"4.48 Psychosis"

We had the pleasure of reading Sarah Kane’s play ‘4.48 Psychosis’ during our first theatre workshop. Having read some of Kane’s work before, I was intrigued and very excited to begin the analysing and understanding of her chosen work. Having never read the one we were studying before, I did already have some idea of what her play might consist of: usually – physically or emotionally - death, torture, sexual desire and redemptive love. I’ve been aware that most of her plays  are characterised by a poetic intensity, pared-down language, exploration of theatrical form and, in her earlier work, the use of extreme and violent stage action. ‘4.48 Psychosis’ especially takes on the structure of a poem and that’s what caught my eye first. There were a lack of characters, stage directions and the play was clearly anything but linear. It appeared to me that, having known about Sarah Kane’s personal state beforehand the play was just her thoughts and feelings at the time on the page and that made it strangely and twistedly beautiful.

 

 This made it evident at first look that her play was an experimental text, which supported what I expected one to look like prior to reading it. My first impressions when reading the text were that instead of reading it from a an audiences’ POV, I found myself reading it from the play wrights, having known already Kane’s relation to the words on the page and how it was her last piece of work before she committed suicide. The play showed very apparent aspects and emotions of someone suffering with depression, like Kane, boasting very dark and very profound and emotionally raw feelings. It could be ambiguous in the way that it was structured and written by Kane, and by going around and listening to each person in the class’ thoughts on the poem and how they were all quite different, I wondered just how many interpretations of ‘4.48 Psychosis’ were out there, eager to hear them all.

 

Using the text as our first piece of experimental inspiration, we were split into groups to create a piece of experimental theatre. We were asked to be sure not to include any words or any sounds into our performance – keep it silent – for experimental purposes and to ensure that we focused more on telling the story through actions. I believed this was a great way devise and was so amazingly appropriate to our text. I believe, due to Sarah Kane’s serious depression; that she probably felt unable to speak during the whole time she felt so low, often like a depressor experiences. She felt like she couldn’t tell anyone about her problems, thus keeping it to herself and staying silent long enough for her to feel like there was no way out… like death was the only option. As part of experimental theatre, we were allowed to choose anywhere in the school to perform our silent work, and I was excited at the prosperousness of this. We chose two places close together to perform – the corridor and a small props cupboard - because firstly, we were able to position the audience so that they had two views, one of the long corridor performing space and one of the cupboards performance space. We also performed it in two spaces to show the alternation of Sarah Kane’s mind set and her thought process. The long corridor where a member of my group took a long walk through represented Kane’s long journey of the mind and all of the pain she went through to end up so enclosed in her own mind and so desperate (the small props cupboard) that she felt like there was no way out. The cupboard was cramped and dark and claustrophobic which, in my opinion, did very well to represent the mind of Kane. We used a few props fo symbolisation but our main one was a large, out dated TV that appeared broken. It had no reception and constantly showed a fuzzy screen. I thought that this symbolised the lost hope of the characters/Kane's mind. There was nothing on the TV, nothing left for Kane. Four of the actors in my group placed themselves in different positions along the corridor and portrayed the different emotions. One was sat, staring at the blank screen of the television, another slumped against the lockers, one staring hopefully out of the window, wishing for something better to come along, and the other sat down at the end holding an umbrella above them. All actors showed no emotion and held firm blank faces. I believe that this perfectly represented Kane’s emotions through non-verbal theatre. Another actor then walked down and mirrored the actions each of the actors was doing, as if they were Kane themselves. I think this showed how Kane succumbed and copied the things around her that bought her down. We then acted out a brief silent scene in the props cupboard. We had one actor in the group boarding up the window in frustration with sheets of card, blocking out any day light. Another actor was constantly doing the motion of pulling down the blinds of a prop window and 2 others were writing the numbers that were featured in the script on paper, starting off slow and calm before letting the frustration build and freaking out. I think this represented the emotions, the feelings and Kane’s situation very effectively and of course experimentally. Personally, I believe our piece was abstract yet completely comprehendible, our message clear for our audience despite our complete lack of speech. I really enjoyed performing a non-verbal piece personally as talking is something I do best (I normally don’t shut up) so to be given instructions of creating a piece of theatre that consisted of no speech was exciting and refreshing. This was the start where I first finally understood that theatre doesn’t necessarily have to have a beginning, a middle, a climax and an end, especially with experimental theatre. Theatre can be simply observed and the audience will still probably gain something from it. This was a great start to experimental theatre, and a beneficial preview of what is to come later. I’m excited!