Sarah Kane (3 February 1971 – 20 February 1999) was an English playwright, screenwriter and theatre director. She is known for her plays that deal with themes of redemptive love, sexual desire, pain, torture—both physical and psychological—and death. They are characterised by a poetic intensity, pared-down language, exploration of theatrical form and, in her earlier work, the use of extreme and violent stage action.
Kane herself and scholars of her work, such as Graham Saunders, have identified some of her inspirations as expressionist theatre and Jacobean tragedy. The critic Aleks Sierz saw her work as part of a confrontational style and sensibility of drama termed "in-yer-face theatre". Sierz originally called Kane "the quintessential in-yer-face writer of the [1990s]" but later remarked in 2009 that although he initially "thought she was very typical of the new writing of the middle 1990s. The further we get away from that in time, the more un-typical she seems to be".
Kane's published work consists of five plays, the short film Skin, and two newspaper articles for The Guardian.
Life
Born in Brentwood, Essex, and raised by evangelical parents, Kane was a committed Christian in adolescence. Later, however, she rejected those beliefs. After attending Shenfield High School she studied drama at Bristol University, graduating in 1992, and went on to take an MA course in play writing at the University of Birmingham, led by the playwright David Edgar.
She praised Jeremy Weller's Mad as "the one piece of theatre that changed my life".
Kane wrote consistently throughout her adult life. For a year she was writer-in-residence for Paines Plough, a theatre company promoting new writing, where she actively encouraged other writers. Before that, she had worked briefly as literary associate for the Bush Theatre, London.
Depression and suicide
Kane struggled with severe depression for many years and was twice voluntarily admitted to the Maudsley Hospital in London.
She took antidepressants with reluctance. According to Kane's agent, Mel Kenyon, Kane told her "she didn't like taking pills because they numbed her response to the world, which is, of course, what they're supposed to do. But as an artist, it's extraordinarily difficult if your responsive level is made less intense. What do you do? Take pills and take away the despair? But despair also engenders knowledge in some way, and that knowledge fuels your understanding of the world and therefore your writing, but at the same time you want to exorcise the despair. She tried to weigh it up all the time."
Whilst talking about how her play Phaedra's Love deals with the theme of depression, Kane said that "[t]hrough being very, very low comes an ability to live in the moment because there isn't anything else. What do you do if you feel the truth is behind you? Many people feel depression is about emptiness but actually it's about being so full that everything cancels itself out. You can't have faith without doubt, and what are you left with when you can't have love without hate?"
First suicide attempt and subsequent hospitalisation
In the early hours of 17 February 1999, Kane in her Brixton flat attempted suicide by taking 50 sleeping pills and over 150 antidepressant tablets. Her flatmate, David Gibson, awoke and found a suicide note from her, stating that he was not to enter her room. Ignoring this request, Gibson entered Kane's room where he found her to be unconscious.
Kane was then taken to London's King's College Hospital where she was resuscitated and assessed by two psychiatrists. One of the psychiatrists, Nigel Tunstall, said that "it was very clearly the case that [Kane] was intending to kill herself and she was surprised and upset that she had not succeeded" and that she "said she had no intention of killing herself while she remained at King's College Hospital, but in abstract terms she said that at some point she would certainly kill herself." Because of this, Dr Tunstall ordered that Kane should be detained under the Mental Health Act if she attempted to leave the hospital.
Kane was admitted to the Brunel ward of the King's College Hospital, which was a general ward and not a psychiatric wing.