4.48 Psychosis (Methuen Modern Plays)

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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. Psychosis premiered one month after her suicide, the connection between the playwright and her work was apparent to all.

So, my journey in this project began by trying to comprehend her previously written plays,” says Durga. Only a handful of people had been allowed access to the script; neither Macdonald or Simon Kane were willing to talk to the press.The easiest thing to say is that it is derived from the Greek word for "actor" – someone who pretends that they are something that they are not. Psychosis is a ‘choreopoem’ that follows the upheavals of a girl’s psyche, who really wanted to live but was never in love with life. 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.

Psychosis at The Theatre Les Bouffes Du Nord in Paris (2005), Belarus Free Theatre in Minsk (2005), KUFER theatre in Croatia (2005.It was crucial to Kane to show depression with all the accuracy she could summon, he adds: “Mental illness is so often sentimentalised, or portrayed as madness – I hate that word.

The controversy began over Blasted, Kane’s first play presented at London’s Royal Court Theatre in 1995. It was her last work, first staged at the Royal Court's Jerwood Theatre Upstairs on 23 June 2000, directed by James Macdonald, nearly one and a half years after Kane's death on 20 February 1999. McInnes, who now works as a director, admits that at first she wasn’t sure: “I remember reading it on the train home, I couldn’t get a handle on it. 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. Being someone who himself has struggled with mental health issues in the past, reading Sara’s works made me feel like a miniature self navigating her mind.While Blasted and Cleansed and Crave have long been acknowledged for the radical theatrical masterpieces they are, 4. Certain images are repeated within the script, particularly that of "hatch opens, stark light"; a repeated motif in the play is " serial sevens" which involves counting down from one hundred by sevens, a bedside test often used by psychiatrists to test for loss of concentration or memory. Psychosis was written throughout the autumn and winter of 1998-99 as Kane battled with one of her recurrent bouts of depression. In fact, there have been instances in the past when audiences have requested to open the curtains while watching it.