4.48 Psychosis

Sarah Kane’s 4.48 Psychosis is one of the key plays in the generation of Britain’s “in-yer-face” drama. The texts of Sarah Kane (1971 - 1999) employed shock, pain and the evocation of a sense of disgust and discomfort in the spectator in order to break down the ever-resistant fourth wall separating audiences from what happens on stage. 

Actress of various ages are cast in this production. They form a choir of inner voices that run the gamut of intonations from irony to hysteria, from malaise or depression to lyricism, sarcasm, farce and grotesque. 
Joining director Alexander Zeldovich in an exploration of the limits of female experience are the designers from the AES+F group. Their input makes them full-fledged co-creators of this show.

AES+F’s video material (animated 3D graphics) runs parallel to the text, occasionally matching it in an associative way, occasionally losing touch entirely in a surrealistic way. The poetics of the video content, sometimes fairy-tale like, sometimes horror-like, is filled with images of the archetypal female body - blood, milk, black snow, psychedelic colors and insects.

“This production is a dance macabre, a dance of death, a ritual and a grotesque,” says director Alexander Zeldovich. “The tragic is always the slash where destiny is the numerator, the individual is the denominator, and the remainder of each depends on their faith.”

In Russian with English subtitles.