Sarah Kane

Sarah Kane (3 February 1971 – 20 February 1999) was a controversial English playwright that suffered with mental health issues. Sarah Kane was born jun Brentwood,Essex to extremely religious chrisitan parents, who later discovered that she was against those beliefs. Kane studied at Bristol University, where she went on to complete an MA course in playwriting art Birmingham University. Sarah Kane used to struggle with severe depression for most of her life, and spent a lot of time in Maudsley Hospital in London, but kept writing plays consistently. 

Sarah Kane was also a resident playwright at Plaines Plough for a short while. Sarah Kane wrote a series of plays which received lots of critical acclaim, and stigma for being explicit, uncomfortable and disturbing. Her first play debuted at age 22 and was called 'Blasted' Kane wrote the first two scenes while a student in Birmingham, where they were given a public performance. The agent Mel Kenyon was in the audience and subsequently represented Kane, suggesting she should show her work to the Royal Court Theatre in London. The completed play, directed by James Macdonald, opened at the Royal Court Theatre Upstairs in 1995. 'Blasted' was attacked by news papers and journalists describing it as "this disgusting feast of filth." 

Kanes other plays were Skin,Phaedra's Love,Cleansed,Crave and her final play 4.48 Psychosis. Kane's last play, and most commonly known 4.48 Psychosis, was completed shortly before she died and was performed in 2000, at the Royal Court, directed by James Macdonald. This was Kane's shortest and most fragmented theatrical work. As it was incomplete due to her death there was no direction for plot or character, leaving it down to complete interpretation. When the play was written Sarah Kane was suffering from severe depression, it has been described by her fellow-playwright and close friend "David Greig as having as its subject the "psychotic mind." According to Greig, the title derives from the time — 4:48 a.m. — when Kane, in her depressed state, frequently woke in the morning"

"Though Kane's work never played to large audiences in the UK and was at first dismissed by many newspaper critics, her plays have been widely performed in Europe and South America. In 2005, the theatre director Dominic Dromgoole wrote that she was "without doubt the most performed new writer on the international circuit"