your neck. When you laugh, choke on your tongue.
Phaedra's Love (an image): Love laughed and tore her heart: not in the traditional way -- through the chest, parting the rib cage; but in an abrasive way, through her back -- severing the thoracic vertebrae.
The Prince laid comfortably on a frayed couch, watching her, trying his best to feign interest. He managed a bombastic yawn, followed by droopy eyes. He wanted her heart; it would keep him company when he watched sitcoms -- Three’s Company was his favorite.
The queen bowed, coughed, and spat up blood -- some dribbled from her chin onto her collar. Despite her distress and agony, she turned and walked out of her son’s chamber. Her face was wet with tears; her back covered in blood. She glanced at her son; he had picked up her heart and squeezed it like a stress ball -- his eyes never looking away from the TV. He was focused: content.
As soon as she was in the hall she collapsed onto a dirt floor. She pulled herself across, leaving a trail of blood. Margret, the maid, would be livid. The queen imagined her saying, “These past two weeks blood has shit on my floor five fucking times. Clean is a bitch to blood!”
The Queen dragged herself to her bedroom door and reflected, Love is Dirt’s bitch.
Cleansed : "Upon injection you will experience the following: burning in the groin, incontinence, nose bleeding, hemorrhaging in the urinary tract, bleeding gums, loss of teeth, distorted vision, auditory hallucinations, Tongue-tie/loss of tongue, inflated ego, vomiting of blood, and an overwhelming sense of love, passion, hate, and once again... love… Any questions? Ask now… What? You’re unintelligible with that sock in your mouth."
Crave : Continue. Shit. Sleep. Stretch. Consume. Fuck. Sleep. Speak. Eat. Fear. Crave. Sacrifice. Forget. Inflict. Feed. Sleep. Cuddle. Smell. Abandon. Return. Abandon. Return. Fuck. Shit. Drink. Accept. Blame. Accept. Fail. Leave. Return. Survive. Reflect. Suffer. Suffer. Suffer. Remember. Suffer. Surfer. Suffer. Pause. Repeat.
4.48 Psychosis : The fluorescent bulb blinks with a twist of the wrist: a floor of cockroaches scatter. Your naked body watches a black mass scurry up your legs and across your chest -- midnight organic armor. The sun tears through the bay window; the roaches run: abandon. You hesitate, then fall forward onto a metal spike, impaling yourself before the afternoon picnic. (No one asked for poetry.)
Skin (an image): Grace’s dreadlocks were pulled into a ponytail with a red rubber band; it rested neatly between her shoulder blades. Her exaggerated hand gestures complemented her energetic conversations. Today her fingernails were fluorescent orange -- perfectly manicured. She had worked at Tiny’s Hair Salon for over a decade; her clients were mostly black women of all ages. Sam was the exception: a middle aged white man.
Tiny's was located in a black community fifty miles from the Kentucky border. Every fifth of the month at 1pm for the past eight years, Sam came through the door of Tiny’s Salon. Initially, Sam was an unsightly blemish -- a splash of bleach on a black dress.
But Sam’s agreeability was quickly embraced; Mrs. Ower, an eighty year old woman, called him “adorable.”
He’d wait, smile, nod, and read beauty magazines. He was patient, and tapped his feet to the old time jazz and blues that played on a Pioneer record player.
Grace got so comfortable with Sam that she’d playfully tease him as she worked. Grace traditionally slapped him on the shoulder and said his head was a test to the trade. She skillfully concealed Sam’s bald spot where his hair naturally parted. “Thanks Grace,” was his only reply.
Today Sam wore blue jeans and a button up black short sleeve shirt, one size too small, which exaggerated his lean and muscular frame.
“Hey,” Sam said, sitting in the chair.
“Sammy… Same?” Grace said with a wink and a smile.
“No.”
“No?”
“Yeah.”
“Really?” she turned his chair around to face the mirror.
“Shave it,” he said, running his fingers through his thick black curls.
“Shave it…? What? No.” Grace said, looking at Sam through the mirror.
“Yeah. Shave it.”
“Right… that’s what you said. But I think you're messed up.”
“No. Just shave it… Close.”
“You don’t want that.”
“Tired off the bald spot, Grace.”
“Don’t you worry about that. Just part it like I showed you… you look sophisticated,” she said with a genuine laugh.
“Shave it,” he said flatly.
They looked at each other in the mirror. Grace nodded, took up her scissors and cut it down. As she prepared the clippers she asked, “How short?”
“To the skin.”
“Skin?”
“Yeah skin.”
“Don’t you want something nice like --” she started.
“Skin Grace; I’m tired of asking.”
Grace looked around the salon, Betty, a fellow beautician -- who was working on Mrs. Hayden -- just shook her head and clicked her tongue.
“Yeah,” Grace said. “Your head.”
Grace set the clipper guard to zero; his bald spot looked like a broken X. She removed the remaining hair evenly, starting at his right temple and pulling the clipper towards her. She passed over the bald spot and her face grew stern and focused. Betty walked over, tapped Grace’s shoulder and went back to her chair.
Grace turned the clippers off, Betty was talking on her cell phone -- customers started leaving. She went to the counter and picked up the scissors and put them in her pocket. She turned Sam around so he could look in the mirror. He was expressionless.
Grace rubbed jojoba oil into his scalp, repeatedly going over the swastika tattoo. She applied more oil, this time she rubbed it in with her nails, until the swastika had red gashes. Sam was motionless.
“Thank you Grace,” Sam said with closed eyes. Grace bent and whispered into his ear; a fluorescent orange fingernail touched Sam’s Adam's apple.
----------------------------------
Sarah Kane
February 20, 1999
Sarah (28 years old) sits at the end of the stage, knocking her boots together. She wears jean pants, a red shirt, and dark brown leather jacket. She takes a drag of her cigarette: exhales, pauses, takes another drag, exhales, pauses, takes a third drag and holds it in; finally smoke slowly exits her nostrils. She scratches her throat and looks at the audience, closes her eyes, and flicks the cigarette into the audience. She opens her eyes, rubs her throat with both hands and scans the audience.
Sarah (tight): Open the curtains.
Blackout.
January 5, 2021
Sarah Kane's career began with a blast - quite literally. In 1995 "Blasted" shocked and revolted the critical establishment by putting together two apparently unrelated subjects: a guy raping his mentally unstable girlfriend in a hotel room and civil war. Hard to imagine how the two could fit together in play, due to the difficulties such a hybridisation of concepts and languages implies. Kane took the easy way, stripping all metaphors bare and throwing them on stage, making the public acknowledge them exactly for what they are.
The guy spends the night abusing the girl, both sexually and psychologically. The morning after the rape there's a knock on the door and a soldier, simply and inexplicably, breaks into the room, bringing in with him all the horrors of an unspecified civil war (the author chose not to wrap her soldier in any particular flag, she didn't put any banner in his hands nor colours on his uniform). In a surreal escalation of horror, the soldier inflicts all sorts of torture to the rapist and reveals the common nature of their cruelty. By the end of the play, cannibalism, sodomy, the telling of war atrocities witnessed and committed, blood, cum and shit have turned the cosy hotel room in a disaster area.
Predictably enough, this play was bound to be misunderstood, since it provides none of the easy answers both the public and the critics feel entitled to. Its message is perhaps to be found in the sudden shift from the sphere of sexual assault to that of war. The private violence of rape and the total violence of war are one and the same thing in principle: it's merely a matter of numbers. When the dynamics of love - the means for us to get in physical as well as emotional touch with each other - are twisted and perverted, then everything is lost, everything is but a meaningless calvary of farcical, obscene brutality in which even the boundaries between victim, perpetrator and bystander get increasingly blurred - until they cease to exist. Thus the Soldier, embodiment and metaphor of all institutionalised rape, joins in after the Abuser has performed his own small-scale atrocity, and the two dimensions start to merge; thus the victimiser is now victimised by the chain of events he himself has set in motion.
"Phaedra's Love" (1996) is a retelling of the Greek myth of Phaedra, who falls in love with her stepchild Prince Hippolytus and, frustrated in her desire, accuses him of rape before hanging herself. A story of incest, unrequited love, blasphemy and murder reminding of Kathy Acker's novels. In Kane's version the setting is a modern royal family destroyed from within by two conflicting drives: Hippolytus' death of affection and Phaedra's insane passion, which will lead the monarchy (symbolising the family, or maybe the self) to catastrophe. It is indeed the two faces of desire that these characters represent; while the Prince - fat, spoiled, abject - is determined never to surrender to feelings, either the other people's or his own, Phaedra is willingly overwhelmed by hers, and therefore naturally drawn to (self)destruction.
Echoes of Pasolini's "Oedipus Rex" and "Theorem", Shakespeare's "Titus Andronicus", Sade.
"Cleansed" (1998) deals with a question whose answer doesn't exist: what's the greatest promise you're willing to make to a lover, and how far would you actually go to keep that promise?
Tinker, a sadistic psychiatrist (?) experiments on a few patients (?) with very peculiar issues in an unnamed institution, apparently a university turned into Tinker's private concentration camp/scientific lab. He observes them interact, love each other, have sex, make vows - and then pushes each of them to the extreme limits of those vows, inflicting unthinkable tortures on them - 'cleansing' them, so to speak, of all their lies and illusions; giving their love the purity of immanence, the absolute gratouitousness of Here and Now.
Orwell comes to mind with regards to the tortures (Room 101 in "1984") although there's a good deal of the author's personal experience in these pages, especially her lifelong struggle against depression and the shortcomings of institutionalised mental healthcare. The name 'Tinker' is her retaliation against the cultural establishment who had been attacking her on a shamefully personal level ever since "Blasted" was first performed ('This disgusting feast of filth', as critic Jack Tinker put it; hence the name).
A few months later, "Crave" was performed in Edinburgh: a 'choral monologue' of four different voices belonging to one and the same mind, fragmented and tormented, whose effect on the reader is utterly bewildering. Although it certainly reminds of Beckett, there's none of his surreal humour here, but rather an overwhelming intensity. In writing this play, Kane drew heavily from her history of mental issues, failed relationships, family conflicts, but also from the juvenile religious fervour she had rejected in her early twenties, the traces of which are to be found in the biblical images and quotes (Job, Psalms, the Gospels and even A. Crowley) that form the evanescent texture of this dialogue/soliloquy.
It's an unsettling, intensely poetic experience, messed up, chaotic and visceral as only the human mind can be.
To crown it all, her posthumously performed masterpiece, "4.48 Psychosis". Strictly speaking, this one is not even a play, but rather a suicide letter, a poem, a desperate monologue with virtually no stage directions. It reads like a collection of diary entries written shortly before Kane surrendered to her inner demons and took her own life by hanging herself (with her shoe laces, which a patient whose suicidal tendencies were already well known wasn't supposed to have at her disposal. But then again, she wasn't supposed to be left alone for one hour and half, either).
Hence the total lack of dramatic technicalities and genre conventions, to the point that it's hard to even classify this marvelous text. Pure poetry, most definitely, but also a visionary, heartrending account of the suffering she went through as a psychiatric patient, more realistic and gutwrenching than Sylvia Plath's and Anna Kavan's. In fact one can't help but wonder what a great poet she could have been. This elegy to the self reached so deep inside me, struck so many chords with such inexorable precision that I often felt too frightened to continue.
Soon after completing this devastatingly beautiful poem, she killed herself.
Reading this is therefore like seeing a girl standing on a roof edge: the moment you start screaming no no no no she waves you hello and jumps off. And you realise that she was only waiting for someone to pass by and see her, someone she could wave hello to for the last time. And it happened to be you. You can only hope she was smiling while doing so, but you'll never really know, nobody ever will.
Thank you, Sarah. For what it's worth, I'll think of you very often and very fondly.
It's a promise.
The guy spends the night abusing the girl, both sexually and psychologically. The morning after the rape there's a knock on the door and a soldier, simply and inexplicably, breaks into the room, bringing in with him all the horrors of an unspecified civil war (the author chose not to wrap her soldier in any particular flag, she didn't put any banner in his hands nor colours on his uniform). In a surreal escalation of horror, the soldier inflicts all sorts of torture to the rapist and reveals the common nature of their cruelty. By the end of the play, cannibalism, sodomy, the telling of war atrocities witnessed and committed, blood, cum and shit have turned the cosy hotel room in a disaster area.
Predictably enough, this play was bound to be misunderstood, since it provides none of the easy answers both the public and the critics feel entitled to. Its message is perhaps to be found in the sudden shift from the sphere of sexual assault to that of war. The private violence of rape and the total violence of war are one and the same thing in principle: it's merely a matter of numbers. When the dynamics of love - the means for us to get in physical as well as emotional touch with each other - are twisted and perverted, then everything is lost, everything is but a meaningless calvary of farcical, obscene brutality in which even the boundaries between victim, perpetrator and bystander get increasingly blurred - until they cease to exist. Thus the Soldier, embodiment and metaphor of all institutionalised rape, joins in after the Abuser has performed his own small-scale atrocity, and the two dimensions start to merge; thus the victimiser is now victimised by the chain of events he himself has set in motion.
"Phaedra's Love" (1996) is a retelling of the Greek myth of Phaedra, who falls in love with her stepchild Prince Hippolytus and, frustrated in her desire, accuses him of rape before hanging herself. A story of incest, unrequited love, blasphemy and murder reminding of Kathy Acker's novels. In Kane's version the setting is a modern royal family destroyed from within by two conflicting drives: Hippolytus' death of affection and Phaedra's insane passion, which will lead the monarchy (symbolising the family, or maybe the self) to catastrophe. It is indeed the two faces of desire that these characters represent; while the Prince - fat, spoiled, abject - is determined never to surrender to feelings, either the other people's or his own, Phaedra is willingly overwhelmed by hers, and therefore naturally drawn to (self)destruction.
Echoes of Pasolini's "Oedipus Rex" and "Theorem", Shakespeare's "Titus Andronicus", Sade.
"Cleansed" (1998) deals with a question whose answer doesn't exist: what's the greatest promise you're willing to make to a lover, and how far would you actually go to keep that promise?
Tinker, a sadistic psychiatrist (?) experiments on a few patients (?) with very peculiar issues in an unnamed institution, apparently a university turned into Tinker's private concentration camp/scientific lab. He observes them interact, love each other, have sex, make vows - and then pushes each of them to the extreme limits of those vows, inflicting unthinkable tortures on them - 'cleansing' them, so to speak, of all their lies and illusions; giving their love the purity of immanence, the absolute gratouitousness of Here and Now.
Orwell comes to mind with regards to the tortures (Room 101 in "1984") although there's a good deal of the author's personal experience in these pages, especially her lifelong struggle against depression and the shortcomings of institutionalised mental healthcare. The name 'Tinker' is her retaliation against the cultural establishment who had been attacking her on a shamefully personal level ever since "Blasted" was first performed ('This disgusting feast of filth', as critic Jack Tinker put it; hence the name).
A few months later, "Crave" was performed in Edinburgh: a 'choral monologue' of four different voices belonging to one and the same mind, fragmented and tormented, whose effect on the reader is utterly bewildering. Although it certainly reminds of Beckett, there's none of his surreal humour here, but rather an overwhelming intensity. In writing this play, Kane drew heavily from her history of mental issues, failed relationships, family conflicts, but also from the juvenile religious fervour she had rejected in her early twenties, the traces of which are to be found in the biblical images and quotes (Job, Psalms, the Gospels and even A. Crowley) that form the evanescent texture of this dialogue/soliloquy.
It's an unsettling, intensely poetic experience, messed up, chaotic and visceral as only the human mind can be.
To crown it all, her posthumously performed masterpiece, "4.48 Psychosis". Strictly speaking, this one is not even a play, but rather a suicide letter, a poem, a desperate monologue with virtually no stage directions. It reads like a collection of diary entries written shortly before Kane surrendered to her inner demons and took her own life by hanging herself (with her shoe laces, which a patient whose suicidal tendencies were already well known wasn't supposed to have at her disposal. But then again, she wasn't supposed to be left alone for one hour and half, either).
Hence the total lack of dramatic technicalities and genre conventions, to the point that it's hard to even classify this marvelous text. Pure poetry, most definitely, but also a visionary, heartrending account of the suffering she went through as a psychiatric patient, more realistic and gutwrenching than Sylvia Plath's and Anna Kavan's. In fact one can't help but wonder what a great poet she could have been. This elegy to the self reached so deep inside me, struck so many chords with such inexorable precision that I often felt too frightened to continue.
Soon after completing this devastatingly beautiful poem, she killed herself.
Reading this is therefore like seeing a girl standing on a roof edge: the moment you start screaming no no no no she waves you hello and jumps off. And you realise that she was only waiting for someone to pass by and see her, someone she could wave hello to for the last time. And it happened to be you. You can only hope she was smiling while doing so, but you'll never really know, nobody ever will.
Thank you, Sarah. For what it's worth, I'll think of you very often and very fondly.
It's a promise.
October 18, 2018
"così astratto da essere
spiacevole
inaccettabile
non ispirante
impenetrabile
irrilevante
irriverente
irreligiosa
incorreggibile
antipatica
spostata
incorporea
scomposta"
Ecco il teatro di Sarah Kane. Ti fa provare repulsione e nausea e allo stesso tempo ti attrae e ti affascina. Fa paura, tremendamente paura. Ma è bello, bellissimo. E' forte imponente e maestoso, deciso, senza reticenze o sottintesi.Ciò che deve dire lo dice senza mezzi termini.
La bellezza è questa: la pienezza unita al fascino.
E questi testi sono belli da far paura.
December 11, 2012
da «Psicosi delle 4 e 48»
Sono triste
Sento che il futuro è senza speranza e le cose non possono migliorare
Sono stufa e insoddisfatta di tutto
Sono un fallimento completo come persona
Sono colpevole, vengo punita
Vorrei uccidermi
Prima riuscivo a piangere ora sono oltre le lacrime
Ho perso interesse negli altri
Non riesco a prendere decisioni
Non riesco a mangiare
Non riesco a dormire
Non riesco a pensare
Non riesco a vincere il senso di solitudine, di paura, di disgusto
Sono grassa
Non riesco a scrivere
Non riesco ad amare
Mio fratello muore, il mio amante muore, sono io che li uccido
Galoppo verso la morte
Ho terrore dei medicinali
Non riesco a fare l’amore
Non riesco a scopare
Non riesco a stare sola
Non riesco a stare con gli altri
Ho i fianchi troppo grandi
I miei genitali non mi piacciono
Alle 4 e 48
quando la disperazione mi fa visita
mi impiccherò
al suono del respiro del mio amante
Io non voglio morire
Mi sono depressa così tanto al pensiero della mia mortalità che ho deciso di suicidarmi
Io non voglio vivere
Brutale, ripugnante, insensato. Lugubre, desolante, dolce.
La poesia di Sarah Kane. Teatro, se volete.
Sono triste
Sento che il futuro è senza speranza e le cose non possono migliorare
Sono stufa e insoddisfatta di tutto
Sono un fallimento completo come persona
Sono colpevole, vengo punita
Vorrei uccidermi
Prima riuscivo a piangere ora sono oltre le lacrime
Ho perso interesse negli altri
Non riesco a prendere decisioni
Non riesco a mangiare
Non riesco a dormire
Non riesco a pensare
Non riesco a vincere il senso di solitudine, di paura, di disgusto
Sono grassa
Non riesco a scrivere
Non riesco ad amare
Mio fratello muore, il mio amante muore, sono io che li uccido
Galoppo verso la morte
Ho terrore dei medicinali
Non riesco a fare l’amore
Non riesco a scopare
Non riesco a stare sola
Non riesco a stare con gli altri
Ho i fianchi troppo grandi
I miei genitali non mi piacciono
Alle 4 e 48
quando la disperazione mi fa visita
mi impiccherò
al suono del respiro del mio amante
Io non voglio morire
Mi sono depressa così tanto al pensiero della mia mortalità che ho deciso di suicidarmi
Io non voglio vivere
Brutale, ripugnante, insensato. Lugubre, desolante, dolce.
La poesia di Sarah Kane. Teatro, se volete.
November 27, 2019
Termino a Sarah Kane temblando tras leer Psicosis 4:48, un monólogo con una tremenda historia.
🥀
4.48 es la hora en la que estadísticamente se cometen más suicidios por ser esa franja intermedia entre que pasan los efectos de la medicación y la siguiente toma. Una franja de lucidez pero también desbordamiento en la que Kane escribe este grito desgarrador lleno de honestidad, contradicciones y dolor.
🥀
«La escotilla se abre
Luz cruda
y Nada
Nada
veo Nada
.... ¿Cómo soy yo?
..........la criatura de la negación»
🥀
Cada palabra es un golpe que nos interpela, una súplica no contestada:
«tajo retorcer golpe quemazón».
La traducción mantiene ese ritmo sórdido que es todavía más notable si lo leemos en versión original «parpadeo toque flotar toque».
🥀
Kane Es de esas autoras que no se lee. Se siente, se palpa, se rasga. Es difícil hablar de ella porque su contenido tan poético, que no etéreo, penetra de forma contundente. Si hay autoras que marcan, Kane es una de ellas: «por favor abre las cortinas».
#SarahKane #psicosis448 #mujeresylocura #librosgrito
🥀
4.48 es la hora en la que estadísticamente se cometen más suicidios por ser esa franja intermedia entre que pasan los efectos de la medicación y la siguiente toma. Una franja de lucidez pero también desbordamiento en la que Kane escribe este grito desgarrador lleno de honestidad, contradicciones y dolor.
🥀
«La escotilla se abre
Luz cruda
y Nada
Nada
veo Nada
.... ¿Cómo soy yo?
..........la criatura de la negación»
🥀
Cada palabra es un golpe que nos interpela, una súplica no contestada:
«tajo retorcer golpe quemazón».
La traducción mantiene ese ritmo sórdido que es todavía más notable si lo leemos en versión original «parpadeo toque flotar toque».
🥀
Kane Es de esas autoras que no se lee. Se siente, se palpa, se rasga. Es difícil hablar de ella porque su contenido tan poético, que no etéreo, penetra de forma contundente. Si hay autoras que marcan, Kane es una de ellas: «por favor abre las cortinas».
#SarahKane #psicosis448 #mujeresylocura #librosgrito
February 25, 2016
With Sarah Kane, you either love her or you hate her.
I hated some of these but LOVED 4.48 Psychosis.
A must read for any drama/performance student.
I hated some of these but LOVED 4.48 Psychosis.
A must read for any drama/performance student.
November 22, 2020
I've never understood—4.48 Psychosis
what it is I'm not supposed to feel
like a bird on the wing in a swollen sky
my mind is torn by lightning
as it flies from the thunder behind
[...]
It is myself I have never met, whose face is pasted on the underside of my mind.
March 27, 2025
Dopo Sarah Kane, il nulla. Questa visionaria è riuscita nell'impresa di uccidere e resuscitare il teatro in un colpo solo. Chissà cosa avrebbe potuto donare al mondo se fosse vissuta più a lungo. Definita "brutalista" dalla critica, io trovo che chiunque con un granello di sensibilità possa percepire la delicatezza e la poesia dietro i suoi dialoghi. Conserverò questo libro con amore.
November 13, 2007
these are some of the most fucked up things i've ever read. they're also completely brilliant. both of which are a reflection of her. i've now finally seen one staged (blasted) and it was quite the intense experience. reading the play doesn't quite prepare you for the actual act of watching it, nor does it do full justice to the play. once you actually seen living breathing human beings acting out these roles, every part of it gets magnified, including the brilliance. and i'd recommend seeing it on an empty stomach.
Read
September 2, 2022Una me che non ho mai conosciuto, il volto impresso sul rovescio della mia mente
per favore aprite le tende
...
Che potenza, che forza, che devastazione. 4:48 Psychosis è una delle cose più forti che abbia mai letto, quanto mi sarebbe piaciuto leggere altro di suo...
per favore aprite le tende
...
Che potenza, che forza, che devastazione. 4:48 Psychosis è una delle cose più forti che abbia mai letto, quanto mi sarebbe piaciuto leggere altro di suo...
March 3, 2024
"Sanity is found at the centre of convulsion, where madness is scorched from the bisected soul.
I know myself.
I see myself.
My life is caught in a web of reason
spun by a doctor to augment the sane."
-
Incendiary, neurotic prose. Electrifyingly incredible.
I know myself.
I see myself.
My life is caught in a web of reason
spun by a doctor to augment the sane."
-
Incendiary, neurotic prose. Electrifyingly incredible.
December 22, 2025
- Blasted: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
- Phaedra's Love: ⭐⭐⭐⭐
- Cleansed: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
- Crave: ⭐⭐⭐
- 4.48 Psychosis: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
- Skin: ⭐⭐⭐
Reviews available on individual GR pages.
- Phaedra's Love: ⭐⭐⭐⭐
- Cleansed: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
- Crave: ⭐⭐⭐
- 4.48 Psychosis: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
- Skin: ⭐⭐⭐
Reviews available on individual GR pages.
February 16, 2020
Nada fácil de retratar. Ou se ama ou se odeia.
Cinco peças de uma profundidade imensa, poética, atroz, densa, doce , agreste, sensível, cruel, caótica, estimulante .... Não chegam os adjectivos !!
Diz O Sim e o seu Oposto.
Imprudente retirar qualquer passagem.
Escrita, toda ela, a sublinhar , a sublimar , a intrigar , a degustar, a devorar, a memorizar.
Catártica / Libertadora.
Cinco peças de uma profundidade imensa, poética, atroz, densa, doce , agreste, sensível, cruel, caótica, estimulante .... Não chegam os adjectivos !!
Diz O Sim e o seu Oposto.
Imprudente retirar qualquer passagem.
Escrita, toda ela, a sublinhar , a sublimar , a intrigar , a degustar, a devorar, a memorizar.
Catártica / Libertadora.
July 28, 2023
“They will love me for that which destroys me
The sword in my dreams
The dust of my thoughts
The sickness that breeds in the folds of my mind”
It’s hard not to let the other works in this collection get overshadowed by 4.48 Psychosis. Not because they’re not brutal and beautiful and form-pushing in their own rights, but more so because 4.48 is truly one of the most powerful, most uncomfortable pieces of poetry (Dialogue? Prose? Aphorism?) that you’ll ever read.
It’s really challenging to reckon with. The author’s suicide is so present within the text that it feels impossible to read this as anything but personal, and as a result the reader is implicated. This is the suffering Artist laid bare in language and it feels almost immoral to look at those pages, Kane is vocally aware of our voyeurism. But at the same time, the raw emotion is intoxicating:
“Fuck you. Fuck you. Fuck you for rejecting me by never being there, fuck you for making me feel like shit about myself, fuck you for bleeding the fucking love and life out of me, fuck my father for fucking up my life for good and fuck my mother for not leaving him, but most of all, fuck you God for making me love a person who does not exist.FUCK YOU FUCK YOU FUCK YOU.”
It’s impossible to deny that this is incredible literature, but it’s deeply uncomfortable to admit that there is aesthetic beauty in a young, clinically depressed woman writing about hanging herself. It’s also a work that really challenges the morally “right” way to think about the suicidal, it’s hard to think that someone so “ill” is capable of writing something so poignant. I expect 4.48 will remain one of the most haunting things I’ll ever read.
The sword in my dreams
The dust of my thoughts
The sickness that breeds in the folds of my mind”
It’s hard not to let the other works in this collection get overshadowed by 4.48 Psychosis. Not because they’re not brutal and beautiful and form-pushing in their own rights, but more so because 4.48 is truly one of the most powerful, most uncomfortable pieces of poetry (Dialogue? Prose? Aphorism?) that you’ll ever read.
It’s really challenging to reckon with. The author’s suicide is so present within the text that it feels impossible to read this as anything but personal, and as a result the reader is implicated. This is the suffering Artist laid bare in language and it feels almost immoral to look at those pages, Kane is vocally aware of our voyeurism. But at the same time, the raw emotion is intoxicating:
“Fuck you. Fuck you. Fuck you for rejecting me by never being there, fuck you for making me feel like shit about myself, fuck you for bleeding the fucking love and life out of me, fuck my father for fucking up my life for good and fuck my mother for not leaving him, but most of all, fuck you God for making me love a person who does not exist.FUCK YOU FUCK YOU FUCK YOU.”
It’s impossible to deny that this is incredible literature, but it’s deeply uncomfortable to admit that there is aesthetic beauty in a young, clinically depressed woman writing about hanging herself. It’s also a work that really challenges the morally “right” way to think about the suicidal, it’s hard to think that someone so “ill” is capable of writing something so poignant. I expect 4.48 will remain one of the most haunting things I’ll ever read.
Read
February 12, 2023Non lo valuto sto libro, non merita una tale oggettificazione.
Sarah Kane era un'artista vera, un'artista con la A maiuscola, senza nessun desiderio se non quello di essere ascoltata, letta e guardata.
I commenti dopo contano poco.
Mentirei se dicessi che ho amato questo libro, sembrerei anche spocchioso dall'alto della mia vita "normale", posso solo dire che era necessario, come necessario era che esistesse anche nella nostra epoca una figura del genere.
Sarah Kane era un'artista vera, un'artista con la A maiuscola, senza nessun desiderio se non quello di essere ascoltata, letta e guardata.
I commenti dopo contano poco.
Mentirei se dicessi che ho amato questo libro, sembrerei anche spocchioso dall'alto della mia vita "normale", posso solo dire che era necessario, come necessario era che esistesse anche nella nostra epoca una figura del genere.
April 28, 2025
unbelievable
May 6, 2015
This is a book that is certainly not for everyone. It´s definitely disturbing. It's dark and extreme. There is rape, there is suicide, there is a tongue being cut off, limbs are removed, eyes are getting sucked out and a a baby is being cannibalized. Just to name a few things. And yet there is some beauty in the writing and in the things told.
To me there are very clearly two periods in Kane´s work. The first period would include Blasted, Phaedra´s love, Cleansed and the script for the short-film Skin. This period is marked by extreme brutality.
Then there is the second period, containing the plays Crave and 4.48 Psychosis. These plays are not so much brutal as they are deeply depressing. Throughout the writing there is a feeling of strong necessity to it. I also think these two plays are absolutely brilliant.
Blasted: 3/5 stars: This play takes place entirely in a hotel room. It's about an unpleasant journalist, his presumably ex-girlfriend and later a troubled but sadistic soldier in a time of war. Without spoiling anything, the theme here is the brutality of war and it's effect on the human psyche. It's about the need for human connection, but also about the sadistic push of war on an individual level.
Phaedra's love: 3/5 stars: A modern take on the original Phaedra myth. It's on the extremes of human love, the strange position of royalty (Hyppolytus: "News. Another rape. Child murdered. War somewhere. Few thousand jobs gone. But none of this matters 'cause it's a royal birthday."), it's about sex and self-destruction.
Cleansed: 2/5 stars: I had to ponder on this one a while. Was not quite sure what I thought about it or what the message was. It's about an extremely sadistic man, who toys with his subjects. All of them are in love with someone and the sadist, Tinker, 'tests' to find the limits of their love (by cutting of limbs, psychologically breaking them and threatening). There are layers of depth in here of people switching identities in some way, of the extremes of human emotions. Nonetheless, this play was the one I felt most to be shocking for the effect and had the least connection with.
Skin: 2/5 stars: A story about a skinhead who falls in love/lust with a black woman. I felt it was too short to be worked out properly and did not really get it's message across.
Crave: 4/5 stars: If you are depressed, do not read this one or 4.48 Psychosis. This play is depression and psychosis come to life. It has extremely dark humor ("Do you hear voices?" - "Only when they talk to me"), beautiful language and with every sentence you feel the necessity of the work. It is haunting, but beautiful.
4.48 Psychosis: 4/5 stars: Very much like Crave, but even further down the spiral. A complete conversation with the voices inside the protagonist's head, it has the same dark humor as Crave, but there is less of it. Knowing that Kane committed suicide shortly after writing this, you can't help but feel this is her suicide note, in a way.
Let me be clear: It's horrible and definitely not something to be romanticized. Depression is not beautiful, suicide is not a romantic way of dying. Kane killed herself with a shoelace. You have to be in an extremely dark place to be able to do this and it is not something to aspire.
Nonetheless, the last two plays are wonderful because they consist of very strong emotion and it's probably recognizable to everyone to some degree (although I hope for most to a lesser extend).
"Let the day perish in which I was born
Let the blackness of the night terrify it
Let the stars of its dawn be dark
May it not see the eyelids of the morning
Because it did not shut the door of my mother's womb"
To me there are very clearly two periods in Kane´s work. The first period would include Blasted, Phaedra´s love, Cleansed and the script for the short-film Skin. This period is marked by extreme brutality.
Then there is the second period, containing the plays Crave and 4.48 Psychosis. These plays are not so much brutal as they are deeply depressing. Throughout the writing there is a feeling of strong necessity to it. I also think these two plays are absolutely brilliant.
Blasted: 3/5 stars: This play takes place entirely in a hotel room. It's about an unpleasant journalist, his presumably ex-girlfriend and later a troubled but sadistic soldier in a time of war. Without spoiling anything, the theme here is the brutality of war and it's effect on the human psyche. It's about the need for human connection, but also about the sadistic push of war on an individual level.
Phaedra's love: 3/5 stars: A modern take on the original Phaedra myth. It's on the extremes of human love, the strange position of royalty (Hyppolytus: "News. Another rape. Child murdered. War somewhere. Few thousand jobs gone. But none of this matters 'cause it's a royal birthday."), it's about sex and self-destruction.
Cleansed: 2/5 stars: I had to ponder on this one a while. Was not quite sure what I thought about it or what the message was. It's about an extremely sadistic man, who toys with his subjects. All of them are in love with someone and the sadist, Tinker, 'tests' to find the limits of their love (by cutting of limbs, psychologically breaking them and threatening). There are layers of depth in here of people switching identities in some way, of the extremes of human emotions. Nonetheless, this play was the one I felt most to be shocking for the effect and had the least connection with.
Skin: 2/5 stars: A story about a skinhead who falls in love/lust with a black woman. I felt it was too short to be worked out properly and did not really get it's message across.
Crave: 4/5 stars: If you are depressed, do not read this one or 4.48 Psychosis. This play is depression and psychosis come to life. It has extremely dark humor ("Do you hear voices?" - "Only when they talk to me"), beautiful language and with every sentence you feel the necessity of the work. It is haunting, but beautiful.
4.48 Psychosis: 4/5 stars: Very much like Crave, but even further down the spiral. A complete conversation with the voices inside the protagonist's head, it has the same dark humor as Crave, but there is less of it. Knowing that Kane committed suicide shortly after writing this, you can't help but feel this is her suicide note, in a way.
Let me be clear: It's horrible and definitely not something to be romanticized. Depression is not beautiful, suicide is not a romantic way of dying. Kane killed herself with a shoelace. You have to be in an extremely dark place to be able to do this and it is not something to aspire.
Nonetheless, the last two plays are wonderful because they consist of very strong emotion and it's probably recognizable to everyone to some degree (although I hope for most to a lesser extend).
"Let the day perish in which I was born
Let the blackness of the night terrify it
Let the stars of its dawn be dark
May it not see the eyelids of the morning
Because it did not shut the door of my mother's womb"
July 18, 2019
Re-read, 18/7/19
Probably the most significant body of work by any British writer of the last 30 years or so. Staggering texts that resemble nerve endings rather than typical dramatic muscle. The bleakest of situations shot through with that beautiful, pared right back poetry.
Essential reading.
ORIGINAL REVIEW:
Sarah Kane is quite possibly the most important dramatist to have emerged in the last 25 years. She's also quite possibly the best. She is often described as 'shocking' and there's no doubting her use of violence is certainly that, it absolutely serves a purpose dramatically, and shouldn't discourage you. Having said that, don't read these in one sitting. You won't sleep.
'Blasted' is a work of genius; equating an act of sexual violence in a hotel room in Leeds with atrocities in Bosnia, stripping the characters of the humanity until they are truly pitiful, in the Aristotelian sense.
'Cleansed' is probably her 'best' play. Broken promises lead to a nightmarish spiral into the world of a sadist. Horrifying, disturbing, violent - and also shot through with beautiful language, and genuinely upsetting sentiments about the destructive effects of love and depression.
My favourite - if that's the right word - is '4.48 Psychosis': her masterpiece. This is one I find hardest to to remove Kane as the playwright from. This gives the piece an enormous power, and importantly does not romanticise Kane's mental health issues, which culminated with her suicide in 1998. When reading it you are aware of her depression as a destructive as opposed to a creative force. Her incredible craft is particularly evident in this piece; it is stunningly constructed and completely poetic.
The other 3 pieces ('Phaedra's Love', 'Crave' and her short film 'Skin') that form her complete works I consider comparatively minor, but they more than hold up twenty years later.
Anyone with an interest in theatre, and in fact anyone who's interested in literature should see what Kane had to offer.
Probably the most significant body of work by any British writer of the last 30 years or so. Staggering texts that resemble nerve endings rather than typical dramatic muscle. The bleakest of situations shot through with that beautiful, pared right back poetry.
Essential reading.
ORIGINAL REVIEW:
Sarah Kane is quite possibly the most important dramatist to have emerged in the last 25 years. She's also quite possibly the best. She is often described as 'shocking' and there's no doubting her use of violence is certainly that, it absolutely serves a purpose dramatically, and shouldn't discourage you. Having said that, don't read these in one sitting. You won't sleep.
'Blasted' is a work of genius; equating an act of sexual violence in a hotel room in Leeds with atrocities in Bosnia, stripping the characters of the humanity until they are truly pitiful, in the Aristotelian sense.
'Cleansed' is probably her 'best' play. Broken promises lead to a nightmarish spiral into the world of a sadist. Horrifying, disturbing, violent - and also shot through with beautiful language, and genuinely upsetting sentiments about the destructive effects of love and depression.
My favourite - if that's the right word - is '4.48 Psychosis': her masterpiece. This is one I find hardest to to remove Kane as the playwright from. This gives the piece an enormous power, and importantly does not romanticise Kane's mental health issues, which culminated with her suicide in 1998. When reading it you are aware of her depression as a destructive as opposed to a creative force. Her incredible craft is particularly evident in this piece; it is stunningly constructed and completely poetic.
The other 3 pieces ('Phaedra's Love', 'Crave' and her short film 'Skin') that form her complete works I consider comparatively minor, but they more than hold up twenty years later.
Anyone with an interest in theatre, and in fact anyone who's interested in literature should see what Kane had to offer.
February 10, 2016
It's so difficult to talk about Kane, even though I've been studying her oeuvre this entire semester, and I actually had a 4-hour exam on this topic today. I just can't comprehend it how such a huge legacy is compressed into this one book.
Would I have ever read this if it weren't for the course? Definitely not. Am I glad I did? You bet.
It's definitely not for casual readers; I don't think anyone who's unfamiliar with the historic context and criticism will enjoy/understand it. It's dark, visceral, brutally honest. It was very difficult at the beginning to get into her texts, but the deeper I delved into it, the more interesting it got. It also indirectly gave me a story idea which is probably the most depressing thing that I've ever come up with, but also the most intense and emotional.
For me, this is the ranking of the plays:
1. Phaedra's Love, 2. Crave, 3. 4.48 Psychosis, 4. Blasted, 5. Cleansed
From what I understand,Phaedra's Love is considered Kane's weakest play, but I don't really get it why. It's worthy of the Seneca and Racine versions, that's for sure. I'm not sure why this is the play that gripped me the most, but it is.
I really want to see one of her plays one day.
"No one survives life."
I learned a lot from her. To quote Hippolytus' last words: "If there could have been more moments like this..."
Rest in peace, Sarah.
Would I have ever read this if it weren't for the course? Definitely not. Am I glad I did? You bet.
It's definitely not for casual readers; I don't think anyone who's unfamiliar with the historic context and criticism will enjoy/understand it. It's dark, visceral, brutally honest. It was very difficult at the beginning to get into her texts, but the deeper I delved into it, the more interesting it got. It also indirectly gave me a story idea which is probably the most depressing thing that I've ever come up with, but also the most intense and emotional.
For me, this is the ranking of the plays:
1. Phaedra's Love, 2. Crave, 3. 4.48 Psychosis, 4. Blasted, 5. Cleansed
From what I understand,Phaedra's Love is considered Kane's weakest play, but I don't really get it why. It's worthy of the Seneca and Racine versions, that's for sure. I'm not sure why this is the play that gripped me the most, but it is.
I really want to see one of her plays one day.
"No one survives life."
I learned a lot from her. To quote Hippolytus' last words: "If there could have been more moments like this..."
Rest in peace, Sarah.
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December 2, 2017“Loro mi ameranno per ciò che mi distrugge.”
Io no. Non per quello.
Se per qualche oscuro motivo dovessi ancora espormi a descrizioni minuziose, in scala, del peggio possibile, passerei in tempi brevi alle grandezze naturali e/o mi rivolgerei al giornalismo deteriore. In letteratura e nel resto della (mia) vita, se posso scegliere, davanti all'orrore - e al sublime - mi attendo anche allusioni. Esclusioni. Spazio tra gli oggetti, me compresa.
In Febbre, l'autrice prova ad aprir(si) percorsi nuovi, in questo senso. In Psicosi delle 4.48 ci riesce mirabilmente. Purtroppo però alla Bellezza non sempre si sopravvive. Soprattutto se è la propria.
Io no. Non per quello.
Se per qualche oscuro motivo dovessi ancora espormi a descrizioni minuziose, in scala, del peggio possibile, passerei in tempi brevi alle grandezze naturali e/o mi rivolgerei al giornalismo deteriore. In letteratura e nel resto della (mia) vita, se posso scegliere, davanti all'orrore - e al sublime - mi attendo anche allusioni. Esclusioni. Spazio tra gli oggetti, me compresa.
In Febbre, l'autrice prova ad aprir(si) percorsi nuovi, in questo senso. In Psicosi delle 4.48 ci riesce mirabilmente. Purtroppo però alla Bellezza non sempre si sopravvive. Soprattutto se è la propria.
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