'Love Me or Kill Me': Sarah Kane and the Theatre of Extremes

Description

Her play, "Blasted", brought Sarah Kane to the theatre pages of the broadsheets, the front pages of the tabloids, and to the notice of the nation. Based on conversations with directors, actors and others who knew her, this book studies the British post-war dramatist, covering all Kane's major plays and productions, as well as hitherto unpublished material and reviews. It also looks at her continuing influence after her tragic early death. Locating the main dramatic sources and features of her work as well as centralizing her place within the "new wave" of emergent British dramatists in the 1990s, Graham Saunders provides an introduction for those familiar and unfamiliar with her work.

Graham Saunders is a lecturer in Theatre Studies at Coventry University

'This is a pioneering book that will have a marked influence of all subsequent Sarah Kane studies. Graham Saunders has spoken to directors, actors and others who worked with her and knew her intimately. You can hear the rustle of draft scripts, feet in rehearsal rooms, the coffee cups of students discussing late into the night. It is astonishing to read such intimate accounts of a woman who became a public icon in her short life... This is not a sycophantic book, its judgements are balanced - and that makes us realise all the more what we have lost. It was one little death, but theatre will need a crowd of brilliant writers to take her place - if even then.' Edward Bond