Sarah Kane - English playwright, died at the age of 28. Wrote 5 plays, one short film, Skin, which focused on an abusive relationship between a black woman and a racist skinhead. Her most well-known play (at least within this department), Blasted, depicts multiple scenes of disturbing acts that span from anal rape to cannibalism and other forms of brutality. She committed suicide by overdose then hanging in King's College Hospital in London.
4.48 Psychosis was written within 3 months of Sarah Kane's suicide. It premiered posthumously at the Royal Court Theater in 2000. It was her last play and was her shortest. The writing is unclear as to the amount of actors needed to voice the play. The title derives from 4:48 AM, the time when Sarah Kane woke up the most during her years of depression.
1. The original cast consisted of one male and two female actors. How would your casting go? How many actors would you want in order to honor the text in your mind?
2. Do you believe that Sarah Kane's choice in writing more about thoughts than actions makes as powerful a statement as a play (Let's use Tracy Lett's Killer Joe) with lots of specific action and not so much inner exposition?
3. Is 4.48 Psychosis Sarah Kane's memiores?
4. If you suffer/have suffered/know someone who suffers from clinical depression, does this script accurately depict some of the feelings that one experiences when dealing with depression?
5. Would you EVER want to see this play done?
6. Looking at Sarah Kane's use of page spacing, and also examining Shakespeare's use of fragmented iambic pentameter to stress certain lines or have question-answers on specific topics, do you think she meant anything by her use of fragmented lines?
7. Did you think this was a boring, exceedingly trite call for help?
8. If you're answer to the above is no - Did you feel uncomfortable reading this play as if it were someones true thoughts or a journal of sorts?
9. Do you think 4.48 Psychosis correctly follows the doctrine of In-Yer-Face in terms of representing the new norm for theatre?
5. Yes. Having read the play, I would like to see it because it's nice to have a visualization of the text in my mind. If I hadn't read the play, and didn't know anything about it before seeing it, I would probably be a bit befuddled.
ReplyDelete8. I read it out loud last night with my roommates and I didn't feel uncomfortable at all. We traded off every other break in the text. When I read the "Fuck you. Fuck you. Fuck you..." part, it felt good to say it out loud because I've been through that before with my previous ex. I also identified with the "Sometimes I turn around and catch the smell of you..." lines because that's definitely happened to me with the aforementioned ex. I didn't get up at six in the morning to go look for him, but I've felt that same physical sickness, that ache in the pit of your stomach when a guy with a similar cologne walks by... Unlike the character in the play, I managed to get through it and move on.
When I read the "flash flicker slash burn wring press dab slash" lines, the first few seconds of Pink Floyd's "Money" immediately started playing in my mind... If you've never heard it, you can/should listen to the first 20 seconds or so of it here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=am0IzgV22SU
Also, the bit where the doctor (or whomever) is listing all of the drugs the patient has been on reminded me (and my apologies if you're not a fan of musicals) of the song "My Psychopharmacologist And I" from Next to Normal where they're reciting all the drugs she's been on... here's a link to a crappy youtube recording of it. If you don't mind some singing, skip ahead to 3:20 in the video. The meat and potatoes of the similarity b/w the lines and this song starts around 4 minutes in:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=htFsdiyxxXM
4. I know two friends who have suffered from depression. I always thought it was a disease that was really not that bad, but after reading this, my entire view changed. It was an eye-opener for me and because of her true and honest interjections; I had a much clearer understanding of the disease.
ReplyDelete5. Honestly, no. It was extremely sad and depressing for me to read. I can’t imagine watching it.
6. I think she was trying to make a point. As her spacing decreased, it would hit a solid line, full of meaning or emotion. She was trying to grab our attention.
8. I did feel as if I was reading her journal, but I didn’t feel like an intruder. Because of this play, I have a much clearer understanding of the suffering depression victims face. I had no idea.
Closing Remarks: I thought this play was very powerful and
I am thankful for all who shared their truths about their personal lives in class. I respect all of you so much.
4. If you suffer/have suffered/know someone who suffers from clinical depression, does this script accurately depict some of the feelings that one experiences when dealing with depression?
ReplyDeleteYes. I’ve been sad before but I’ve never suffered from depression, but I knew people who had and know people who still do. I can’t imagine how hard it is to deal with, don’t want to and hope I never have to. Reading this play actually reminded me about several things I’ve kind of buried in the back of my mind and hoped to forget, but never did. The play itself really didn’t bother me; my experiences did.
5. Would you EVER want to see this play done?
Honestly, I don’t know. Part of me says yes just to see how it would be portrayed on stage, but that’s the sick part of me. The other part says heellll naw for a lot of reasons, mainly because whoever participates in the production will probably be effected and I really don’t want to see what went on in the minds of so many people I know and knew.
7. Did you think this was a boring, exceedingly trite call for help?
I think it may have been a cry for help, but it wasn’t desperate or anything. I don’t know, maybe writing the play caused the rest of what we know.
8. If you're answer to the above is no - Did you feel uncomfortable reading this play as if it were someones true thoughts or a journal of sorts?
I didn’t feel uncomfortable reading it because I tried to distance the script and the writer as much as I could; I didn’t like reading it though because it brought back memories. Today was a hard day to take in and that’s coming from me, but it was nice to see that even though we’re all different, we all had something in common, even if it was what it was. I felt like we bonded today.
9. Do you think 4.48 Psychosis correctly follows the doctrine of In-Yer-Face in terms of representing the new norm for theatre?
Yes, it may be too in-yer-face. We talk about how realistic some of these plays are; I don’t think they’re anything compared to this one.
Ok so I am extremely late. But I have to say this play was at times extremely hard to read. Like part of me understood how she felt and then part of me was like what the hell, she's crazy. But one of my best friend went through a depression stage back in high school. She would always have panic attacks. She would literally call me at 2am crying because she just didnt know what was going on. She still to this day sees a school counselor every now and then just to talk. So my heart trully goes out to those who have to go through that.
ReplyDeleteI would LOVE to see this play done, and, whenever I was reading it, I also imagined that the cast consistented of two women and one man. The main character, her mother, and the doctor would be my characters. I would make one of the characters her mother because one of the dialogues sounded like she was having a conversation with her mother.
ReplyDeleteI didn't know where to comment and I didn't feel like waiting so I just decided to do it here. Anyway, I read the play, and even though it's kind of yadiyadiyada, I didn't think it was that bad. I understood most of it and most of the references but I don't know, the way it was writen kind of threw me off. It's probablly because I skimmed through it and all the back and forth and arguing and stuff went over my head because all the "problems" and "context" were "normal" to me. I wouldn't say I'm from the ghetto, but I spent about half of my life growing up there and to me, until I left, it was all I had. I mean, I knew there was more out there but, I don't know, it's hard to explain. I guess you have to be in my shoes to understand, but anyway, I liked the article much more than I did the play. Knowing that all these homeless kids believed in something was amazing, but what they believed shocked me. Hell and evil was winning and was going to prevail, but they still had hope. I was never homeless or in a shelter or anything like that, but I totaly understood where that type of thinking came from and that touched me.
ReplyDeleteI really did think that 4:48 Psychosis was trite. That is probably the perfect word to describe it, actually. Thanks for that. :)
ReplyDeleteI know this is probably terrible to say, considering that she committed suicide later and so by all appearances the play was reality-based, but it seemed generally fake to me. The play was like the inner dialogue of every emo kid I knew in high school that I wanted to punch, because it was sososo obvious that they were making everything up, wearing black and gauging their ears as a device to garner sympathy and fit in.
In my high school, people literally wore their "sadness" on their sleeves.
And their bracelets, and their hair clips, and their belts, and... etc.
Thus, crying about life became a sort of age-based culture, and people participated in it even when they were generally happy people.
I think that culture is demeaning and distracts from people who really have depression. My lack of sympathy could very well be a result of that.
I think, on some level, I am also angry with Sarah Kane, and so part of me rejects her. Here is this woman laying her life out on the page, setting it up to be read on stage, allowing herself the ultimate catharsis — and it pisses me off. It really, really does. Not everybody knows how to achieve that catharsis, to articulate their feelings. She should be grateful! Isn't that a terrible thing to think? I know it is. Sorry.
Having said that, there were a few very real moments in the play, notably when she tells the doctor to "LOOK AWAY FROM ME" and the monologue Neal posted on his FB. I mean, wow.
Having said that, I think with the right people portraying the characters, this play could be enjoyable in real life. I also imagined it with three characters: The Real Woman, The Imaginary Woman in My Mind, and The Doctor. The Real Woman and The Doctor interact, but TIWIMM is always on stage alone. Except for when she comes storming up to TD and slaps him while he's talking to TRW, because he is an idiot and deserves it. And that part breaks something in the play and is completely surreal, as though TRW were unleashing something inside her.
But I could never watch it with anybody else in the room.
The play impacted me emotionally in very insignificant ways — but the way it impacted everyone else struck me. Talking about it really, really got to me, and I cried because I really wished that nobody in the world would ever be able to relate to this play.