Depression is a prominent theme in the arts. From works of fiction and verse to the bleakest images imaginable, creative types have long been struggling both to express anguish in their work and live with the pain inflicted by life itself.
University Theatre’s winter production, “4:48 Psychosis,” is the work of one such distressed mind. The title, depending on whom you ask, comes either from the time in the wee hours of the morning when the most suicides occur, or alternately from a tendency the late playwright Sarah Kane developed of waking out of depression at 4:48 a.m. in her later years. Psychosis deals with death, sanity and the reality in which we live, according to the play’s press release.
The play is frighteningly upfront, which is one of the reasons it is so captivating, according to Jennifer Thomas, the play’s director.
“Rarely do we openly speak about the chaos that resides in our mind,” Thomas said. “This play openly embraces the fear, anger and passion that exists within individuals during difficult times.”
“4:48 Psychosis” was the final work Kane completed before her suicide in 1999 and gives the audience a window into depressed and suicidal thought through what has been described as a “stream of consciousness” set of lines that lacks much of the structure generally expected of a script. There is no explicit number of roles, no character names, no stage directions, not a “scene” as such to be found.
The Theatre
has taken this open-ended form and adapted it to an all-female cast that explores the darkness of this play in seven performances at the Arena Theatre in 104 Villard.
According to the University Theatre, attendees should plan to arrive on time, as there will be no late seating, and rightly so; an exploration of the bleakness of the mind like “4:48 Psychosis” doesn’t exactly lend itself to being picked up in the middle.
“4:48 Psychosis” will open Wednesday, Feb. 6. at 8 p.m. Shows will continue for the next two weeks. Tickets cost $4 for University students and $6 for the general public. Students can purchase tickets two-for-one at both of the play’s Thursday night performances. Visit uoregon.edu/~theatre for more information.
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