4.48 psychosis
sarah kane’s final enigmatic play explores the interior of a clinically depressed protagonist. reading more like poetry than a play, kane cycles through straight scenes, medical records, and lyricism to bring us into the world of someone estranged from the rest of the world in search of some essential truth. our production cast three actors as the lead and set them within the mental image of their home to illustrate the continuum of experience, the inability to determine boundaries between the self and the world, characteristic of psychosis.
company
Director: Vanessa Andrick
Assistant Director: Erin Caparelli
Stage Manager: Piper Huntley
Assistant Stage Manager: Cameron Knauf
Scenic Designer: austin Mitchell
Associate Scenic Designer: Arshaya Nagavekar
Lighting Designer: Sam Leroy
Assistant Lighting Designer: Laliya Zulpykhar
Sound Designers: Hal Sufrin and Sam Vides
Composer: Richie Nickel
Props Manager: Julia Todd
Costume Designer: Sasha Oman
Producers: Casey Hilton, Hattie Ugoretz, Hailey Armentrout, Paige Speaker, and Ashton Mahadeo
Technical Director: Sophia Pollachi
Assistant Technical Director: Ally Fox
Performed by Carolina Ayala, Halia Lindauer, and Jackson Shemwell
show photographers: Peter Zhu and Asha Mody
director’s note
Welcome to our production of Sarah Kane’s 4.48 Psychosis.
Exactly a year ago, I decided I wanted to direct this play. Something about it grabbed me and never let me go. I still can’t claim to understand the entirety of Kane’s writing, but through the collaboration of the 4.48 Village, I do believe we are beginning to scratch at the surface and getting a glimpse of what lies underneath.The content of 4.48 Psychosis, and Kane’s death, cast a long shadow over the play that influences how we engage with it. However, it is a play, a score for performance, and we get
nowhere by ignoring its dramatic power in favor of an autobiographical reading. There are undeniably personal elements in the play, but please resist this impulse. I encourage you to look beyond what’s written on the door and step into the room: “This is the very threshold of revelation.”My background in theatre and public health drew me to 4.48 Psychosis. I believe in the ability of psychiatric treatment to help people – I have benefited greatly from care myself – but there is no denying that it is not a perfect system, that treatment doesn’t work for everyone, and that the treatment itself might hurt patients in the worst cases. We further marginalize people whose illness resists remedy by ignoring the existence of these problems. We should try to understand how medicine’s objectification of the body into a list of symptoms, making people into their sickness, is felt by patients. We have been invited into this experience and must confront some uncomfortable truths.
The hope in bringing this play to our campus would that it would be an opportunity to follow Sarah Kane to new frontiers. The challenges presented in elevating this text to performance presented infinite opportunities for creative expansion and new experiences, and an unfamiliar way for audiences to engage with theatre. If the play elicits some kind of response, any response, from you, we will have done something great.
Sarah Kane’s work deserves to be witnessed. She is one of the most brilliant, provocative playwrights to ever do it. The way she pushed the theatrical form, bringing the content of her plays into their structure, still stands out. 27 years on from her death, and she continues to challenge us. I hope that this play will introduce more people to her work and inspire exploration of different forms of theatre at USC.
Thank you, and enjoy the show.
