4.48 Psychosis (Methuen Modern Plays)

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Director Ted Huffman says the melding of the text with music has felt, dramatically, like a natural process. “There is such a wide variety of register in the writing, many recurring motifs and especially there is text that clearly wants to overlay other parts of the text. This is a rarity in theatre, but something that occurs in opera all the time, where the music helps define individual lines so you can hear several things being sung at once.”

For six weeks in late spring 2000, they hunkered down at the Royal Court rehearsal rooms, trying to find answers. Simon Kane joined them, perched on a mattress in the corner. All three actors set about learning the text in its entirety; every moment would be rehearsed, but in keeping with the script’s freeform feel, it was decided that some sections should be left to the moment – if one person started a speech, the lines would be theirs for that performance. Designer Jeremy Herbert created a setting that was as stark as the text, a single large mirror suspended at a 45-degree angle over a plain white floor – visually elegant, but also a metaphor for the script’s prism of multiplying personalities. Normally going to see Sarah Kane’s 4.48 psychosis on a Saturday evening would not fill one with the joys of life. But this production does.Sarah Kane’s lyrical and haunting play about mental health. ★★★★ Time Out, ★★★★ The Guardian, ★★★★ Theatre Weekly, ★★★★★ West End Wilma Sixteen years on, McInnes is adamant that 4.48 is infinitely more than a suicide note: “People take her story on and then they infuse her work with that: I find that really frustrating. To me the heart of it is a love story – what does it mean to love, can we love, all those questions.” She points to Kane’s formal experimentalism, the startling urgency and precision of her language, the way the play itself invites the audience to experience a form of psychosis, in which reality dissolves even as it appears. “She understands theatre at such a deep level; in some ways I don’t think we’ve caught up with her yet.” Maybe it’s time to think again. If Kane is not exactly part of the establishment – the thought would probably have amused and horrified her – she is now a canonical figure, celebrated in many countries worldwide. 4.48 Psychosis itself is coming up for two decades old; this month, an operatic adaptation by composer Philip Venables will open at the Royal Opera House, the first of its kind. A great deal of ink has been spilled on Kane’s too-short life and death, and not nearly enough on the story of the play itself. Should we finally let some things go?

Suicide note? 4.48 is much more than that, and Tangram’s production gives new resonance to one of the 1990s’ most strongly poetic theatrical voicesPsychosis has divided critical opinions. Michael Billington of The Guardian newspaper asked, "How on earth do you award aesthetic points to a 75-minute suicide note?" [5] Charles Spencer of the Telegraph said "it is impossible not to view it as a deeply personal howl of pain.” [6] David Greig considered the play to be "perhaps uniquely painful in that it appears to have been written in the almost certain knowledge that it would be performed posthumously." [1] Opera [ edit ] Psychosis is made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew M. Cuomo and the New York State Legislature. Loving a Shadow: The narration/lead laments that they are forever doomed to never truly love or know their true love; it is ambiguous as to if this is a real person, an idea/concept that will never live up to reality, or even the doctor that interacts the most with the lead/one of the characters in the narrative. I would argue the process of composing 4.48 Psychosis as an opera was not one of merely setting a libretto to music. The nature of the text itself and the stipulations regarding its use for this specific production, and also the absence of its author, meant that the compositional process was primarily concerned with the creation of a musical dramaturgy, rather than musical adaptation. […] Sarah Kane ( Writer) was born in 1971 and died in 1999. Her first play, Blasted, was produced at the Royal Court Jerwood Theatre Upstairs in 1995. Her second play, Phaedra’s Love, was produced at the Gate Theatre in 1996. In April 1998, Cleansed was produced at the Royal Court Theatre Downstairs and in September 1998, Paines Plough and Bright Ltd produced Kane’s fourth play, Crave, at the Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh. Her last play, 4.48 Psychosis, was given its premiere at the Royal Court Jerwood Theatre Upstairs in June 2000. Her short film, Skin, produced by British Screen/Channel 4, was first broadcast on Channel 4 in June 1997. Sarah Kane’s plays continue to be regularly performed around the world, particularly in Europe, Australia and South America. Notable productions include the Royal Court Theatre’s revivals of Blasted, Crave and 4.48 Psychosis in 2001, the New York premiere of Blasted at SoHo Rep in 2008, and Sean Holmes’s revival of Blasted at the Lyric Hammersmith in 2010. More recently, in 2015, Sheffield Theatres mounted a Sarah Kane Season with full productions of Blasted, Crave and 4.48 Psychosis and semi-staged readings of Phaedra’s Love and Cleansed. In February 2016, Katie Mitchell directed a new production of Cleansed, marking Kane’s debut at the National Theatre.