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2007/2/21 《我们走在大路上》台词摘录去年11月份的 从台词看有2000格瓦拉的味道 ，挺严重的。 错过了 可惜…… 朝阳9个剧场
《我们走在大路上》 大款跟大官组合／大官跟大腕组合／大腕跟大师组合／大师跟太极阴阳组合／太极阴阳跟软玉温香组合／软玉温香跟紫檀家具组合／紫檀家具跟紫玉山庄组合／紫玉山庄跟黄金宴组合／黄金宴跟白嫩高组合／白嫩高跟麻骚娇组合／麻骚娇跟8缸40气门90度排列保时捷跑车组合／8－40－90跟三超组合／三超跟三高组合／三高跟太庙组合／太庙跟私有财产神圣不可侵犯组合／私有财产神圣不可侵犯跟文化底蕴组合／文化底蕴跟上海的风花雪月组合／上海的风花雪月跟往事如烟组合／往事如烟跟告别革命组合／告别革命跟自由组合／自由跟独立知识分子组合／独立知识分子跟狼组合／狼跟狮子王组合／狮子王跟历史终结组合／历史终结跟中国应该说是组合／中国应该说是跟进口伟哥组合／进口伟哥跟强化激励组合／强化激励跟硬道理组合／硬道理跟中华崛起组合
知识的价值终于实现了：
这兜股票这兜党票
又独立董事又人大代表
刚更新老婆正装修糖号（townhouse）
――我倒想穷困潦倒呢，无奈机率太小啊
还有马克还有美元
还有因私因公两本护照
还有哈佛剑桥的邀请信
——谁还想跑啊，哪片国土有这片热土好啊
推出过力作多篇为剥削正名
正working on一部专著证明腐败之必要
边缘知识分子要盯紧，社会公正大旗要抓到
——就冲咱这色毛，投奔哪张皮，哪张皮不要啊！就冲咱这 双捷足，踩哪儿，不是金光大道啊！！咱也闹不清国外是不是真那样：四十不到就让回家
咱也闹不清铁饭碗是不是真该砸，反正我跟小孩他妈二十年就没请过事假
咱也闹不清那什么“现代企业制度”到底怎么意思：厂子被他们几个搞垮，一转脸又成他们几个的啦
咱也闹不清市委党校都教什么，单位头儿进修了俩月真他妈像大红门屠宰场学回来的！
嫦娥的奶子像两只玉兔∕在尤里西斯的眼皮里乱窜∕盛满多种维他命的白兰瓜∕是奉天大和尚内裤不能承受之负担∕交媾中流出幽幽长调∕从通胀一直流到疲软
救死扶伤跟红包接轨
强身健体跟黑哨接轨
孤有所依老有所养跟末尾淘汰接轨
人人有书读有学上跟教育创收接轨
眼，就这么尖起来
手，就这么快起来
胸，就这么挺起来
历史就这么踏着尸骨前进
药，就这么熬出来
铁，就这么打出来
路，就这么踩出来
历史就这么踏着尸骨前进
人，就这么逼出来
事，就这么拼出来
命，就这么争出来
历史就这么踏着尸骨前进
楼，就这么盖起来
家，就这么发起来
国，就这么强起来
历史就这么踏着尸骨前进
江河如练，就这么流过来……
岁月如烟，就这么飘过来……
我们一起死
我们一起生
我们一起唱
我们走在大路上
……
从别人的blog里摘的：
要不你给社会下跪，要不社会给你下跪
……
上不起学了？那就勤上庙里烧烧香――
买不起房了？彩票买得起吧，没准叁块钱买座大别墅呢
看不起病了？那就看开点，认命吧――生老病死，客观规律
跳楼跳去，上吊上去，喝农药喝去，这就是社会嘛
抢东西抢去，偷东西偷去，不抢不偷，那还算人类么
嫌钱少请走人啊，怕剥削别出门啊
别给脸不要脸，趁那什么主义还没凉透，赶紧领俩钱走人，往后下岗，可都扒了工作服，光着滚蛋！
《我们走在大路上》，里面有一场戏。一大款开车撞死路人，激起民愤，而法学家则联名上书刀下留人，号称“维护法律独立性”，号称“法律，不能被民意强奸！”知识精英们一通“英美法系”“大陆法系”，得撞死白撞。我看完这出戏之后，一直在想，不知道对这样的事情，像我们这些小民百姓应该怎么样表现，才叫心态好？我们是否应该对受害人的家属说：“人死不能复生，算啦。何必非要人家坐牢呢？如果要让人家偿命，那就更不厚道啦。彼此让一步，世界多美好？”
西方有富豪有一句话，“死于巨富是一种耻辱”，但是我们的富豪以及知识精英们却一天到晚在反问社会：“为富不仁有什么错吗？”好象稍微要求他们有点同情心讲点良心道德，就是对他们要求高了，不合理了，是“仇富”是“红眼病”，我就不明白，是不是看着为富不仁弱肉强食还特理解觉得特对就应该这样就是心态正常啦？
以前只知道秀才遇见兵，有理说不清。现在才知道，秀才如果遇到精英，那比遇到兵还可怕啊！
当精英失去良心，世界将会怎样？
就一个问题――你跪还是他跪――
就一个问题――他跪还是你跪――
人，就这么逼出来
事，就这么拼出来
命，就这么争出来
历史就这么踏着尸骨前进
《我们走在大路上》导演的话
王焕青
做导演和画画是两回事，需要足够的不要脸！
……
如果一定要我说出“大路上”将要模仿或者剽窃——说好听点叫参照的出处，稍微喜欢电影的人大概都看过爱森斯坦的《十月》和李芬斯塔尔的《意志的胜利》。我不想评价这两部作品的思想性，只是提醒大家《我们走在大路上》和它们在气质上有隐秘的联系。我希望咱们这部作品里也一定弥漫着壮怀激烈的气息。因为我们是在做一部史诗，不是小里小气的狠话、蠢话、怪话、馊话、脏话、漂亮话的小品集粹。我们要拒绝促狭之气，要剔除自然主义的表演，更要警惕时髦的所谓“行为艺术”。如果还有谁对《我们走在大路上》看不明白，我想提醒一下，这是一部充满悲悯和大爱的诗篇。对风格样式心里没底，就好好看看纪苏写在剧本前面的话，它必须成为我们各位的共识。
为了解决大家对这个作品风格趋向的困惑，我带来了《吡卢寺》壁画和乔托、斯宾塞的作品，给大家一点视觉提示。我们不是为了模仿某一幅画面而是要在舞台空间里营造出精神力量……我们也不必和雕塑套瓷攀亲，没有什么雕塑会比你们自己的身体更美，这一点你们一定要有充分的自信。建立用身体来传达信息的能力你们在学校里早就学会了，只是在这个作品里它将被放大使用。为此，我特意为大家请了一位现代舞的编舞崔凯，他自己就是出色的舞蹈家。我不是为了把这个戏弄成现代舞，而是让他协助大家来释放自己的身体。陶子为我介绍来一位非常棒的舞台美术家曾文通，大家从模型上应该看得明白，他的设计为整个戏确立了约束和空间处理的妙趣。剧中的歌曲大家已经听到了，非常好，我说好的理由是它极为贴切。我和纪苏反复同侯牧人讨论的焦点是，歌曲该如何成为《我们走在大路上》能穿透内心的感慨？年龄小的演员或许觉得还不够时尚，对不起，符合你们耳朵的声音已经足够多了，这次我坚持怂恿侯牧人针对中年人的心境来创作，毕竟《我们走在大路上》是编年体史诗，音乐应该浩大，幽深，诚朴……我的学生任磊和孙上恩一直在设计和制作影像，我相信大家将会看到精致考究的影像。
另外，顺便也给大家看一点结构主义作品，我们的舞台空间将在简化的直线控制之下，舞美、灯光、服装、化妆都将服务于这个大结构。演员是流动的曲线和移动的点；音乐、歌曲是弥漫的气息；投影是时代符号。如果大家能及早理会到我的意图，演员集体就可以合并成我们、你们、他们；个体能简化成你、我、他，纪苏所创作的精美的颂诗和激烈的台词就有了卓越的传达介质，对，你们各位就是传达介质，这就是与你们此前的演剧经验完全不同之处。因为《我们走在大路上》这个文本在我眼里是前所未见的编年体大诗。我钦佩张光年，他为那个如火如荼的时代留下了《黄河大合唱》这样壮美的诗篇。在我们这个催人向上同时也促人堕落的时代，《我们走在大路上》是潜沉和激越的爱国主义诗篇。你们可以不同意我的看法，但请遵循我的理解，我要哄着你们、骗着你们、骂着你们，当然，其实是请求你们花一点心血，像我一样能理解到文本的精髓。
有人疑问我在作一个非驴非马的东西，没错！夸张地说，我们心里装着一个独一无二的剧本，凭什么我们不能创造一个特立独行的作品？！客观地说，你们都是艺术家，大家的才智汇集在一起一定会有惊人的创造力，现在是我在煽动你们，随后，我相信一定是你们带领我走过文字的原野看到生动、立体、壮丽、活着的诗篇。
从今天起，我希望各位在排练过程中学会沉醉在诗句和时间里。我的请求是，你们要变成灵魂，你们就是我们，也是他们，你们本身就是诗，是镜子，也是镜中的幻影，能在幻境里来去自如，你们是思想也是算计，你们是过去也是未来，你们是已经也是即将，你们是具体也是抽象，你们是喜悦也是愤懑，是希望也是绝望，你们是鬼魅，是畜生，是行尸走肉，你们能飘荡，会飞翔，你们像蛆一样蠕动而不是爬行，你们像猪那样爬行而不是像人那样直立行走，你们是芸芸众生，你们是人民群众，你们是英雄，是圣人，是不死者，你们是人民在失去的生命里复活，你们是叹息，是悲苦，是欢笑，是心跳……你们是活动着的诗句……
2007/2/16 然后看戏《爱有九条命》
东方先锋剧场
2007.02.14 19：00
张志鹏
导演兼主演
孟京辉之徒
此人很白呢~！
能找到02年孟氏《关于爱情归宿的最新观念》（当时还是和nana一起去的呢=）的小感觉，但后劲儿不足。
2007/2/6 关于晚上的紫竹院和路上谁是狗狗，谁是小朋友
狗狗应该走在你前面，还是走在你后面
狗狗会不小心或者故意踩到小猫咪
谁恐高不能太靠栏杆走，在过街桥上。
蹭蹭
大尾巴（小尾巴）
piu
钻到床里直接睡着？不如赖一会儿再睡着（早晨不能赖床除非故意提前醒来）
刚到0度湖面没结冰…… 2007/2/5 Sarah Kane莎拉 凯恩
女人
话剧
28
5
医院的卫生间
Blasted 1995
Phaedra's Love 1996
Cleansed 1998
Crave 1998
4：48 Psychosis 1999
Sarah Kane by Aleks Sierz
'There may be some people who kill themselves,' wrote Al Alvarez in The Savage God, his classic 1971 study of suicide, 'in order to achieve a calm and control they never find in life.' He went on to claim that for poet Sylvia Plath, a personal friend who'd committed suicide in 1963, it was a desperate way out of a corner she had boxed herself into. The case of Sarah Kane, the 28-year-old playwright who hanged herself on 20 February 1999, inevitably recalls Plath. Once again, here was a precocious but self-destructive young talent whose death changed the way we look at her work. Kane's short career began in January 1995, with Blasted, a shocking play whose raw language and powerful images of rape, eye-gouging and cannibalism provoked critical outrage. The Daily Mail denounced the play as 'this disgusting feast of filth', the Sunday Telegraph fulminated against its 'gratuitous welter of carnage' and the Spectator called it 'a sordid little travesty of a play'. But if Blasted shocked because of its explicit sex and violence, it was also disturbing because of its innovative structure: after a naturalistic first half, Kane exploded theatrical convention by making the second part richly symbolic and earily nightmarish. In her subsequent plays - Phaedra's Love (1996), Cleansed (1998) and Crave (1998) - Kane developed a characteristic mix of extreme emotional content and theatrical innovation. Although her savagery attracted more attention than her tenderness, Kane's special talent lay in taking apart theatrical structure. In Crave, for example, the four characters have no names and most of their speeches could be addressed to any of the other characters on stage. Since her death, an enormous amount of interest has been generated by rumours that her last play, 4.48 Psychosis, which is now being produced by the Royal Court in London, tackles the subject of suicidal depression. When speculation about it first began, in September 1999, Simon Kane - Sarah's brother and executor of her estate - pointed out that 4.48 Psychosis is 'about suicidal despair, so it is understandable that some people will interpret the play as a thinly veiled suicide note'. But, he said, 'this simplistic view does both the play and my sister's motivation for writing it an injustice.' You can see his point. If 4.48 Psychosis is worth seeing, it should be because it's a good play and not because it hints at its author's depression, her voluntary stays at London's Maudsley Hospital or her previous attempts at suicide. For this reason, the Royal Court is discouraging publicity. The poster advertising the play is black, with no picture, and includes a quote from the play which simply conveys Kane's bleak humour: 'I dreamt I went to the doctor's and she gave me eight minutes to live - I'd been sitting in the fucking waiting room half an hour.' In view of her ceaseless desire to innovate in form, audiences should expect 4.48 Psychosis to be more of a poetic extravaganza than a traditional three-act play. Watching it will probably involve being exposed to a text in which lyricism is laced with powerful stage images and where missives from the edge of extreme experience are laced with a wry humour. But 4.48 Psychosis inevitably raises troubling questions about the literature of despair. On the one hand, sceptics see Kane's work as a literal reflection of her life. The Telegraph's critic, Charles Spencer, wrote in May 1998 that 'you feel her work owes much more to clinical depression than to real artistic vision'. You could argue that her writing simply reproduces the fears and confusions of mental illness. On the other hand, Kane's defenders - such as Graham Whybrow, the Royal Court's literary manager - emphasise her dramatic technique. Not only did she have a first-class honours degree in drama, but her work never stayed still. 'Each new play,' he says, 'was a new departure and to some extent an investigation of form. She left behind a body of work which is consistent in vision and diverse across a range of subjects.' But Kane was also 'acutely aware that she was living an accelerated life, personally and artistically,' says Whybrow. 'She was only too aware of the tragedies of other artists who died young: she was conscious of Buchner and so on.' In fact, Kane directed Buchner's Woyzeck in 1997. Was she part of what Alvarez calls the 'black thread' of morbid writers who were fascinated by suicide and death? Playwright Mark Ravenhill, who knew Kane and whose Shopping and Fucking (1996) also caused a stir at the Royal Court, says: 'Actually, I see her more as a classical writer. Her work is connected with a form of theatre that is quite confrontational because it doesn't reassure you with social context or Freudian psychology - it doesn't explain things. It just presents you with these austere, extreme situations. She is the only contemporary writer who has that classical sensibility.' Did she pay the price of being encouraged by theatre managements to explore the dark sides of life? 'Not at all, she was a very stubborn, strong-willed person,' says Ravenhill. 'She wrote what she wanted to write. For every person who praised her work, there was one that condemned it. She just went her own way.' Perhaps her restless desire to innovate pushed her further and further into a corner from which death offered the only escape. 'I don't agree,' says Simon Kane. 'I don't think fears about her work were a significant factor in her decision to commit suicide. I think Sarah's work was much more the effect of who she was and what she cared about, than it was the cause of her depression.' Similarly, Kane's agent Mel Kenyon sees her work as speaking for itself. 'People should admire the boldness of it, the starkness of the images and her influence will encourage writers to be courageously theatrical.' But there is also a dangerous side to her legacy. 'Because of her death, some young people might think they have to live in despair to be proper writers. And that you have to kill yourself to become profound.' At the time of Kane's death, Kenyon was quoted as saying that Kane was an artist who suffered from 'existential despair'. But, as fellow Royal Court playwright Anthony Neilson pointed out, the same depression affects both artists and check-out girls, so why 'canonise one and stigmatise the other'? Mental illness is no respecter of professions. And David Tushingham, who included Kane's work in Live 3: Critical Mass, an anthology of new writing, before she became notorious, says: 'Sarah Kane's career as a mental patient was briefer and much less exceptional than as a dramatist - the only freakish thing about her was her talent.' Simon Kane adds, 'It is very narrow and trivial to look at a play simply as an expression of someone's biography - it limits interpretation and closes off other possible meanings. Her work is much richer than just an expression of personal anguish.' When I interviewed Kane for my book on young playwrights - called In-Yer-Face Theatre: British Drama Today - in September 1998, she gave few clues about her pain. She wasn't the kind of person to offload problems on strangers. Her responses to my questions were helpful and polite, and her subsequent letters generous in answering my queries. Since her death, however, some references inevitably seem to scream from the page. Her favourite band was Joy Division, purveyors of dark and doomy music whose lead singer Ian Curtis committed suicide by hanging. When discussing Blasted, Kane once mentioned a haunting newspaper image - of a Bosnian woman hanging from a tree - that emphasised the stark realities of civil war. In Cleansed, a young man hangs himself when he realises how long his prison sentence is, an incident which Kane took from a true story about a black activist on Roben island in South African during the apartheid years. In her plays, the portraits of depression and desperation - whether it's the character of Hippolytus in her retelling of the Phaedra story or the inmates of the corrective institution in Cleansed - were not just the results of research, but came from the gut. In her lifetime, she was accused of posing as the 'naughtiest girl in class', but the truth is that she meant it. But seeing connections between Kane's life and her writing does tend to be reductive. After all, her friends will tell you about her sense of fun as well as her depression. Her taste in music and theatre may have been bleak (Beckett was a favourite) but she also loved Manchester United football team - hardly a melancholic's choice. Besides, what she admired most about Beckett was his sense of overcoming the darkness. When I talked to her, she emphasised that she was essentially interested in love and affection. 'I don't find my plays depressing or lacking in hope,' she said. 'To create something beautiful about despair, or out of a feeling of despair, is for me the most hopeful, life-affirming thing a person can do.' If anything, her ultimate failure to survive the pain of mental illness excites compassion and pity. In the end, her decision to kill herself probably had more to do with escaping the agony of depression and her feelings of loneliness than with her work. If, as Alvarez suggests, some people kill themselves to gain control and find calm, the irony is that Kane, who all her life struggled against being pigeonholed as a 'woman writer', is now powerless against being labelled a suicidal artist. And the problem with seeing Kane as an example of the Sylvia Plath syndrome - with her work refracted through the optic of her death - is that it reduces her art to biography, and limits its meaning. 'It will be very hard for 4.48 Psychosis to be seen solely as a play,' says Ravenhill. 'How can an audience engage with it without the author's biographical details getting in the way?' Perhaps the best way to approach the play is to do what theatre audiences always do: suspend disbelief - forget that the actors are only acting and that the writer is no longer living, and open yourself to the experience of the work. Sarah Kane 2 by Aleks Sierz
The explosion of 'in-yer-face' new writing for the British stage in the mid-1990s - lauded at the time as part of 'Cool Britannia' - seems to have run out of juice over the past year or so. The Royal Court's reopening was delayed, the Evening Standard refused to give an award in the best new play category, and articles in the Guardian moaned about the poverty of new plays.
Perhaps most symbolic of all, writer Sarah Kane killed herself on 20 February 1999. Undoubtedly one of the most talented of the new generation of playwrights who made their debut in the 1990s, Kane brought a welcome blast of scandal to theatre, outraging critics, if not audiences, with her first play Blasted in January 1995.
With her final play, 4.48 Psychosis, about to get a posthumous production at the Court, what was her legacy? She was, says fellow playwright Mark Ravenhill, 'a contemporary writer with a classical sensibility who created a theatre of great moments of beauty and cruelty, a theatre to which it was only possible to respond with a sense of awe.'
Graham Whybrow, literary manager of the Royal Court (which put on most of her work), says: 'Sarah Kane was head and shoulders above other young writers in her uncompromising vision and her precocity. Her plays are tough in conception and terse in writing.' Aware of theatrical traditions (she had a First Class Honours degree in drama from Bristol University) but 'not slavishly tied from them', she dealt with raw atrocities but 'showed a great deal of compassion'. Each of her plays was a new experiment in form and an exploration of theatrical possibility. Says Whybrow, 'Her plays aren't troubled by awkward local references or contemporary detail in a way that would date them - they will endure.'
Had it not been for Blasted, the explosion of 1990s in-yer-face theatre - from Ravenhill's Shopping and Fucking to Jez Butterworth's Mojo - would not have had the impact that it did. But Kane was much more than a leader of a brat pack of avant-garde provocateurs. As James Macdonald, who directed Blasted and Cleansed, says: 'The media painted her as a wild axe-girl, but actually she was far more theatre-literate than most writers of her age.' What was her role in new writing? 'To shake it up a bit - with an ambition and urgency and passion that's often lacking,' says Macdonald. 'She wasn't just symptomatic of the 1990s - what was refreshing was that she was up to something different from most of her generation. She was writing about politics in her own way. Her gods were Beckett, Pinter, Bond, Barker.'
Kane's agent, Mel Kenyon, also stresses her individuality, although she sees Kane as typical of the 1990s 'in her desire to fragment form, to blow apart old forms' as well as in her anger. 'The stage is one of the last places one can be genuinely angry. In comparison, screen violence tends to be overstylised and anodyne, distant and unreal.' And Kane 'was the angriest of the lot'. But stage violence 'is also an expression of despair. People will look at her work and admire the boldness of it, the starkness of the images and she will probably encourage people to be courageously theatrical.' But, says Kenyon, 'I also hope that her death gives the lie to the notion that this generation doesn't care.' And that it 'reminds people that theatre is still a serious platform for debate. If her legacy does both these things, it will have been great.'
If it is too early to see her influence on young British writers, her effect on European writers is clear. David Tushingham, dramaturg and translator, says that 'in Germany, she is regarded as one of the most significant authors of the decade.' German writers such as Marius von Mayenburg and David Gieselmann - whose work has just been shown as part of the Court's international season - were directly influenced by Kane, who also worked with writers and actors in the USA, Netherlands, Bulgaria and Spain.
If Kane's influence is busy working its way through the new writing scene, her last play, 4.48 Psychosis, may attract more interest because of its subject matter - it refers to suicidal depression - than because of its theatrical daring. Critics may be tempted to see this as no more than a direct reflection of Kane's own mental problems. This would be a pity because, in the words of her brother, Simon Kane, 'It is very narrow and trivial to look at a play simply as an expression of someone's biography - it limits interpretation and closes off other possible meanings. Her work is much richer than just an expression of personal anguish.'
Tushingham agrees: 'Sarah Kane's career as a mental patient was briefer and much less exceptional than as a dramatist - the only freakish thing about her was her talent.' But her legacy does have a dangerous side, says Kenyon. 'Because of her death, some young people might think they have to live in despair to be proper writers. And that you have to kill yourself to become profound.' Instead, it would be better if they learnt from Kane's generosity and imaginative flair, from her love of life rather than from her early and tragic death.
Sarah Kane's 4.48 Psychosis opened on 24 June 2000 at the Royal Court
Sarah Kane 3 by Aleks Sierz I'm a fortysomething journalist so I had good reasons for worry. In her Royal Court debut, Blasted (now being revived at the same venue as part of a season of her work) the main character is Ian, a middle-aged journalist. In the course of the play, he abuses Cate, a naive young women and a family friend. Then he is raped by a soldier, has his eyes sucked out, starves, eats a dead baby, and tries to kill himself.
If that represented what Kane - whose father worked for the Daily Mirror - thought about tabloid journalists, and middle-aged men in general, what hope for me? In the event, Kane turned out to be one of the most helpful of all the writers I met and talked to for my book, In-Yer-Face Theatre: British Drama Today.
In what was probably the last interview she gave, she talked about her work, pointing out that the final scene of Blasted takes place in a metaphorical 'hell'. 'Don't forget the stage direction that says 'He dies with relief',' she said. 'Ian dies, so you think that's the worst thing that can happen - then it rains on him.' It's a moment that sums her bleak sense of humour.
When Kane lit a cigarette, she held it behind her back so that the smoke wouldn't blow into my eyes. Her considerate behaviour reminded me that although her plays - Phaedra's Love, Cleansed, Crave and 4.48 Psychosis - feature lashings of violence, they are also full of gentleness. After all, her main theme is love.
Kane felt that the emotional content of her work had been misunderstood. 'Blasted is a hopeful play,' she said. 'I was a lot more hopeful at 22 than I am now. The plays that I consider to be about hope (Blasted), faith (Phaedra's Love) and love (Cleansed) seem to have depressed everyone else.'
Kane didn't recognise herself in negative media descriptions. 'I don't find my plays depressing or lacking in hope,' she said. 'But then I am someone whose favourite band is Joy Division because I find their songs uplifting. To create something beautiful about despair, or out of a feeling of despair, is for me the most hopeful, life-affirming thing a person can do.'
Yet, despite the fact that love was so important to her, Kane was also constantly aware of violence. She told me two anecdotes about life in Brixton, where we both lived. One was about a black woman who jostled her and then racially abused her, and the other about a gay man who been beaten up and arrived on her front doorstep with his face pouring with blood.
At the end of our meeting, she told me she didn't like giving interviews. 'I'm a writer,' she said. 'I'd much prefer if you could send me letters, and I'll write my replies to your questions.' In the next months, she sent me a couple of letters about her plays, then just as I was finishing the first draft of my chapter on her for the book, I heard she'd killed herself.
Obituaries emphasised her role as, in the words of Mark Ravenhill, her friend and fellow playwright, 'a contemporary writer with a classical sensibility who created a theatre of great moments of beauty and cruelty, a theatre to which it was only possible to respond with a sense of awe.'
David Greig, another playwright who knew her well, said: 'Sarah was a complex person and a complex writer. Every statement I make about her, I immediately feel the contrary is probably also true.' That's the paradox of Sarah Kane: she was the gentle vegetarian whose mind could be a raging cauldron of emotions.
In a short career, she did more than any other writer to change the face of British playwriting. Out went what Dominic Dromgoole, artistic director of the Bush in 1994, when Kane was a literary associate there, calls 'miserabilist plays'. In came confrontational drama, aggressively in-yer-face and vividly depicting scenes of shock and terror. Yet despite the sensational tactics, what makes these plays great is their genuine emotional punch.
When I asked Kane what she thought of the label 'in-yer-face theatre', she shrugged. 'At least it's fucking better than New Brutalism,' she said. Although the trend started in the early 1990s, it only took off when Kane's Blasted was staged at the tiny Royal Court Theatre Upstairs in January 1995.
Denounced by the Daily Mail as 'This disgusting feast of filth' and derided by the Guardian as 'scenes of masturbation, fellatio, frottage, micturition, defecation - ah, those old familiar faeces - homosexual rape, eye gouging and cannibalism', Blasted sold out.
Why did the critics hate the play so much? Kane explained their reaction by pointing out that 'a play by a middle-aged male journalist who rapes a young woman and is raped and mutilated himself can't have endeared me to a theatre full of middle-aged male critics'.
Maybe. Equally probable is the fact that Blasted is a powerfully written piece which embodied the blatant in-yer-face sensibility that young writers discovered in the past 10 years. Experimental in structure and provocative in its portrayal of civil war, the play was uncomfortable because it made audiences feel they were experiencing the emotions shown on stage.
Although the controversy it sparked off led to countless articles in the papers as well as television and radio features, the small size of the studio theatre meant that only about 1,100 people ever saw the show. Now, with the Royal Court reviving this remarkable first play on its main stage, a much larger public will finally get to see what all the fuss was about. A theatre legend will once again be were it should be - not in a book, not in the memory, but in front of an audience.
The Sarah Kane season was at the Royal Court in March-April 2001.
Sarah Kane facts and bibliography by Aleks Sierz
Biographical notes
3 Feb 1971 Born in Brentwood, Essex. Grows up in Kelvedon Hatch, near Brentwood, and attends Shenfield Comprehensive school, where she directs Ibsen and Shakespeare.
Oct 1989 Begins BA in drama at Bristol University, where she acts and directs Macbeth, Top Girls, Rockaby and other plays.
Aug 1991 Performs Comic Monologue, part of Dreams, Screams and Silences, with Vincent O'Connell (Sore Throats Theatre Company) at Edinburgh Festival Fringe.
Jul 1992 Graduates from Bristol University with a First Class Honours Degree.
Aug 1992 Performs two monologues, Starved and What She Said, part of Dreams, Screams and Silences 2, with Vincent O'Connell at Edinburgh Festival Fringe.
Oct 1992 Begins MA in Playwriting at Birmingham University.
3 Jul 1993 Workshop performance of Blasted for the Birmingham MA in Playwriting performance weekend.
29 Jan 1994 Rehearsed reading of Blasted at the Royal Court.
Mar 1994 Appointed literary associate at the Bush Theatre, London.
18 Jan 1995 Press night of Blasted at the Royal Court Theatre Upstairs, Sloane Square, London.
May 1995 Participates in exchange programme with New Dramatists, New York.
Oct 1995 Skin first screened at the London Film Festival.
15 May 1996 Phaedra's Love first performed at the Gate Theatre, London.
28 Aug 1996 Appointed Writer-in-Residence at Paines Plough, where she runs the Wild Lunch series of writers' groups.
Feb 1997 Participates in the Royal Court's annual International Exchange Programme (New English Drama) - with Phaedra's Love - at the Deutsche Theater Baracke, Berlin.
21 Mar 1997 Crave given a public reading under pseudonym of Marie Kelvedon.
17 Jun 1997 Skin screened at 11.35pm on Channel 4.
Oct 1997 Directs BŸchner's Woyzeck at the Gate Theatre, London.
30 Apr 1998 Cleansed first performed at the Royal Court Theatre Downstairs at the Duke of York's, St Martin's Lane, London. Kane plays the role of Grace for the last three performances when actress Suzan Sylvester injures her back.
May 1998 Supported by the British Council, Kane works with Dutch writers in Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
June 1998 Visits the Varna Festival in Bulgaria, with the Royal Court's International Play Development Programme, and helps set up a writers' group in Sofia.
July-Aug 1998 Leads playwriting workshop at the Royal Court's International Residency in London.
4 Aug 1998 Crave first previewed at the Chelsea Centre, London.
13 Aug 1998 Crave first performed at the Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh.
8 Sep 1998 Crave transfers to the Royal Court Theatre Upstairs at the Ambassadors Theatre, London. When the play tours to Maastricht, Kane plays the role of C for five performances.
Nov 1998 Works with Andalusian writers in Seville, Spain, part of the Royal Court International Play Development Programme. Awarded the 1998 Arts Foundation Fellowship for Playwriting.
20 Feb 1999 Commits suicide while in King's College Hospital, London.
18 Apr 1999 Commemorative event at the Royal Court Theatre, St Martin's Lane.
23 Jun 2000 4.48 Psychosis first performed publicly at the refurbished Royal Court Theatre Upstairs, Sloane Square, London.
Kane: stage plays
Full-length stage play
Ian, a middle-aged journalist, takes twentysomething Cate, a family friend, to a Leeds hotel room and abuses her. Halfway through the 90-minute play, the Soldier arrives and subjects Ian to verbal threats and rape. Cate escapes. A mortar bomb crashes into room, the Soldier sucks out Ian's eyes and then commits suicide. Cate returns with a baby that's been given to her by victim of the war raging outside. It dies, and Ian tries to eat it. Now blind and hungry, Ian finally dies. Rain pours in on his head, which is poking out of the floorboards. Cate returns to this metaphoric hell with some food - Ian thanks her. Raw in style, horrific in content and experimental in form, Blasted received some of the most hostile reviews of the decade. Blinded by its explicit scenes of horror, most critics failed to see that what was really disturbing was the play's radical structure, in which a first half set in Leeds hotel suddenly explodes into a war zone reminiscent of Bosnia. An example of experiential theatre, which aims to reproduce the dislocation of war by means of a dislocation of plot.
Cast: two men, one woman
Set: Anonymous hotel room
Performed: workshop production, Birmingham university, July 1993; Royal Court Theatre Upstairs, January 1995; Royal Court Downstairs, April 2001
Phaedra's Love
Full-length stage play
Loosely based on Seneca, a modern-day version of the Phaedra story, with Hippolytus as a depressed narcissist. On his birthday, Phaedra, in the grip of irrational desire, performs fellatio on him. He rejects her, telling her that he's had sex with her daughter Strophe, and she hangs herself, leaving a note accusing Hippolytus of rape. Galvanised by the accusation, Hippolytus surrenders to the police, refuses a priest's offer of forgiveness, and demands to be punished. Theseus arrives, and watches as Hippolytus throws off his guards and leaps into the crowd, which tries to kill him. When Strophe, in disguise, tries to help her half-brother, Theseus rapes and kills her. Hippolytus has his genitals cut off and thrown on a fire. His last words are: 'If there could have been more moments like this.' With its explicit violence, Kane's version breaks with the classical convention of describing rather than showing atrocity, but also includes another inversion of the original, by not staging Phaedra's suicide. The play concentrates more on Hippolytus than on Phaedra, and radically rethinks his character. Instead of being virginal, Kane's Hippolytus is sexually experienced, even if he gets no pleasure from sex. In place of puritanical purity, he pursues honesty to the point of self-destruction.
Cast: four men, two women, plus crowd of ten
Set: palace rooms, prison cell, street
Performed: Gate Theatre, London, May 1996
Cleansed
Full-length stage play
Set in 'an institution designed to rid society of its undesirables', ironically called a university, the play explores the theme of love, testing its characters by subjecting them to horrendous atrocities. Grace searches for Graham, her brother, an addict who's been murdered by Tinker, a sadistic guard or doctor. Grace wears Graham's clothes, dances with his spirit, makes love to him, and finally - after having a penis transplant - becomes him. At the same time, Carl promises Rod eternal love, but betrays him; Rod, who lives for the moment, dies for love. And Robin, a disturbed 19-year-old, falls for Grace when she teaches him to read, while Tinker imposes Grace's identity onto that of an erotic dancer. At the end, Grace looks identical to Graham, Carl is dressed in Grace's clothes, and Tinker has his own 'Grace'. Intensity of desire has made identity fluid. The play balances the yearning for purification through love with the horrors of torture. The serial mutilation of Carl is symbolic: every time he uses a part of his body to express love, it is cut off. The need for love, symbolised by the incestuous attraction of Grace and Graham, is expressed by means of sunflowers and daffodils.
Cast: five men, two women
Set: university perimeter fence, college green, sanitorium, sports hall, showers, library and round room
Performed: Royal Court Theatre Downstairs, London, May 1998
Crave
Full-length stage play
A series of poetic exchanges in which four characters - A, B, C and M - talk about their needs and desires: more of a tone poem than a conventional play. With its echoes of the King James Bible, William Shakespeare, T S Eliot and Samuel Beckett, the text is dense and allusive and has no stage directions. Although their relationships with each other are fluid, each of the characters has a coherent personality. A describes himself as a paedophile, C is haunted by abuse, M wants to have a baby, and B is ready to be seduced. The play makes sense both as the fragmented exchanges between an older man (A) and a younger woman (B), and an older woman (M) and a younger man (B), and as one mind's competing internal voices. When each character speaks, they could be addressing one or more of the other characters. Originally staged with four actors sitting on swivel chairs as in a talk show, Crave can be interpreted as an account of two couples, as one mind's mental collapse or even as the overlapping feelings of four people. Likewise, the ending is ambiguous, and can be read as a final gasp of happiness before death, a moment of rage against the fading of the light, or the quiet drifting into unconsciousness.
Cast: two men, two women
Set: none specified
Performed: Paines Plough at Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh, August 1998; Royal Court Theatre Upstairs, London, September 1998; Royal Court Downstairs, May 2001
4.48 Psychosis
Full-length stage play
The title refers to 4.48am, the darkest hour before dawn, and the theme is suicidal despair and psychosis, a state in which the normal boundaries between waking life and dream life, between the self and others, collapse. Composed of monologues and dialogues whose content includes exchanges between patients and therapists, notes about grief, mental anguish and psychological distress, caustic accounts of the therapeutic use of drugs and diary entries. Each of the lines could be spoken by either a man or a woman. The effect is of a mind full of competing voices, a mix of poetic images, idiomatic snatches of conversation, satires on psychobabble and repetitive, quasi-liturgical rhythms. Conveys the experience of psychological crisis, when the barriers between reality and different forms of imagination disappear. Originally staged with three actors, Kane's most experimental play is the culmination of her quest to make form and content one. On the page, there are no characters, nor any indication of how many actors are required. The text is laid out following the conventions of a modernist poem, rather than those of a playtext.
Cast: none specified, but one man and two women in original production
Set: none specified
Performed: Royal Court Theatre Upstairs, London, June 2000; Royal Court Downstairs, May 2001
没有现场，只能从剧本中感受震撼了……
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