Crave: Artistic Director Daniel Evans on Sarah Kane

Artistic Director Daniel Evans on Sarah Kane I happened to be working at the RSC in 1995 when Sarah Kane’s first play Blasted exploded onto London’s theatrical landscape and changed it irrevocably. So, when I was sent the script of her latest play, Cleansed, in the winter of 1997, I knew immediately I wanted nothing more than to be in it.

I treasure the moments – despite our oh-too-cold rehearsal room in South London, huddled around portable red heaters – where Sarah would pointblank refuse to reveal to the actors the meaning of any line, favouring instead to allow us to discover it for ourselves. She got excited one afternoon and wanted to make a rare change to the text: a comma was to become a full stop. And sure enough, the meaning completely changed.

In Crave, her talent as a poet of the theatre shone through. No conventional character names and no obviously linear narrative. The play’s meaning is a gradual revelation and its form and musicality an essential component of that unfolding. And here again is the constant refrain in Sarah’s work: the longing for a deep connection with another person. Given our enforced isolation and atomisation of late, I’m curious to discover what the play might reveal about our human need for contact.

By the time we were back at the Royal Court rehearsing Sarah’s next play 4.48 Psychosis, she had died. Aged 27. I treasure many memories of that production and most of all the very first preview in the Theatre Upstairs. No one applauded – at least not for a while. We bowed in silence. For Sarah, the rest was silence. But, thankfully, her compact and powerful body of work lives on and the world catches up with it.