Initial Read Through and Research of Psychosis 4:48

Upon the initial read through of 4:48 Psychosis it was clear that the subject matter of the piece was a sensitive subject that would have to be handled with care and caution. I felt that the format of the piece would offer an interesting and challenging way of blocking and performing the piece. The obvious lack of set characters and the way that the play is delivered meant that as a class we would each individually get to explore and develop our own characters. I knew that the lines that I was given would be the foundations of how I set about researching and developing a character. This was aided by research on both the play and the playwright, Sarah Kane.

Sarah Kane struggled with severe depression for many years and was admitted to a psychiatric hospital twice during her short life. Kane was a prolific writer in her adult life, writing six plays before her death in 1999. 4:48 Psychosis was written shortly before her death in 1999, during a period of deep depression. The play is Kane’s shortest and most fragmented piece of work, she has disposed of plot and character and there was no indication of how many actors were to be in the play. It has been suggested that the play was a suicide note, and this leads readers to listen out for cries of help, but friends of Kane have said the reader is then distracted from the “explosive theatricality, the lyricism, the emotional power, and the black humour contained within the play”. Obviously because of the circumstances surrounding Kane at the time of writing this play it is hard to read the play outside of biography.  It is believed that the title of the play derives from the time at which Kane frequently woke in her depressed state – 4:48 in the morning.

Kane has been described as an independent spirit who wasn’t afraid to stick up for her rights, she cared about people and injustices in the world, something that reflected in her plays. I found this to be true in the case of 4:48, there are moments within the script where I felt that Kane is trying to highlight the negative side of the health system that is meant to care for the mentally ill. In the scenes where the Doctor and Patient are conversing there is always the sense that the patient is trying to make the Doctor slip up, therefore removing the “facade” that the Doctor is there to make the patient better.

D- “It’s not your fault. You’re ill.”

P-“I don’t think so.”

 D-“No?”

 P-“No, I’m depressed. Depression is anger”.

 This interaction shows that the Patient is countering the Doctor’s diagnosis of being ill and the patient states that they are not ill but are dealing with strong, uncontrollable emotions. There is a running theme of the Doctor telling the patient that it is not their fault, and the patient will always agree. The patient knows that they are not to blame for being ill but the repetitiveness of that statement leads them to start to think it is their fault because it is said so often. This could perhaps be a way of Kane showing the injustice that is placed on a patient’s shoulder as they have to listen time and time again to a doctor say it is not their fault as if that is somehow going to make them better. The character in 4:48 appears to be rather outspoken and isn’t afraid to say it’s not their fault, they take it further by suggesting that the drugs they are given don’t do anything to make them better. In fact it will only hinder: “I won’t be able to think, I won’t be able to work”. In one of my lines the patient lists the things the doctors should do if they are trying to heal her and she suggests a chemical lobotomy. As soon as I had read that line I thought of the end of “One Flew Over the cuckoo’s Nest” when McMurphy has had a lobotomy. I spent the entirety of the film wondering if he was in fact suffering with a mental illness and then it seems as if the lobotomy is not a treatment as it is supposedly described as, but a further cause of mental illness. It is the lobotomy that ends McMurphy, not his supposed problems that lead to him being institutionalised in the first place. This one line seemed to sum up the injustice of the treatments that were supposed to help patients in institutes but didn’t seem to be as effective as they were made out to be. Kane showed this again when listing off the countless drug prescriptions that were meant to help and the list of reactions caused by each new drug that the patient has taken. One instance is when the patient takes Venlafaxine, they suffer with dizziness, low blood pressure and headaches and all the doctors say is “No other reaction” as if those other reactions are simple problems that are nothing to worry about. This passage of text in the script is just a series of medical terms used by the doctors, who are paying no attention to the negative effects each new drug has on a patient, as they reduce it to a simple “no other reaction” – another injustice.

The style of 4:48 and Sarah Kane’s other works is known as “in-yer-face” theatre, which is a theatre of experience, experimentation and shock tactics, all of these elements can be found in 4:48. Kane’s play is recognisable as in-yer-face with its unusual aspects such as the structure and language, it creates discomfort for the audience and gets “in-their-faces” by invading their personal space. In-yer-face theatre took off in the 90s (when Kane was writing) and became the dominant style of new writing. Some of Kane’s other in-yer-face contemporaries include Mark Ravenhill (Shopping and Fucking) and Anthony Neilson (Penetrator). During the early 90s it was thought that new writing was in a state of crisis but in-yer-face theatre begun to make theatre newsworthy again and the playwrights of in-yer-face theatre were speaking to audiences of their own generation.