Sarah Kane’s Theatre of Psychic Life: Theatre, Thought and Mental Suffering

Sarah Kane was one of the landmark playwrights of 1990s Britain, her influence being felt across UK and European theatre. This is the first book to focus exclusively on Kane's unique approach to mind and mental health. It offers an important re-evaluation of her oeuvre, revealing the relationship between theatre and mind which lies at the heart of her theatrical project. Drawing on performance theory, psychoanalysis and neuroscience, this book argues that Kane's innovations generate a 'dramaturgy of psychic life', which re-shapes the encounter between stage and audience. It uses previously unseen archival material and contemporary productions to uncover the mechanics of this innovative theatre practice. Through a radically open-ended approach to dramaturgy, Kane's works offer urgent insights into mental suffering that take us beyond traditional discourses of empathy and mental health and into a profound rethinking of theatre as a mode of thought. As such, her theatre can help us to understand debates about mental suffering today. Half Title Series Page Title Page Copyright Page Dedication Contents Acknowledgements Introduction Why Kane? Mental health policy in the 1990s and community care plays Phaedra’s Love as mental health satire Chapter summary Chapter 1: The dramaturgy of psychic life Experientialism: Escaping from hell Dramaturgy Theatre and the mind Expressionism The historical avant-gardes Feminist theatre Psychic life Exploring experientialism: Crave (1998) with Paine’s Plough The subject of theatre Chapter 2: A dramaturgy of sexual trauma Kane’s feminist legacies Theatre and traumatic response: PTSD and mimetic models Blasted: The psychic life of sexual trauma The mimetic model: Hiding the subject Blasted in production Shifting mimesis Chapter 3: Rhythm, interruption, psychosis A dramaturgical turning point Closing off or opening up psychosis Prediction and interruption in Cleansed A cognitive reading: Psychosis and prediction errors Cleansed at the National Theatre: Searching for narrative A play about love? Chapter 4: The mind-as-site (Un)Redemptive reading The ceiling of a mind Hatch opens/stark light What do you offer? It’s not your fault Chapter 5: RSVP ASAP Desire and despair Kane’s late style: What does theatre want? Suicidality: Returning to Kane’s sources Directionless desire 4.48 Psychosis with the Belarus Free Theatre (2014): Queer time, love and suicidality Afterword: Sarah Kane and psychic life today Bibliography Primary sources Performances cited Sarah Kane plays and interviews Other literary and dramatic works Sarah Kane production history and reviews Mental health legislation, policy documents and reports Secondary sources Psychoanalytic theory, theatre, literary and cultural criticism Index