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The books and CDs are available in shops and libraries.  You can also buy them from Amazon in America or Europe- click on the images.

 

 
Related works USA UK/Europe
The Savage God, a study of suicide by Al Alvarez
A book for people wanting to understand the minds of people who want to commit suicide
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The Suicidal Mind by Edwin S. Schneidman
Case studies on suicide.  Dave Evans (in Love me or Kill me) says "[Kane] was reading it and using large sections of it for 4.48 Psychosis.  You remember the lists?"
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Antonin Artaud, The Theatre and its Double
"I mentioned danger... Now it seems to me the best way of producing this concept of danger is by the objective unforeseen, not unforeseen in situations but in things, the sudden inopportune passing from a mental image to a true image"
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Artaudīs Theatre of Cruelty, Albert Bermel
"At best [Seneca] is felt to have been a link between ancient Greece and the Elizabethan and Jacobean playwrights...Artaud greatly admired him...It is true that Seneca dwells on the grisly aspects of the myths he chooses to tell. In Phaedra the messenger describes the death of Hippolytus in gruesome detail; another messenger pays inordinate attention to the rending of flesh and the flow of blood in Oedipus"

 
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Artaud for Beginners, Gabriella Stoppleman click for Amazon USA

 
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Arguments for a Theatre, Howard Barker click for Amazon USA

 
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Collected Plays Volume 1, Howard Barker
includes Victory which Kane acted in, playing Bradshaw
"I lived with a man whose no was in the middle of his heart, whose no kept him thin as a bone and stole the juices from him.  No is pain and yes is pleasure, no is man and yes is nature"

 
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A Lover's Discourse, Roland Barthes
Compare with Crave:
"The sentiment of an accumulation of amorous sufferings explodes in this cry: īThis can't go on...ī

...

Such is life
Falling over seven times
And getting up eight"

 

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Saved, Edward Bond
Bond's play was attacked by the press just as Blasted was.  "Clearly the stoning to death of a baby in a London park is a typical English understatement.  Compared to the īstrategicī bombing of cities it is a negligible atrocity" from the Author's Note.

 
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Pravda, David Hare and Howard Brenton click for Amazon USA

 
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The Empty Space, Peter Brook
One of the great theatre directors writing about the stage.
"Alienation works in many ways in many keys.  A normal stage action will appear real to us if it is convincing and so we are to take it, temporarily, as objective truth.  A girl, raped, walks on to a stage in tears- and if her acting touches us sufficiently we automatically accept the implied conclusion that she is a victim and an unfortunate one.  But suppose a clown were to follow her, mimicking her tears, and suppose by his talent he makes us laugh.  His mockery destroys our first response.  Then where do our sympathies go?"

 
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Woyzeck, Georg Buchner
Kane directed Woyzeck as a student.  The unfinished play has loosely fitting scenes similar at times to Kane.
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Among the Thugs, Bill Buford
Bufordīs account of English football violence was a source for Blasted:
"In the fight that ensued, Harry wrestled one of the policemen to the ground, lifted him up by the chest an then head-butted him- inflicting a hair-line crack across the forehead... he grabbed the policeman by his ears, lifted his head up to his own face and sucked on one of the policeman's eyes, lifting it out of the socket until he felt it pop behind his teeth.  Then he bit it off"

and

"It is easy to dismiss an incident of crowd violence in Yugoslavia; it is an unstable state; it is not ours"

 

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Mojo, Jez Butterworth
A contemporary of Kane: "Sequin after sequin after sequin.  Sequins on the walls.  Sequins on the ceiling.  Sequins round the bar/ Looks like Little Richard walked in and exploded"


 
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The Myth of Sisyphus, Albert Camus
Compare with the staging of Crave:
"If it were essential on the stage to love as people really love, to employ that irreplaceable voice of the heart, to look as people contemplate in life, our speech would be in code.  But here silences must make themselves heard.  Love speaks up louder and immobility itself becomes spectacular"
Translated by Justin O'Brien

 
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The Bear, Chekhov
Kane directed the play as a student
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Far Away, Caryl Churchill
Far Away shows the influence of Sarah Kane
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Top Girls, Caryl Churchill
"Have you ever felt like that?  Nothing will ever happen again.  I am dead already"
  click for Amazon UK

 
Attempts on Her Life, Martin Crimp
Like 4.48 Psychosis the play leaves the number of actors, or who speaks which lines, open.  Written a couple of years before 4.48.
"What it's not- and this is perhaps how it differs from those previous attempts- what it's not is a cry for help... No-one could have helped her... certainly none of her so-called friends"

 
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The Waste Land, T.S. Eliot (US edition costs $1.50 !!)
Kane quotes T.S. Eliot in her work, and her style shows his influence.
"He who was living is now dead
We who were living are now dying
With a little patience"

"Who is the third who walks always beside you
When I count, there are only you and I together
But when I look ahead up the white road
There is always another one walking beside you"

 

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Rainer Werner Fassbinder : Plays
"I walked into Vicky's office one day and found she was not there.  But I saw a copy of Fassbinderīs Pre-Paradise Sorry Now which I started to read.  While reading it I suddenly had the idea for Crave" (from Thielmans quoted in Sauders).

Fassbinder leaves space for the director just as Kane did.  Pre-Paradise Sorry Now tells of the Moors Murderers.  Fassbinder states that the scenes can be played in any order, and the cast can be between 5 and 30 performers.

"But you were friends/ you know that already/ when did you last see him"
"You must become a master.  A master over life and death"
(translation by Denis Calandra)


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Sorrows of Young Werther, Goethe
The famous story which legend has it inspired a wave of suicides.
"No priest attended him"
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Dirty Butterfly, Debbie Tucker Green
An original play, but influenced by Kane
  click for Amazon UK

 
Europe, David Greig   click for Amazon UK

 
The Three Birds, Joanna Laurens
Joanna Laurens has some of the same concerns as Sarah Kane.  The Three Birds draws upon the violence of Greek drama, and shares Kane's fascination with foreign languages.

"When the silence is/ spoken it isn't silence anymore/ My words are the pigeoncoughs/ of a fifteen year old/ A sign of the man who will come"

 

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Closer, Patrick Marber click for Amazon USA click for Amazon UK

 
Betrayal, Harold Pinter click for Amazon USA click for Amazon UK

 
Mountain Language and Ashes to Ashes, Harold Pinter
"...What strikes me now about Ashes to Ashes is how similar in theme it is to Sarah Kane's Blasted. She wanted to show that there is a clear continuum between a sexual assault in a Leeds hotel room and the rape camps in Bosnia. So she sent the horrors of Bosnia bursting into the location of that private English crime. Beginning with the recollection of a sado-masochistic ritual, Ashes to Ashes likewise attempts to remove the divide between its comfortable English setting and a world of fascism and systematised cruelty. Only in Pinter's play that world enters not in a violent irruption but through the dream-like "memories" and prophetic visions of the female protagonist, Rebecca, who is being interrogated by her badgering partner... about a former lover...." Paul Taylor, The Independent, 28 Jun 2001.

 
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Yard Gal, Rebecca Prichard click for Amazon USA click for Amazon UK

 
Shopping and F***ing, Mark Ravenhill
A contemporary of Kane.  "Crushed by a herd of wild elephants/ Only it wasn't an accident"
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Prozac Nation, Elizabeth Wurtrzel
"That's one thing I want to make clear about depression: It's got nothing at all to do with life.  In the course of life, there is sadness and pain and sorrow, all of which, in their right time and season, are normal- unpleasant, but normal.  Depressions is an altogether different zone because it involves a complete absence: absence of affect, absence of feeling, absence of response, absence of interest.  The pain you feel in the course of a major clinical depression is an attempt on nature's part (nature after all abhors a vacuum) to fill up the empty space.  But for all intents and purposes, the deeply depressed are just the walking, waking dead"

 
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Music
 
   
A Hard Days Night, CD by The Beatles
Includes Things We Said Today (as in Cleansed)
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Vespertine, CD by Bjork (quotes Crave)
"one of these days
soon very soon
love you till then
love you till then"

 
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Closer, CD by Joy Division
"Existence - well what does it matter?
I exist on the best terms I can
The past is now part of my future
The present is well out of hand
Heart and soul , one will burn
One will burn, one will burn"

 
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Substance, CD by Joy Division
"Get a taste in my mouth
As desperation takes hold
Yeah, something so good
just can't function no more
and love, love will tear us apart again"

 
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Let Love In, CD by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds
Compare with Cleansed:

"Despair and Deception, Love's ugly little twins
Came a-knocking on my door, I let them in
Darling, you're the punishment for all of my former sins...

Well I've been bound and gagged and I've been terrorized
And I've been castrated and I've been lobotomized
But never has my tormenter come in such a cunning disguise...

I let love in
I let love in
I let love in"

 

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Know Your Enemy, CD by Manic Street Preachers
"Not a subject not a subject am I
Sick and pale but strangely alive
Broken blood vessels line my cheeks
Reflections look bad and somehow unreal"

 
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Waiting for the Moon, CD by The Tindersticks
Includes 4.48 Psychosis using Kaneīs text.
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