Being someone who himself has struggled with mental health issues in the past, reading Sara’s works made me feel like a miniature self navigating her mind. The controversy began over Blasted, Kane’s first play presented at London’s Royal Court Theatre in 1995. Narrating stories of depression and anxiety on stage can be difficult, especially if the storyline sounds more like a ‘suicide note’ than the script of a play.

But Sarah did kill herself, and she was writing a play about what it feels like to be suicidally depressed. We were very worried about creating the right context,” remembers Ian Rickson, then artistic director.Philip Venables’ award-winning operatic adaptation of Kane’s play is the first ever permitted adaptation of any of her work. Only a handful of people had been allowed access to the script; neither Macdonald or Simon Kane were willing to talk to the press. Psychosis until now – “I’ve never been the greatest fan of the press,” he says dryly when we meet for coffee – but has pondered the play long and hard.

In February 1999, she killed herself at King’s College hospital, south London, three days after a previous suicide attempt. There’d been these tabloid frenzies over her early plays, and we wanted this play to be received as a play. She points to Kane’s formal experimentalism, the startling urgency and precision of her language, the way the play itself invites the audience to experience a form of psychosis, in which reality dissolves even as it appears. In the midst of that critical firestorm, several noted British playwrights quickly came to Kane’s defense, including Caryl Churchill ( Cloud Nine), Harold Pinter ( Betrayal) and Edward Bond ( Saved). Charles Spencer of the Telegraph said "it is impossible not to view it as a deeply personal howl of pain.Elsewhere, a single voice pulsates with anxiety, and another records sardonic clinical notes: “Lofepramine and Citalopram discontinued after patient got pissed off with side effects and lack of obvious improvement. Psychosis at The Theatre Les Bouffes Du Nord in Paris (2005), Belarus Free Theatre in Minsk (2005), KUFER theatre in Croatia (2005. The plot demands a deeper analysis of what mental health issues are — what’s the right way to attend to people suffering from depression; how empathetic and compassionate one needs to be; and who decides on the extent of medication and institutional care,” Shatarupa elaborates. According to Kane's friend and fellow-playwright David Greig, the title of the play derives from the time, 4:48 a. So, the name comes from that idea, that you can’t pin a person down to a certain idea, to a way of thinking, because human beings are just a lot more complicated than that.

Obviously, it isn’t an easy watch for the audience either, as there is a constant sense of distress and discomfort among all. Psychosis heralds a break with all theatrical conventions–the play reads more like a poem, without character distinctions or stage directions –and even presents much of Kane’s personal medical history–her struggle with antidepressants, suicidal tendencies and her philosophical wrestling with the idea of mortality. End of the day, theatre is a form of art and its aesthetics are crucial to keeping the audience’s attention. Designer Jeremy Herbert created a setting that was as stark as the text, a single large mirror suspended at a 45-degree angle over a plain white floor – visually elegant, but also a metaphor for the script’s prism of multiplying personalities.played in front of an invited audience – family and friends, colleagues, and fellow playwrights, among them Harold Pinter and Joe Penhall. A sequence of elliptical fragments, fractured and emotionally lacerating, it apparently portrayed a mind in the throes of breakdown, raging against doctors who do not (or will not) understand. A great deal of ink has been spilled on Kane’s too-short life and death, and not nearly enough on the story of the play itself. Ionesco wrote this book, Notes and Counternotes, which is a compilation of essays and interviews and various speeches that he made throughout life, all about theater. Echoing similar thoughts, Shatarupa says, “There were days when I would have to take a break after the rehearsals and probably engage in some mundane and mindless things just to take my attention off the script.

Psychosis premiered one month after her suicide, the connection between the playwright and her work was apparent to all. The other two stages — “realising that her depression is more serious than what it looks like” and “worried about figuring out how to get through it” — are essayed by actors Durga Venkatesan and Yeshaswini Channaiah respectively.

The opera was first presented in 2016 by the Royal Opera in London, in a production by Ted Huffman, and has subsequently seen productions in London, New York City, Strasbourg and Dresden.