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Sarah Kane's Theatre of Psychic Life Leah Sidi

Sarah Kane's Theatre of Psychic Life By Leah Sidi

Sarah Kane's Theatre of Psychic Life by Leah Sidi


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Sarah Kane's Theatre of Psychic Life Summary

Sarah Kane's Theatre of Psychic Life: Theatre, Thought and Mental Suffering by Leah Sidi

Sarah Kane was one of the landmark playwrights of 1990s Britain, her influence being felt across UK and European theatre. This is the first book to focus exclusively on Kane's unique approach to mind and mental health. It offers an important re-evaluation of her oeuvre, revealing the relationship between theatre and mind which lies at the heart of her theatrical project. Drawing on performance theory, psychoanalysis and neuroscience, this book argues that Kane's innovations generate a 'dramaturgy of psychic life', which re-shapes the encounter between stage and audience. It uses previously unseen archival material and contemporary productions to uncover the mechanics of this innovative theatre practice. Through a radically open-ended approach to dramaturgy, Kane's works offer urgent insights into mental suffering that take us beyond traditional discourses of empathy and mental health and into a profound rethinking of theatre as a mode of thought. As such, her theatre can help us to understand debates about mental suffering today.

Sarah Kane's Theatre of Psychic Life Reviews

Sarah Kane's Theatre of Psychic Life is an incisive and eloquent account of the necessity of Kane, the necessity of theatre, and the necessity of interdependence. Sidi's book offers a persuasive argument for the fecundity of desolation. * anna harpin, Head of Theatre and Performance Studies, University of Warwick, UK *
Though Sarah Kane's work is steeped in despair, this fascinating and compassionate book offers hope in its vision of her theatre as a place where our darkest and most intensely personal experiences are transformed into an investigation into the political and psychological landscape of our society. * Professor of Contemporary Theatre, Royal Holloway University of London, UK *

About Leah Sidi

Leah Sidi is Lecturer in Health Humanities at University College London, UK. Her research focus is on contemporary theatre and mental health, with a special focus on feminist theatre and psychoanalysis. She has been the recipient of the Feminist Review Archive Award and a Wellcome/ISSF postdoctoral award at Birkbeck, University of London, UK. She has published in Performance Research and is a regular contributor to the Institute for Medical Humanities' The Polyphony.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Revisiting Kane - Why Kane? - The question of biography: mental health and politics - Context: Mental Health in the 1990s: Phaedra's Love and 'community care plays' Chapter 1: Plays and playing: The Dramaturgy of Psychic Life - A Starting Point: Experientialism and the mind - Dramaturgy - Theatre and thought - Psychic life and psychoanalysis - Crave with Paine's Plough (1998): Exploring Experientialism Chapter 2: The stage as traumatic space - Kane's Feminist Legacies: Feminist theatre and sexual trauma - Theatre as a theoretical response? PTSD and mimetic traumas - Blasted : The psychic life of sexual trauma - Blasted at the Crucible: A trauma reading Chapter 3: Rhythm, Interruption, Psychosis - Phaedra's Love to Cleansed: A dramaturgical turning point - Dramaturgical tools: Prediction and interruption in Cleansed and Crave - A cognitive reading: Psychosis and prediction errors - Influence on Kane from Strindberg and Artaud - Cleansed at the National Theatre: Playing it against the text Chapter 4: The Mind as Theatrical Site - Crave and 4.48 Psychosis as 'mental health' plays - The mind-as-site - Neoliberal healthcare and psychosis: dramaturgical responses to political changes - 4.48 Psychosis at the Lyric Hammersmith: splitting the mind into space Chapter 5: RSVP ASAP - Kane and desire: What does theatre want? - Suicidality: returning to Kane's sources - Staging desire: An apostrophic reading with Barbara Johnson - 4.48 Psychosis by the Belarus Free Theatre: Queer love and suicidality Conclusion: Looking ahead: Kane and the future of 'mental health' Bibliography Index

Additional information

NPB9781350283121
9781350283121
1350283126
Sarah Kane's Theatre of Psychic Life: Theatre, Thought and Mental Suffering by Leah Sidi
New
Hardback
Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
2023-04-06
232
N/A
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