Sarah Kane

Um...

The lyrics are, are, are based on a play called Crave, uh, which was written by Sarah Kane.

Um, the, the play has a lot of, uh, poetic language, and, like, quite odd staging, but it focuses on the idea of pain in love, uh, and explores that through themes of rape, incest, pedophilia, anorexia, drug addiction, mental instability, murder, and suicide.

Um-

No, I don't want to be the devil, too.

I, I, I, uh, so, I mean, in soci- in, in psychological problems, the, uh, I talk about may- bipolar for example, or like Sarah Kane, or a narcissist is my top one.

But no, not, um, psychopath or whatever.

No.

And you're listening to Thursday Night's Arena.

Sarah Kane was one of the most radical voices in British theatre.

When she died in 1999 at the age of just 28, she left behind five plays that continue to challenge audiences.

Her final work, 448 Psychosis, was completed just two weeks before her death by suicide and is an extraordinary exploration of mental illness, despair and the struggle to remain alive.

And we've been talking a lot about how those two plays speak to each other, about how they exist in this kind of context.

liminal space between life and death.

And I think both O'Neill and Sarah Kane have a belief in a kind of love as salvation, the kind of the need for love and the possibility for love to save you.

And Also, the tragedy that love might be the only thing that can save us, but the kind of love that we need might not be available to us.

Exactly.

Yeah, like I'm obsessed with Sarah Kane.

And, you know, that woman, the short that I'm writing at the moment, which hopefully we'll film in the fall, is heavily inspired by Cleanse, which I've recently seen at the Almeida.

Yeah.