4.48 Psychosis
| 4.48 Psychosis | |
|---|---|
| Written by | Sarah Kane |
| Characters | None |
| Date premiered | 23 June 2000 |
| Place premiered | Royal Court Jerwood Theatre Upstairs, London |
| Original language | English |
| Subject | Clinical depression |
| Setting | None |
4.48 Psychosis is a play by British playwright Sarah Kane. It was her last work, first staged at the Royal Court's Jerwood Theatre Upstairs on 23 June 2000, directed by James Macdonald, nearly one and a half years after Kane's death on 20 February 1999. The play has no explicit characters or stage directions; this continues the style of her previous production entitled Crave. Stage productions of the play vary greatly, therefore, with between one and several actors in performance; the original production featured three actors. According to Kane's friend and fellow-playwright David Greig, the title of the play derives from the time, 4:48 a.m., when Kane, in her depressed state, often woke.
The play is played by a person with clinical depression, a disorder from which Kane suffered. She killed herself after writing the play, before its initial performance. Rather than claiming that it tries to cover depression as a whole, it might be fairer on the text to say that it is a very subjective presentation of depression, giving the audience an insight into one particular case (or perhaps providing specifics on several individual cases). Contemplation and discussion of suicide are prominent and while there is no strict narrative or timeline, certain issues and events are clearly dealt with: deciding whether to take medication to treat depression, the desires of the depressed mind, the effects and effectiveness of medication, self-harm, suicide and the possible causes of depression. Other themes that run throughout the script, in addition to depression, are those of isolation, dependency, relationships, and love.
4.48 Psychosis is composed of twenty-four sections which have no specified setting, stage directions or characters. Its language varies between the naturalistic and the highly abstract or poetic, an extension of the style which Kane had developed in Crave, where she had begun significantly to marry form and content. Certain images are repeated within the script, particularly that of "hatch opens, stark light"; a repeated motif in the play is "serial sevens" which involves counting down from one hundred by sevens, a bedside test often used by psychiatrists to test for loss of concentration or memory.
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