4.48 Psychosis: Play Analysis

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Sarah Kane’s play 4.48 Psychosis is about a person who is dealing with depression. The scenes in the play depict different moments that deal with depression, but they do not necessarily follow a specific order and they are not necessarily related to each other. Some of the scenes include two characters talking about how one of the characters has cut his or her wrist, a person who expresses romantic attachment for his or her psychiatrist, and a person expressing suicidal thoughts. If I were to name the structure of this play, I would say that it was episodic. Each of the scenes could be performed alone or in a different order. If a scene were to be taken out, it would not affect the other scenes. However, each of these scenes work together in order to tell a story about depression. This is somewhat similar to how Gao XingJian’s The Other Shore and Danny Hoch’s Jails, Hospitals and Hip Hop were structured. Each of these three plays are significantly different, but they follow an episodic format. These three plays feature scenes that could easily be…show more content…
Not only is the play structured in an episodic format, but it also has no specific character names. The original production had three actors, but the script does not provide any character names or descriptions. A director could assign the dialogue however he or she wanted to since the script does not specify when a certain person should be speaking. When I read the play, I pictured thee different actors since the original production also had three actors. As I read I played around with the different scenes in my head. Sometimes I would picture one character talking on their own throughout the entire scene and sometimes I would picture different actors interrupting each other. I imagine that anyone that would attempt to produce this play would be able to play and experiment with the scenes as

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