BLASTED: THE LIFE AND DEATH OF SARAH KANE

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In this half-hour documentary, I explore the work of Sarah Kane from Blasted to her final, posthumous performance text 4.48 Psychosis. It features interviews with her agent and friend Mel Kenyon, director James Macdonald, writer Mark Ravenhill, and her brother Simon Kane. The piece talks about her plays, to some extent her life, and the legacy of her work. The documentary was broadcast to mark the tenth anniversary of her death but part of the work of the documentary is to get beyond her death, to some extent, hoping to find a way of thinking about her work away from the shadow of her suicide. Particularly striking contributions included Mel Kenyon's conviction that the turn from the brutality of Cleansed to the lyricism of Crave, which was almost universally applauded by the critics, was in fact a retreat into a more acceptable 'feminine' mode of writing.

It was directed and produced by Nicola Swords and you can listen to it below.