Sarah Kane’s Anti-Oedipal Theatre

Postdramatic Theatre, by its very nature, is anti-Oedipal. It resists the restrictive codes of the existing theatrical tradition concerning stage and audience in oedipal axis. it aims to cleanse theatre from the unhealthy, poisonous inscription on the theatrical body so that theatre can be inclusive rather than exclusive, welcoming new experimental dramatic forms. Although many playwrights, starting with Beckett, Artaud, Osborne, may perhaps fall in this category, who could have thought Sarah Kane, labelled as an underrated, naïve young dramatist, could be by far its most extreme representative? Despite her young age, she systematically and strategically de-territorializes the stage and society, deeply sicked by the ossified principles of the oedipal institutions, from her earliest play, Blasted to the last one, 4.48 Psychosis. Kane, like a clinician, diagnoses the problems which neuroticize the English stage. Blasting the blockage which prevents the free flow of desiring production in both stage and social body, Kane celebrates an anti-oedipal, psychotic stage in her plays. Offering an alternative reading of Sarah Kane’s plays from Deleuze and Guattari’s anti-oedipal perspective, this book invites readers to re-interpret the role of Kane and her drama.