Cleaned

Cleansed is the third play of the British playwright Sarah Kane . She wrote it 1997 / 98 ; the premiere took place on April 30, 1998 under the original title "Cleansed" at the Royal Court Theater , London (director: James Macdonald), the German-language premiere on December 12, 1998 at the Hamburger Kammerspiele under the direction of Peter Zadek.

action

Dramatis personae are Graham, Carl, Rod, Grace, Robin, a nameless woman (stripper) - all inmates of a (psychiatric?) Institution in the building of a former school - and Tinker, the director of the facility. The piece is divided into 20 scenes.

Each of the inmates is in love with another, and Tinker uses his position of power to find out how far these people are willing to go in their love. He experiments with humiliation and mistreatment, including physical mutilation. Grace longs for her late brother Graham, Carl and Rod are lovers, Robin is in love with Grace, who teaches him to write, Tinker toying with the woman who dances for him in a booth and whom he at times thinks is Grace. In the course of the play Tinker mutilates Carl by cutting off his hands, tongue and feet, and he cuts Rod's throat. Grace becomes an image of her brother Graham when Tinker performs a sex reassignment on her. Robin is humiliated by Tinker for his love for Grace, while Grace is so much Graham that she becomes insensitive to those around her. Robin dies by hanging himself.

In the search for the answer to the question of what is the highest that a lover can honestly promise the other, the identities dissolve, so that in the end each figure carries a body part or at least the clothes of their lover on the body. As Grace and Graham merge into one, Carl dissolves. Kane himself did not want a naturalistic representation of these atrocities; she saw them as metaphors and wanted them to be portrayed on stage.

shape

As in Kane's other pieces is also Cleaned language expression or doubling of the sitter. The more the figures progress in their dismemberment, the increasingly fragmented they speak; they are barely able to express their needs and desires, but cannot realize them because of the manipulation to which they are subject.

Reactions

Cleaned was the most depressing and difficult piece of Sarah Kane's to date. The implementation of several stage directions is impossible and requires a radical approach in the staging , which is an enormous challenge.