4:48 Psychosis was the last play written by well known British playwright, Sarah Kane (1971-99), in the fall and winter of 1998-99 on commission by the Royal Court, and first produced at the Royal Court Jerwood Theatre Upstairs in 2000. 4:48 Psychosis is a highly poetic ‘open’ text - a primary example of a post-dramatic text. From October 4 through December 4 2004 I worked on Kane’s 4:48 Psychosis in a studio-laboratory setting with an internationally diverse group of twenty actors - ten post-graduate MA/MFA and ten second-year BA students - at the University of Exeter. I chose to work on 4:48 because of its challenging content, structure/form, the relative openness of the text, and the sense that it would require strong ensemble performances to materialize this “state of psychosis” in its is-ness beyond character.
The first five weeks were devoted to intensive training and application of the training to preliminary structured improvisations. The final four weeks were devoted to exploring in workshops and rehearsals how to strategically apply the training processes and principles to the dynamics, structures, and multiple dramaturgies of Kane’s complex, poetic text. The project culminated with a closed work-in-progress showing of this psychophysical approach to Kane’s text.
The point of departure for the development of the performance score was Kane’s notion that 4:48 Psychosis was an exploration of the multiple prisms of a state of psychosis—a state in which, as Kane described it, one does not “know the difference between myself, this table” and another-a state in which one is “somehow be part of a continuum” and “various boundaries begin to collapse” (Kane quote in Saunders 2002:112).
This laboratory exploration was a non-public, closed showing of work-in-progress. This project was undertaken in a pedagogical setting as an active exploration of the application of ongoing psychophysical training to specific dramaturgies and to a specific mise-en-scene under the guidance of Phillip Zarrilli.
Date of closed showing
2004
University of Exeter
Exeter, UK
Director Phillip B. Zarrilli
Writer Sarah Kane
Cast Greece (Tina Alexopoulou, Makis Kyrlis), Israel (Shulamit Druckman), Korea (Hye-Ok Kim, Sunhee Kim), Wales (Teifi Vaughan, Sian Rees), Guernsey (Samata Russell), England (Angela Bradley, William Dickie, Roberta Ensor, Sophie Harris, Aloex Kaye, Laura Marshall, Merlyn Perez-Silva, Claudia Palazzo, Benjamin Shelley), Jordan (Beisan Elias), Ireland (Heidi Love), and Taiwan (Ya-Ruei Han).
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