Sarah Kane
Sarah Kane
Sarah Kanewas an English playwright. Her plays deal with themes of redemptive love, sexual desire, pain, torture — both physical and psychological — and death. They are characterised by a poetic intensity, pared-down language, exploration of theatrical form and, in her earlier work, the use of extreme and violent stage action. Kane herself, as well as scholars of her work, such as Graham Saunders, identify some of her inspirations as expressionist theatre and Jacobean tragedy. The critic Aleks Sierz has...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionPlaywright
Date of Birth3 February 1971
I'm simply trying to tell the truth about human behaviour as I see it.
I hate the idea of theatre just being an evening pastime. It should be emotionally and intellectually demanding. I love football. The level of analysis that you listen to on the terraces is astonishing. If people did that in the theatre... but they don't. They expect to sit back and not participate.
No boy is worth crying over, and the one who is won't make you cry.
Once you have perceived that life is very cruel, the only response is to live with as much humanity, humour and freedom as you can.
the chicken's still dancing the chicken won't stop
You’ll be all right. You’re strong. I know you’ll be okay because I like you and you can’t like someone who doesn’t like themself. The people I fear for are the ones who I don’t like because they hate themselves so much they won’t let anyone else like them either. But I do like you. I’ll miss you. And I know you’ll be okay.
If you died it would be like my bones had been removed. No one would know why, but I would collapse.
Only love can save me and love has destroyed me.
She's talking about herself in the third person because the idea of being who she is, of acknowledging that she is herself, is more than her pride can take.
I don’t have music, Christ I wish I had music but all I have is words.
Of course I loved you, you saved my life. I wish you hadn’t I wish you hadn’t I wish you’d left me alone.
Your hair is an act of God.
Here I am and there is my body dancing on glass.
I feel like I’m eighty years old. I’m tired of life and my mind wants to die.