While Blasted and Cleansed and Crave have long been acknowledged for the radical theatrical masterpieces they are, 4. The vivid and raw nature of the text made it difficult for us to detach from it when not at rehearsals, let alone taking artistic liberties during its making,” says actor Shatarupa Bhattacharyya, who portrays a state of Sarah’s mind, in which she has already gone through a lot in life, and has now “accepted and made peace with the fact that death is her final destination”. According to Durga, the script may seem disjointed on the surface, but for her as an actor, it was important to tap into Sarah’s emotions and the pain that she was going through to be able to portray it on stage. The opera was awarded a Royal Philharmonic Society for Best Large Scale Composition 2017, a British Composer Award for Best Stage Work 2017, a UK Theatre Award for Best Opera 2016 and it was shortlisted for an Olivier Award for Best Opera in 2017 and a Southbank Award for Best Opera in 2017.

Sarah Kane burst on the London stage at the age of 24, in a media frenzy of scorn, derision and distaste for her work. It felt like we had a responsibility to give breath and life to this amazing thing that Sarah had created. Psychosis is a ‘choreopoem’ that follows the upheavals of a girl’s psyche, who really wanted to live but was never in love with life. The production starred Polish film actress Magdalena Cielecka and featured a number of other performers from TR Warszawa in supporting roles.Psychosis itself is coming up for two decades old; this month, an operatic adaptation by composer Philip Venables will open at the Royal Opera House, the first of its kind. At the time, the last thing I would have wanted to say is that it’s a suicide note – I knew it wasn’t just that, that was the point. deserves to be seen as the astonishing piece of theatre it is – as playful as it is confessional, simultaneously precise and improvisatory, roaring with life and wit and energy as it gazes unblinkingly at depression and death.

Echoing similar thoughts, Shatarupa says, “There were days when I would have to take a break after the rehearsals and probably engage in some mundane and mindless things just to take my attention off the script.Who knows it could also be self-love or her desire to find someone — a ray of hope that would serve as a purpose for living,” says Srinivas, adding, “Reading the play multiple times, once as part of Kahe Vidushak Foundation’s Natya Alochan, gave me a different perspective of the script. Being someone who himself has struggled with mental health issues in the past, reading Sara’s works made me feel like a miniature self navigating her mind. Everyone I spoke to remembers a moment at the very end of the performance, where after the play’s haunting final line, “please open the curtains”, Evans and McInnes opened a window in the roof of the theatre, allowing the June night to flood into the silence. Her plays continue to be translated and performed throughout the world today, with a growing awareness of this troubled playwright and her troubling brand of theater. Psychosis, commissioned by Royal Opera and written by British composer Philip Venables, was staged at the Lyric Hammersmith in 2016.

The plot demands a deeper analysis of what mental health issues are — what’s the right way to attend to people suffering from depression; how empathetic and compassionate one needs to be; and who decides on the extent of medication and institutional care,” Shatarupa elaborates. Psychosis is composed of twenty-four sections which have no specified setting, characters or stage directions. Philip Venables’ award-winning operatic adaptation of Kane’s play is the first ever permitted adaptation of any of her work. Mental health issues are still a stigma in our society, so telling such an account is bound to have repercussions. Much like her disturbed mind at the time of writing this play — jostling in her room to make drafts at wee hours, which is also precisely why the play is titled so — the script is disjointed, non-linear and clustered, making it very difficult for anyone to understand it in the first go.

Charles Spencer of the Telegraph said "it is impossible not to view it as a deeply personal howl of pain. It was crucial to Kane to show depression with all the accuracy she could summon, he adds: “Mental illness is so often sentimentalised, or portrayed as madness – I hate that word. played in front of an invited audience – family and friends, colleagues, and fellow playwrights, among them Harold Pinter and Joe Penhall.

The grotesquerie of Kane’s theater is not simply self-indulgent; it is meant, very directly, to shock the audience out of their comfort zone and into a more nightmarish reality. To me the heart of it is a love story – what does it mean to love, can we love, all those questions. Michael Billington of The Guardian newspaper asked, "How on earth do you award aesthetic points to a 75-minute suicide note? Some of Chicago’s most talented theater artists have brought their unique points of view to our stages as part of the Visiting Company Initiative.The creative team decided to invite groups of actors to read through the text, to plot out how many voices were needed, who might speak where. Indian director Arvind Gaur performed this play as a one-woman show with British actress Ruth Sheard in 2005. She was there to talk about her plays – Blasted, which had scandalised and horrified the critical establishment back in 1995, and her equally mould-breaking dramas Cleansed and Crave, both of which had opened earlier that year. Photograph: Jane Bown/The Observer View image in fullscreen Her writing refuses to be categorised … Sarah Kane in 1998.