There are some who believe that the world lost one of its finest
late 20th century dramatists when Sarah Kane committed suicide in
1999. Her work produced extreme reactions in critics and
audiences alike but many failed to appreciate the pure poetry of
her writing until it was too late.
She was born in Essex, England, on 3rd February 1971. Her parents
were both journalists and devout evangelists - religion played an
important part in their everyday lives. Her father became the
area manager of the Daily Mirror for East Anglia, while her
mother gave up work to care for Sarah and her brother. By all
accounts, Kane was an intelligent child who enjoyed learning,
supported Manchester United F.C. and openly discussed God.
However, in later years, when she had lost her faith, she
described her juvenile beliefs as æthe full spirit-filled,
born-again lunacyÆ.
As a teenager, she became involved with local drama groups and
directed Chekhov and Shakespeare while still in school - playing
truant at one point to be an assistant director in a production
at Soho Polytechnic. After taking her A-levels, she went on to
Bristol University to take a degree in drama, with all intentions
of becoming an actress. She seemed at home in the theatre and was
immensely popular with fellow students, enjoying their company to
the full and indulging in a typically wild social life. She went
clubbing, enjoyed affairs with women and became a great admirer
of Howard Barker's Jacobean dramas (once acting in his play,
"Victory") - empathising with his dark views on life and love.
Sarah stood out as a talented actress and director, but somewhere
down the line, she began to loose heart with her anticipated
vocation and started writing instead. The first substantial work
she produced was "Sick", a series of three monologues that were
performed to a pub crowd in Edinburgh. The pieces concerned rape,
eating disorders and sexual identity, and her first person
delivery was said to be "raw" and "unsettling".
She graduated with a first from Bristol and went straight to
Birmingham University to join David Edgar's MA playwriting
course, which she disliked but completed for the sake of her
mother. Secretly she started writing "Blasted", a complex play
about violence from the perspective of both victim and
perpetrator. When it was first performed at the students'
end-of-year show it was watched by Mel Kenyon, who was completely
"awe-struck" and later found it difficult to get the play out of
her mind. She wrote to Kane and they subsequently met up in
London, where Kane agreed to Kenyon becoming her agent.
"Blasted" is about a middle-aged tabloid journalist who appears
to be dying and invites an unsuspecting retarded child into his
Leeds hotel room, assuring her that he simply needs a little
comfort during his final hours. Once trapped he proceeds to rape,
debase and ridicule her before an armed soldier suddenly bursts
in and wreaks appalling havoc, turning the scene into a Bosnian
battlefield. The play opened in January 1995 at the Royal Court
Upstairs, becoming the theatres most controversial work in over
thirty years. British newspaper critics were in their element,
describing it as "a disgusting feast of filth", a work "devoid of
intellectual and artistic merit" and like "having your whole head
held in a bucket of offal". However, established dramatists such
as Harold Pinter turned on the reviewers, telling them they were
"out of their depth" and that "Blasted" was simply too complex
for them.
Although upset by the slating, Kane went on to write four more
plays in as many years. "Cleansed" was about love, death and drug
addiction in a concentration camp and, like much of her work, was
closely fashioned on real-life incidents. Whereas "Crave",
written under the pseudonym of Marie Kelvedon, was about four
warring factions of one individual's consciousness and was
generally received as her most mature play up to that point. She
also wrote the terrifying "Phaedra's Love" and "Skin", a short
film for BritainÆs Channel 4. Throughout this period, she
travelled around Europe, leading theatre workshops by day and
writing at night - becoming quite a celebrity in France and
Germany.
While there is little doubt that Kane was an incredibly likeable,
original and kind human being, depression was never far from the
surface and she was at times unable to cope with the intensity of
her emotions after completing "Crave". She admitted herself to
the Maudsley Hospital in south London for a time but recovered
sufficiently to enjoy her play's critical triumph - which was
compared by some to T.S. Eliot's "The Wasteland". Unfortunately,
her happiness was short-lived and the depression returned. In
January 1999, after completing "4.48 Psychosis" (so called
because it's the time of morning when people are most likely to
kill themselves), she swallowed 150 anti-depressants and 50
sleeping pills. She survived because her flat-mate found her in
time and rushed her to King's College Hospital in London. Two
days later she was left alone for 90 minutes and was later
discovered hanging from her shoelaces in a nearby toilet. She was
28 years old.
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Paula is a freelance writer who has contributed articles, reviews
and essays to numerous publications on subjects such as
literature, travel, culture, history and humanitarian issues. She
lives in North Wales and is a staff writer for Apsaras Review and
the editor of two popular online guides. You can read her resume
at: http://www.mediabistro.com/PaulaBardell or drop her a line at
paula-bardell@....