The defining feature of this production is its ability to utterly captivate and move its audience, making it essential viewing." Philip Venables’ (Composer) music is often concerned with violence, politics and speech within concert music and opera. He is described as “one of the finest composers around” (Guardian) and his work as “brutally effective” (Times), “original and intelligent in both form and content… reminiscent of Matthew Barney’s Cremaster Cycle” (Exeunt Magazine) and “brilliant, extreme work that grips like a vice and won’t let go” (Guardian). Psychosis is composed of twenty-four sections which have no specified setting, characters or stage directions. Its language varies between dialogues, confessions and contemplative poetic monologues reminiscent of schizophasia. 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. British Deaf Association - Health & Wellbeing: www.bda.org.uk/project/healthwellbeing/ or call 0207 697 4140 or text 07795 410 724

Playwright Robert Askins, who received a 2015 Tony Award nomination for Best Play for Hand to God, has cited Kane as a major inspiration. [46] Namedafter thetimeat which playwright Sarah Kane apparently would, in her depressed state, wake, ‘4.48 Psychosis’ is her last play. Kane doesn’t specify setting, stage directions or even characters in this, a textthat my companion (herself a writer and long-time Kane reader) describes as almost taking the form of a poem. The director chooses how many people appear on stage and who speaks which lines. gets its name from the time she found herself waking up every day during the last episode) and the final a b c d e Boggan, Steve (23 September 1999). "Hospital let playwright repeat her suicide bid". The Independent . Retrieved 26 February 2021.Bold and visually stunning' - The Guardian, "Beautifully portrayed by an extraordinary cast of both deaf and hearing performers." - WhatsOnStage At one point she contemplates a conclusive method of suicide: take an overdose, slash one's wrists and then hang oneself. "It couldn't possibly be misconstrued," she wryly says, "as a cry for help." The creative team decided to invite groups of actors to read through the text, to plot out how many voices were needed, who might speak where. Macdonald eventually settled on a cast of three: Daniel Evans, who had worked with Kane on Cleansed, and fellow actors Jo McInnes and Madeleine Potter. 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. But it got to me. By the lunchtime, I said to James, ‘I’ve got to be in this.’” The woman is perfected," wrote Plath just before her own suicide. "Her dead body wears the smile of accomplishment." Except that, in this production, it doesn’t. Instead of embracing the jagged modernism of Kane’s text, Jarzyna has rewritten the play and imposed his own story onto it. So in place of the variety of voices of the original, what we get here is a doomed lesbian love affair, gloating male doctors and a series of suicide attempts that are often risibly overacted, but never tragic. By giving the female actors most of the passages of self-loathing, Jarzyna creates a picture of female depression that strongly suggests the biographical – yes, we know that Kane suffered from depression, but isn't this a very limited reading of a potentially rich text?

Getting There, centres around Charlie, a deaf young carer who juggles school and friends with care routines, medication, and financial responsibilities at home. Kane was admitted to the Brunel ward of the King's College Hospital, [10] [11] which was a general ward and not a psychiatric wing. [7] The six female singers in rehearsal for 4.48 Psychosis. Photograph: Stephen Cummiskey/Royal Opera HouseFigure 11: An excerpt from Scene 24 from 4.48 Psychosis, the final scene, showing antiphonal verse. Though Kane's work never played to large audiences in the UK and was at first dismissed by many newspaper critics, her plays have been widely performed in Europe, Australia and South America. In 2005, the theatre director Dominic Dromgoole wrote that she was "without doubt the most performed new writer on the international circuit". [42] Fellow playwright Mark Ravenhill has said her plays "have almost certainly achieved canonical status". [43] At one point in Germany, there were 17 simultaneous productions of her work. In November 2010, the theatre critic Ben Brantley of the New York Times described the SoHo Rep's "shattering production" of Kane's Blasted (which had opened two years previously) as "one of the most important New York premieres of the decade". [44] Listen to the interview here: http://448psychosis.philipvenables.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/Sue-Johnston-Burt-Kwouk-remembered-Yayoi-Kusama-Simon-Stone-Philip-Venables-2.mp3 Eyre, Richard; Wright, Nicholas A. (2001). Changing stages: a view of British and American theatre in the twentieth century. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. pp. 400. ISBN 0-375-41203-4. Ensemble, 12 players: alto flute + picc, 3 saxes (all sop+bar), piano+synth with organ pedalboard, accordion, 2 percussion (solo roles, some playing from memory), vln+vla, 2 vla, bass.