Behind the troubled mind

By MELANYA BURROWS

There is a school of thought that believes it is better not to mention suicide, that reporting, discussing or spotlighting it may provoke an epidemic.

So what then, to make of a play not only about suicide but by a playwright who took her own life shortly after its completion.

4.48 Psychosis, the title referring to the time of the morning supposedly most common for people to kill themselves, is written by Sarah Kane, former enfant terrible of the British theatre scene, who died in 1999 at the age of 28.

The play stars Peta Rutter, Anna Hewlett and Abigail Greenwood.

To see 4.48 Psychosis purely in terms of the writer's death is to do the playwright a disservice, Rutter says. "The play is always going to be informed by the fact that she killed herself, but to say that is its main impact is to discredit her. She is an amazing playwright. 4.48 Psychosis was two years in the writing. She was reading widely on the subject in that time and the play works on a lot of other levels as well. Her work is very layered, and we experimented a lot to get to the essence of it.

"This play has been performed all over the world," Rutter says. "Kane's fan-base is phenomenal. People connect to her work. On her website people vote for their favourite of her plays, and list their favourite parts of her plays."

On the tribute website, 4.48 Psychosis is ranked first by fans, as Kane's best work. Another favourite of Kane's online fans, Blasted, enjoyed a sellout season at the SiLo last year.

The printed script of 4.48 Psychosis is unlike most other theatre scripts. The lines are not attributed to specific characters, and the number and gender of characters has varied between productions. The dialogue looks almost like poetry, with words placed very particularly on the page, often in patterns.

Co-director Russell Pickering believes Kane's virtuosity with words is exactly what makes her plays so memorable.

"This play is so beautifully written and I am very interested in really good texts and really good writing," Pickering says. "But it also has a very strong structure. Kane was trying meld form and content.

"That's what the classical authors did. You can see it most easily in someone like Shakespeare with iambic pentameter - the metre breaks up as the characters' states of mind change."

Although the text is complex, Rutter and Pickering have confidence in the play's clarity and accessibility as a rare glimpse into the suicidal mind from the inside out.

"Kane is incredibly real and honest," Pickering says. "Edward Bond, the playwright, called it a treatise on living consciously. It is about engaging with your life, about the struggle to hold on to life, to find a way out of depression, not a willingness to die.

"One of the things that appeals to me is that it is not moralistic. It never claims to be a universal truth, just one person's experience. It's very raw and exposed but there are also very funny moments, a wry humour Kane called her gallows humour."

Pickering has a very personal reason for directing 4.48 Psychosis. He lost a brother to suicide.

"I would like the audience to consider their ideas about suicidal depression," he says. "Often in people's minds suicide is always totally wrong, not to be talked about at all. But that denies the person going through suicidal depression a voice.

"Suicide is never about one person. It involves friends, family, partners. And suicide is never simple, never black and white. It's about so much more than that."

On stage

* What: 4.48 Psychosis

* Where and when: SiLo Theatre, tonight to Oct 9