Initial Research

Sarah  Kane -

Kane was a writer in the 90's and changed modern writers in theatre today. From the 80's, people started writing about real life e.g. dishes in the sink, cancel houses, lower life living. Then later changed in the 90's to 'IN-YER-FACE' theatre which had angry, powerful themes and grabbed the audience by there neck and makes them suffer. 
Sarah Kane was 28 years old and suffered with her mental illness her whole life and tried to kill herself multiple times and tragically died in 20/2/1999 

- Her plays were contemporary theatre metaphysically unanswered questions.  

- She suffered with mental illness called clinical depression but also hallucinations. She had this for all of her life until she committed suicide at 28 years old. 

- She tried to commit suicide once before by taking 150 anti-depressants but this was a failed attempt. 2 weeks later on the 20th February between 2am and 3:30 am, she hung herself with her shoelaces on a hook on a hospital toilet door. 

- After her death, there was an inquest into her death where it was found that she had no nurse supervision during the time that she killed herself. The nurses said that they didn't know that she was mentally ill so therefore didn't know they needed to watch her almost 24/7. 

- 4.48 psychosis was thought to be her suicide note and this was thought by the public but not by her family members. 
- Her plays started to change the way other writers started to write theatrical plays in her era. 

- In this play, she uses a lot of untraditional punctuation such as the full stops and dashes were thought to be a heartbeat rhythm or a hospital sound from the machines.

 
- The theme of hopelessness is a main theme across all of her plays. 

- In one of her plays, 'Cleansed', her thought of University was that she thought of them as a concentration camp. 

- Most of the themes in her plays were what she felt most strongly about or what she hated about not just her life but life in general. 

- During her teenage years, she said that she was a born again christian, but as she got older she hated religion and this was a strong theme in 4.48 psychosis. She hated the idea that he life was controlled by religion as her parents thought strongly about it. 

- She struggled with her sexuality and people didn't know whether this was because of her mental illness or not. She regurlarly uses pronouns in 4.48 and doesn't just call herself either her or he. 

- It was a well known play for its flexibility of forms and it is written like she is living and experiencing one of her psychotic episodes. 

- Some parts she relates to being 'sane',  but the question of 'does sanity exist?' comes up a lot during the play.

 
- There is no mention of how many actors or characters she wanted or are. 

- No stage directions included in it apart from one which is 'silence' and this is repeated a lot during the whole play. 

- No setting or time frame. 

- There are times in the play where it is seen to be her having an affair with either her doctor or psychiatrist/therapist. 

- She left no indication of how to make it a play. 

- Lots of metaphors in a lot of the scenes, imagery and poetic onomatopoeia (bang, flash, flicker)

- 4.48 is known to be the time to commit suicide. This time is talked about by 'her' during one of her scenes. 

- In some scenes there are streams of consciousness. 

- Sarah Kane was the sort of person that hated being told what to do especially when she was told to count down in 7's when she was in a psychotic episode to help her to count down. This was not just thought by her but also other mentally ill patients.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Unit 8 Portfolio Initial Tasks

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