but "... the course of rehearsal altered every aspect of the production. The actors don't move about an open space and we didn´t cordon off the audience and make inset spaces or any such glamorous stuff, simply because it didn't work. We found that the text wanted a tangible divide between performance space and audience space. Definition of who what where etc is turbulent enough as it is, and I think clear demarcation between audience and performer is actually very important, as are distinctions of light and dark. The play must talk to the audience and make them witnesses, but it must never implicate them. We found it best to treat the audience as the only people, apart from the 'characters', who understood what Dr This and Dr That were really like, who had a hope of, if not feeling, at least understanding, the psychosis.

What can I say about it? We used two actors (Mark Farrelly and Caroline McKeating) who could become aware of each other in the space and sometimes, however fleetingly, interact. The setting was simple and largely black - a raised ledge at the back which actors stood on, lay on or hid under, a single chair, a filing cabinet, two torches that stayed on inside the cabinet giving it an unearthly glow, a dictaphone, a notepad, some chalk to write on the walls. They were two characters going through separate journeys who took turns to play the doctor or lover so the other could show the audience their predicament. By the end, people said, the two began to seem two fragments of one persona. Between sections the actors shared more abstract movement reflecting an intangible complicite with each other.

Lights (by Stuart Crohill) provided simple, strong pools of colour which ebbed away to stark white by the end. Music (by Peter Michaels) was more a soundscape of noise and effect than anything with a humable tune".

Thanks to Adam for the photos and the text.

Due to the short throw distance from the projectors to the scrim, we had to get enormous lenses for the projectors that diffused the light such that the scrim took on a ghostly translucence. On each side of the scrim was a bed structure.

One side of the scrim was occupied by A&C, the other by B&M. The blocking on each side often paralleled that of the other side, with sharp breaks in this parallelism to emphasize particular moments. There was also a microphone and a dictaphone on each side of the scrim, the former used for the longer pieces of exposition (prior to A's long monologue), which were played in various personae. This first third of the text (the monologue and short screams divide the text into almost perfect thirds) was both the most realistic and the most divided. The actors did not physically transgress the border marked by the scrim in this section, but sometimes ambiguously communicated through the scrim, and sometimes spoke to individual audience members. During A's monologue the projections were faded out and a video of the actor playing A was projected as the real actor emphatically delivered the monologue on the microphone, competing with a pre-recorded version of the monologue spoken with a deadpan voice played by C on the dictaphone, which she held up to the scrim, while B held the other microphone up to the other side of the scrim, thus amplifying the recording.

Immediately after A's monologue the energy changed. C went immediately to the microphone and delivered her next line, "It's getting worse," in a deadpan fashion, while A crossed the scrimline to join B&M. This middle third of text consisted of deadpan lines delivered on the microphone juxtaposed against the strong emotions of the actors not on microphone (i.e. A's "HOW CAN YOU LEAVE ME LIKE THIS"), generating a rather disconcerting effect.

This section included a number of scrim crossings (the first step toward the breakdown of the metaphorical spatial divisions of the stage). Shortly before the short screams, the actors chaotically deconstructed the beds, which transformed into four compartments that they erected. The screams, and the yes and no sequence that precedes it, were performed from inside these compartments as the scrim was slowly raised up.

The final third of the text was performed primarily as a monologue divided into four voices (although not exclusively). The blocking of this section was mostly symmetrical and completely anti-realistic. The final image involved each of the actors perched inside their compartments, completely isolated, with an anaesthetized numbness about them, after about 30 seconds of which a loop was played on the dictaphone which became increasingly distorted. After another 30 seconds, the doors were opened and the audience eventually filed out of the space. The interesting thing was the audience response. The usual response was applause, although it always took one brave person to lead the rest, since there was no conventional curtain call. But on a few nights, the audience didn't applaud, but rather circled the compartments like vultures, naturally forming two circles, one moving clockwise, the other counter-clockwise (it looked choreographed!). On another night, the audience laughed - but not a normal laugh (I simply can't describe it) - that was by far the strangest response.

On the whole, it was a somewhat cold and alienating experience for the audience (or so I've been told), yet some spectators were deeply moved within the context of that alienation. My favourite response was from my aunt Laura: "Sam, it was like being held down and forced to drink a bottle of drain cleaner." Then she promptly thanked me for the experience."

Thanks to Sam for the text and the photos.  More photos are in the photos section.

"An original staging: the play opens with musician Robinson playing guitar on the stage.  Then the actors, sitting scattered in the twilight among the audience (arranged A, C, M, B) speak.  The closeness of the actors, part of the audience, brings out the rhythm of Kane´s work, each line picked up by another actor.

The music continues, sometimes accentuating the emotion.  When B says El dinero viene solo the guitarist corrects the accent.  An African drummer joins the play, the sounds from the wings "like rats feet over broken glass" (T.S. Eliot).  A scene in total darkness works, because the twilight has prepared the audience.  And the actors slowly make their way onto the stage.

M uses her hands in subtle ways - the strands of the play accumulate - the audience start to laugh at the jokes - the characters of A, B, C and M begin to emerge - the sadness bites - happy and free"

Cleansed takes place in a somewhat oblique setting (Kane calls it “a university”, but frankly, if I were in this university, I’d want to be expelled) that functions mainly as a torture house. It is presided over by Tinker (played in the Rude Guerilla production by Jay Fraley), a self-described “doctor” (he wears a white coat and everything) whose chief business is to brutalize and even kill his “patients”. These folks include Grace (Larissa Tidwell), who shares an incestuous love with the ghost of her brother Graham (Scott Caster), a heroin addict who Tinker murders in the play’s first scene with an intentional overdose shot into his eye; Robin (Scott Barber), a delicate boy who exchanges clothes with Grace and then falls in love with her; and Rod and Carl (Bryan Jennings and Stephen Wagner), a gay couple who pay a horrible price for their relationship.

Tinker savages these folks physically and mentally, but it becomes apparent quite soon that he, too, is in terrible pain. (One of the most powerful ideas in the play is that brutality destroys the brutal as well as the brutalized.) His scenes with a peep show dancer (Molly Dewane) reveal that he is even needier than his victims are. And Kane regards him with just as much compassion, and gives him the same capacity for redemption through love.

...Barton’s production of Cleansed that really made me re-examine my earlier take on Kane’s work. As arresting as the stylized images of brutality are in this production (a special nod should go to puppeteers Peter Balgoyen and Katarina Yeo, who effectively realize the aforementioned rats), I think what I’m going to really remember are the gentler moments, especially the three scenes of graphic but exquisitely tender and intimate lovemaking. (And yes, that’s what Kane calls it in her stage directions, “making love”, not “having sex” or “fucking”.) As focused as the work by the uniformly first-rate cast is throughout, and as fiercely committed as they are to the violence and ugliness in the play, it is undoubtedly in the play’s most loving and beautiful moments where their work is the bravest."

Crave had its New Zealand premiere in Wellington from 4 July 2002.

The players were Carey Smith, Eve Middleton, James Stewart and Tina Helm, with direction by David Lawrence, and presented by The Bacchanals.

For one thing, I thought the actors were just too young - I know it's not their fault, but I just couldn't buy into a 20 year olds saying some of those lines (M really wanting a child, for example). They weren't *bad*, but they weren't exactly good enough either. The four of them were facing the audience, not really moving so in that sense not completely dissimilar to the original production (although two were at the front, C and B I believe, and A and M were behind them). The symbolism of the props - A holding a rosary - I found somewhat heavy handed, ditto broken glass in the middle of the stage.

I also had a feeling that the delivery was teeny-weeny too quick. I know this play is about language, and about rhythm and meaning through rhythm and not about letting the audience to dwell on every line for hours, still, I had a feeling that everything was just that much too fast. It didn't get one laugh for example - OK that might have to do with the audience, but is the Royal Court audience really that different? Because every time I saw it at RC people would laugh - there are some killer lines in Crave, bleak humour Kane style... I think that's a mistake for the director to disregard the humour, and that's what they effectively did here: the friends I saw it with (who were not familiar with the text) said something along the lines 'we noticed some of the lines were funny, but by the time the humour would register, the moment would be gone'."

Dès leurs premières représentations, les textes  de la dramaturge brittanique Sarah Kane, à première vue des documents violents  et sanglants illustratifs d’une époque, étaient déjà l’objet de controverses.  Leur renommée grandit encore après le suicide de l’auteur. Maintenant que  la sensation autour de sa personne s’est un peu calmée, les jeunes gens de  théâtre néerlandophone de Tg. NUN veulent donner la parole au texte même.     
Phaedra’s Love est une pièce qui parle d’icones, d’intégrité, d’amour et de la chasse aux stimulants. La reine Phèdre brûle de passion pour son beau-fils Hyppolyte et se tue quand il la rejette. Dans   la version contemporaine de Sarah Kane de cette histoire classique, l’attitude   de Hyppolyte joue un rôle central.