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Underground > Film, TV & Theatre >

Sarah Kane

  
 
at the scarwash
15:47 / 31.10.02
Infernal Bridegroom Productions, one of the only chances for avant garde theatre in Houston, just finished a run of Phaedra's Love by Sarah Kane, a horrid little bit of self indulgent grade-school nihilism draped over Euripides' Hippolytus. Apparently, she had some kind of Kathy-Ackerish underground cred in the London theatre scene before she offed herself. I was just wondering if maybe she wrote other plays that were actually good (there are some points in the text where she attains a Joe-Ortonish deadpan humor), and Phaedra's Love was a fluke. Anyone? Anyone?
 
 
Shortfatdyke
17:42 / 31.10.02
A writer friend of mine knew Kane. She said of her, "She hated herself/And then she killed herself." A story I've heard too many times before. I Googled her name and got this:

Blasted shook London´s theatre world with critics unable to handle its violence and energy ("a disgusting piece of filth").
James Macdonald, the producer, says "a short run meant Blasted was seen by not many more than 1,000 people, making it perhaps the least seen and most talked-about play in recent memory. Meanwhile, lying low in Brixton, Sarah received a surprise delivery at 3pm one afternoon. A fan letter from Harold Pinter. Had he popped down to deliver it himself, she wondered, or was it a lackey in shades and gloves".

In the bedroom of a hotel room Ian, an obnoxious businessman, has Cate for the night. She is down to earth and unused to luxury. Then the soldier enters. The hotel is in a Bosnian Leeds and the events that follow reflect the pain and suffering that Bosnia endured. Kane uses the viewpoints of both oppressor and victim.

Death. Not being / you fall asleep then you wake up His mother´s a lesbos, am I not preferable to that/ perhaps she´s a nice person Give us a cig/ why?/ Cause I got a gun and you haven´t No God/ Got to be something/ Why?/ Doesn´t make sense otherwise/ Doesn´t make sense anyway

Skin A ten minute television script written by Kane. A skinhead, Billy, comes in contact with a black girl. One of them is a victim. Written in 1995.

Wanna get yourself sorted, Billyboy I do hope you are not turning into a vegetarian You never touched a black woman before? / Only with a baseball bat Nothing of you / You bruise easy

Cleansed is set in a university/concentration camp with episodes in the white room (the sanatorium), the red room (sports hall), the black room (the showers/peep booth) etc.

Life is sweet I´ll do my best, moment to moment, not to betray you Rod not me more like me than I ever was Love me or kill me, Graham I won´t turn away from you If you could change one thing in your life what would you change? / My life Lots of people know me, they´re not in love with me and the rats eat my face Gagging for it/ Begging for it/ Barking for it/ Arching for it/ Aching for it

Crave Because of the critical furore from Blasted, Kane´s next play was initially produced under the name Marie Kelvedon.
Four people sit on chairs facing the audience and talk to the audience separately.

He´s following me... He needs to have a secret but he can´t help telling The heat is going out of me/ The heart is going out of me And though she cannot remember she cannot forget Clutching a fistful of sand What ties me to you is guilt I crossed two rivers and wept by one I am the beast at the end of the rope Happy and free

4.48 Psychosis 4.48 is the time most suicides take place. A haunting play, performed after Kane´s death.

who took the piss when I shaved my head, who lied and said it was nice to see me. Who lied. And said it was nice to see me Your truth, your lies, not mine Nothing can extinguish my anger I just hope to God that death is the fucking end corrosive doubt I dreamt went to the doctor´s and she gave me eight minutes to live. I´d been sitting in the fucking waiting room half an hour

Sarah Kane hanged herself while in hospital being treated for depression. I haven't seen any of her plays, would love to see Blasted and 4.48 Psychosis.
 
 
autopilot disengaged
22:39 / 04.11.02
grrrrrr...

sarah kane was a flawed, mixed-up, broken, part reassembled playwright that, with blasted produced one of the most incredible 100mph handbrake turns in modern drama. if theatre and conceptual art ever really get it together (the way they've been threatening to do for years) kane will be one of the forerunners.

she's by no means one of my favourite writers - but i am always awed by the way she located a potential new front for drama. edward bond, who wrote saved, perhaps the most brutally brilliant play of the sixties seemed to see her as someone who could re-ignite a kind of poetic assault on an increasingly desensitized culture.

she was an incredibly radical, passionate and human writer. i'd recommend reading blasted for its attempt to bring other peoples' tragedies (ie. bosnia) into a head-on collision with contemporary britain... crave for being both beautiful and subversive in its beckettian (?) exploration of love and longing... and 4.48 psychosis for being the most naked, unmediated text i've ever seen produced for the stage.

make no mistake - love her or loathe her - kane was the young playwright most likely to change everything. she didn't write the best plays... she wasn't consistent, or by any means the finished article... but somehow, like i say, she kept stumbling over the border into...

i don't know. take a look (and yeah, phaedra was perhaps the worst thing she put her name to.)
 
 
wembley can change in 28 days
09:00 / 05.11.02
I actually quite liked Phaedra's Love, although I don't think the writing is nearly as sophisticated as 4:48 Psychosis. One thing about any drama that is rooted in a highly literary text (beckett, shakespeare et al - and i include sarah kane in here because of the linguistic intricacy, and the obvious difficulty in staging) is that it takes a miracle to stage it so that the text really comes through. I'm willing to bet that reading Phaedra would have given you a totally different impression of the playwright's worth. Phaedra isn't necessarily a masterpiece, but it's also one of her most straightforward works and thus one of the easiest for plebians like us to take apart and criticise. I'm with autopilot on this one - she is already, in my mind, the beginning of what drama will be in 25 years.
 
  
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