Sugar Kane - a re imagining of Sarah Kane , her life and her work

[Iain Fisher]

and the press release:

"Tom Wilson, from Acomb, became friends with provocative playwright Sarah Kane after meeting her at the Edinburgh festival just months before her suicide in 1999 and was inspired to pen his own play in tribute to her.  Blasted was branded ā€œa disgusting feast of filthā€ by critics, before being revered after her death at age 28. And Tom expects the premier of semi-biographical Sugar Kane to be no less controversial than she was.

ā€œIā€™ll be offended if at least one person doesnā€™t walk out,ā€ says Tom, who has already written and produced three plays in York and London through his theatre company Naloxone Theatre Ensemble.  ā€œIt really is a hot potato. But I figured at some point someoneā€™s going to write something about her so I may as well go for it.ā€

The show tells a fantastical version of Kaneā€™s story through a cast including four versions of Kane, a theatre critic and a drama student.  ā€œSome bits are really dark and hard to take. But itā€™s very, very funny. Sarah Kane created a sort of mythology around herself and this play is an illustration of that. There are some very adult themes which Sarah explored in her own work and this play revisits them, so itā€™s not for the faint-hearted.  I wanted to create something that challenges peopleā€™s conceptions and I donā€™t think itā€™s what people might expect it to be. Itā€™s going to be like going into a cafe for an egg sandwich and being given a box of lego.ā€

Tom and his predominantly Yorkshire-sourced cast and crew are hoping to bring Sugar Kane to York after the festival.

ā€œThe play is actually about 120 minutes long but Iā€™ve had to cut it to 50 minutes for its slot at the Fringe. I felt like a butcher doing that and Iā€™d love to bring that unseen stuff to York.ā€

[rentonsewell]

https://www.edfringe.com/whats-on/theatre/sugar-kane

[rentonsewell]

ā€˜Sugar Kaneā€™.
The play is a part hallucinogenic retrospective, a part deconstructed requiem of Sarah Kane. Her life and her work and part mythology from what critics said and what writers have since created around her legacy. It celebrates who she was, what they said about her, what she left behind and how she saw her world. This is not be for the faint hearted. So maybe Sarah Kane was nothing like this, maybe this is how I wanted her to be. This could be then, the way I imagined her to appear. Part football hooligan part, Clockwork orange droogie. Sometimes butch, other times a female skin head, sometimes a promiscuous lesbian with a death wish, she carries a flick knife. ā€˜Iā€™m not violent but I do carry a blade just in caseā€™  she offers. These sequences are the Sarah Kane I wanted to believe existed not so long ago. A tough bitch who answered the critics back, who answered the audience back, she didnā€™t just break the fourth wall she pissed up the fourth wall of convention. This is a futuristic galvanized multi purpose SK. The show conveys another inner life, whereby Sarah has a chance to speak her mind and answer back what may have been leveled at her. A controversial dead dyke adamant about putting the record straight. This is a furious vitriolic poltergeist,  split into four parts. In fact five if you count the voice of her ā€˜Alter egoā€™. This is ā€˜Waiting for Godotā€™ meets ā€˜4.48ā€™ via MUFC agro.  This is the Sarah Kane I wish I could believe existed, instead of the frail troubled and ultimately desperately sad girl we lost not that long ago. And along with that fragile tender soul we lost what was probably the most exciting, explosive, creative and  landscape changing dramatist we have seen certainly since Joan Littlewood !
What i try to use as a yardstick for this show is that if Sarah was still alive and she came to see it, would she come out skipping saying ā€˜Wow man ! that was nearly as exciting as being at at United V Liverpool cup finalā€™ , and of course United score  a last minute winner!ā€™ 

God bless you Sugar Kane.