Mel Kenyon

Agent of Sarah Kane. She is also the agent of Mark Ravenhill and David Greig. The book Phaedra's Love is dedicated "grateful thanks to ...Mel Kenyon... without whose support I could not have written the play" and Crave has "thanks to... Mel Kenyon...".

"Did Kenyon worry that Kane's writing might harm her? "The only thing I ever wondered about was whether the connection made with the outer world was becoming less and less, and therefore she was having to dig deeper and deeper to create. There were times when I wanted her to embrace doing an adaptation or something, just so that she'd relieve herself of the need to go further inside." Quote from The Guardian 1 Jul 2000, by Simon Hattenstone.

Graham Saunders

Author of the first book devoted to the works of Sarah Kane, Love Me or Kill Me.  He is a lecturer in Theatre Studies at the University of the West of England.

Aleks Sierz

Theatre critic for the Tribune and champion of In-Yer-Face theatre. His book on the subject includes the first detailed analysis of Kane's work.

Michael Billington

Theatre critic for the Guardian. "The Guardian's Michael Billington knows that he is one of the critics that most upset Kane. She wrote to him and told him so. Well before she died, Billington had bravely and honestly recanted; what he once called puerile tosh, he had come to realise was a work of "moral seriousness". Today, Billington speaks with regret of his ebullient hatchet job: "I just regret we never had a chance for a rapprochement, or for me to say to her face what I'd said in the letter. 'I got your play wrong.' "  Quote from article by Simon Hattenstone, Guardian 1 Jul 2000.

Jack Tinker

1938-1996. A critic for the Daily Mail newspaper in Britain. He became famous for his attack on Blasted "...utterly disgusted...no bounds of decency... utterly without artistic merit...", which led to Kane naming one of the characters in Cleansed after him. Tinker says "if you work for a paper which sells up to 3 million copies, you have to make it exciting and readable".  Compare that with another quote by him "if you call something out of tune with the drift of theatre, if you're constantly putting down vibrant new talent, first of all your public will find out and then your editor will find out".  Quotes from Kalina Stefanova´s Who Keeps the Score on the London Stage.