Geiciane Costa

Isabela Matoso
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 TOPICS

● THE AUTHOR
● KANE’S PLAYS
● THE IMPACT OF SARA’S PLAYS
● IN-YER-FACE THEATRE
● LANGUAGE
● THE IMPACT OF 4.48
● THE MEANING OF THE TITLE
● CHARACTERS

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 THE AUTHOR

● She was born on 3 February,

1971.
● Her father was a journalist and
her mother was a teacher.
● She was raised as a christian and
became evangelical, but later,
she struggled her faith and
rejected it.

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 THE AUTHOR
● Started to write poems and short stories very early;
● Studied drama at Bristol University;
● Tendency to get in troubles;
● Finished her studies in 1992;
● She used to act, write and direct plays, but then she stopped;

“She didn’t want to be at

the mercy of directors she
didn’t like’’
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 THE AUTHOR
She didn’t want to be an academic, she wanted to try something new.

“A loving daughter and

a very independent
spirit, quite a feisty sort
of girl, who was not
afraid to stick up for her
rights’’ (Her father)

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SUICIDE

“She fell out of

love with life’’.
Mark Ravenhill.
(Kane’s friend)

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 SUICIDE
● In february, 1999, she killed herself.
● She took over one hundred pills, but was taken to the hospital,
had her stomach pumped and survived.
● Mel Kenyon’s visit.
● She was left unattended by the hospital staff for an hour and was
found dead. She killed herself by hanging with her shoelaces.

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 SARAH KANE’S PLAYS

● Blasted (1995)
● Skin (Filme de 1995)
● Phaedra's Love (1996)
● Cleansed (1998)
● Crave (1998)
● 4.48 Psychosis (1999)

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 THE IMPACT OF HER PLAYS

● Her first play: Blasted was performed in January, 1995, after

Christmas, and really got people’s attention in the good and bad way.
● It had some scenes of violence, and some people covered their eyes,
some people laughed, and some other people walked out during the
play.
● The scenes of violence are more shocking than the violence itself.
● Pseudonym: Marie Kelvedon

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IN-YER-FACE THEATRE

In-your-face' something 'blatantly aggressive or

provocative, impossible to ignore or avoid' - New
Oxford English Dictionary (1998)

'In-your-face' originated in American sports

journalism during the mid-1970s as an exclamation of
derision or contempt, and gradually seeped into more
mainstream slang during the late 1980s and 1990s,
meaning 'aggressive, provocative, brash'.

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 IN-YER-FACE THEATRE
WHAT?
“In-yer-face theatre is the kind of theatre which grabs the audience by the scruff of the
neck and shakes it until it gets the message”;

WHEN?
Although the upsurge of in-yer-face theatre in Britain had many antecedents, especially in
the alternative theatre of the 1960s, it only took off as a new and shocking sensibility in the
decade of the 1990s;

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WHERE?
In-yer-face drama has been staged by new writing theatres such as the Royal Court, Bush,
Hampstead, Soho Theatre, Finborough, Tricycle, Theatre Royal Stratford East, and even
the trendy Almeida, all of which are in London;

WHO?
The big three of in-yer-face theatre are Sarah Kane, Mark Ravenhill and Anthony Neilson.
Other hot shots include Simon Block, Jez Butterworth, David Eldridge, Nick Grosso,
Tracy Letts, Martin McDonagh, Patrick Marber, Phyllis Nagy, Joe Penhall, Rebecca
Prichard, Philip Ridley, Judy Upton, Naomi Wallace and Richard Zajdlic;

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WHY?
In-yer-face theatre is contemporary theatre. What was distinctly new about 1990s drama,
what could not have been written 20 years earlier, is the type of in-yer-face play which
shocked and disturbed audiences, creating a new aesthetic sensibility;

HOW?
How can you tell if a play is in-yer-face?

The language is filthy, there's nudity, people have sex in front of you, violence breaks out,
one character humiliates another, taboos are broken, unmentionable subjects are broached,
conventional dramatic structures are subverted;

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“When people talk about me as a writer, that’s what I
am, and that’s how I want my work to be judged – on
its quality, not on the basis of my age, gender, class,
sexuality or race. I am what I am – not what other
people want me to be.” Sarah Kane

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“After Kane’s death, her work inevitably began to be
viewed and reviewed with the perspective of death and
suicide, which may by all means be one of the possible
perceptions of her work, but as the only one it does
not do her justice” (Ravenhill 2005)

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 There are no speaker
designations or gender
specifications in 4.48
Psychosis.

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I am sad
I feel that the future is hopeless and that things cannot improve
I am bored and dissatisfied with everything
I am a complete failure as a person
I am guilty, I am being punished
I would like to kill myself
I used to be able to cry but now I am beyond tears
I have lost interest in other people
I can't make decisions
I can't eat
I can't sleep
I can't think
I cannot overcome my loneliness, my fear, my disgust 17
I am fat
I cannot write
I cannot love
My brother is dying, my lover is dying, I am killing them both
I am charging towards my death
I am terrified of medication
I cannot make love
I cannot fuck
I cannot be alone
I cannot be with others
My hips are too big
I dislike my genitals
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 LANGUAGE
● 4.48 Psychosis is mainly written in blank verses. The text
is visually constructed in unusual forms that will not
usually be expected in a dialogue;

● Both elements of dramatic dialogue and poetry;

● Dramatic-poetic writing achieves a dense psychological,

suicidal atmosphere!
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(A very long silence.)

-But you have friends.

(a long silence)

You have a lot of friends.

What do you offer your friends

to make them so supportive? 20

a consolidated consciousness resides in a darkened banqueting

hall near the ceiling of a mind whose floor shifts as ten

thousand cockroaches when a shaft of light enters as all

thoughts unite in an instant of accord body no longer

expellant as the cockroaches comprise a truth

which no one ever utters.

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 LANGUAGE

“Poetry can make the drama uniquely precise not only for the actor to
work with, but also for the audience to react to. [. . .] It will compel
drama on the stage of such a kind that the image of it in the audience’s
mind will be something wider and yet finer[. . .]The poetry is there to
express and define patterns of thoughts and feeling otherwise
inexpressible and indefinable” (33)
J. L. Stylan - The Elements of Drama

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 LANGUAGE
● Sara Kane → Lacan → constant signification of reality through language;
● 4.48 Psychosis is a one-act play though it is never explicit that Kane thought of acts
when writing it;
● As to read its psychological meanings, how the play refers to psychosis without
specifically articulating the pathology but played linguistically. It is done so as to
create a dialogue that recreates, in the receiver, a mental state of mind;
● Poetic path → is beyond the strategy to reach into the reader a psychological nerve →
connects text and reader in the same theatrical room → the same fear of suicide;
*Thinking basically of psychosis as a psychiatric condition of those who lose contact with reality

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 LANGUAGE
the broken hermaphrodite who trusted hermself alone finds the room

in reality teeming and begs never to wake

from the nightmare (205).

The presence of the words “hermaphrodite” and “hermself” is the linguistic sex ambiguity
of the voice, in which characters can be both male and women separately but with the fact
that they once shared a mutual body.

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 THE IMPACT OF 4.48 PSYCHOSIS
● It was first played in 2000, at Royal Curt. (Her friends and family discussed before
take the decision to publish and represent the play)

● 4. 48 was associated with her life and dead, and it was (and is still) considered as a ‘’
Suicide art’’, exactly what she didn’t want.

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THE IMPACT OF 4.48 PSYCHOSIS

“When people talk about me

as a writer, that‟s what I am, and
that’s how I want my work to be
judged – on its quality, not on the
basis of my age, gender, class,
sexuality or race. I am what I am
– not what other people want me
to be,” (Sierz 121).

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 THE IMPACT OF 4.48 PSYCHOSIS
‘’70 minute suicide note” (Singer 160)’’;

‘’the fanciest suicide note any of us are ever likely to read” (Alistair
Macaulay in Tycer 2008);

The analysis were divided in two groups: Some people tried to find
the connection between her death and the play, some other people
tried to redarg the play in light of her suicide;

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We have to look further and deeply to the play

A CRITICAL OF
THE MENTAL
HEALTH CARE
INSTITUTIONS

LOVE AND
MEANING OF LIFE
RELATIONSHIPS

HOPE

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 THE IMPACT OF 4.48 PSYCHOSIS

KANE’S PERCEPTION X READERS AND

CRITICS’ PERCEPTION

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 THE MEANING OF THE TITLE
● David Greig mentions that this is the time when Sarah woke up
to work on her play.
● Some people say that this is the time when the suicidal thoughts
are really strong and when most people commit suicide.
● 4.48: For some people this is the time when the main character
felt more insane, for other people, this is the moment when she?
seemed to be sane.

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 THE MEANING OF THE TITLE
LOOKING TO THE TEXTUAL EVIDENCES. THE FIRST TIME IT
APPEARS:

“At 4.48

when depression visits

I shall hang myself

to the sound of my lover's breathing”

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 THE MEANING OF THE TITLE
THE SECOND TIME WHEN IT APPEARS

“After 4.48 I shall not speak again’’

Still pointing towards the suicide

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 THE MEANING OF THE TITLE
‘’–At 4.48

when sanity visits for one hour and twelve minutes

I am in my right mind.

When it has passed I shall be gone again,’’

The main character had a moment of sanity again

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 THE MEANING OF THE TITLE

“Sanity is found at the centre of convulsion, where madness is scorched

form the bisected soul.

I know myself.

I see myself.

My life is caught in a web of reason spun by a doctor to argument the

sane.
At 4.48 I shall sleep’’
*In this part she is aware of herself, and also hopeful. 34
 THE MEANING OF THE TITLE

‘’Within the play Kane gradually transformed the time 4.48 from
something crippling, deadly and scary into a more positive, calm
and hopeful time span.’’
(Chramosilová. Martina. 2013)

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CHARACTERS

?
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 CHARACTERS

‘’I am sad I feel that the future is hopeless and that things cannot improve

I am bored and dissatisfied with everything

I am a complete failure as a person

I am guilty,I am being punished

I would like to kill myself’’

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 CHARACTERS

‘’Victim. Perpetrator. Bystander.’’

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REFERENCES

● BARANIECKA, Elzbieta. Words That ‘Matter’: Between Materiality and Immateriality of Language in
Sarah Kane’s 4.48 Psychosis;
● KANE, Sarah. 4.48 Psychosis

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