Psychosis 4.48 (Sarah Kane) - (2014)
Four women. Three actresses and one musician who takes part with live music in the performance. One camera that penetrates into a fragmented world. A delusional monologue. A play – “farewell note” a moment before suicide. An author who asserts a place alongside the classics.
Direction - translation - camera - space design: Angela Brouskou
Music - Sound design: Nalyssa Green
Starring: Angela Brouskou, Parthenopi Bouzouri, Constantina Angelopoulou, Nalyssa Green
Psychosis 4.48 – Critics
“Angela Brouskou directed the most literal and fascinating Sarah Kane that Greek scene has seen from a Greek director. Her approach in Sarah Kane’s last play was the most “insightful” and thrilling direction of explosive and at the same time perishable and fragile dramaturgy of the dramatist, that the Greek audience has seen.”
- Ioanna Kleftogianni
http://www.clickatlife.gr/theatro/story/28491
She followed Kane’s words with faith and caution, using improvised lighting that fits the text a lot- because it recalls the harsh, «inartistic” way that clarity was succeeding darkness into Kane’s mind. The manual use of the cameras that portray the author's two faces (Parthenopi Bouzouri and Konstantina Angelopoulou) works on the opposite side of fashionable, high-tech stage lust and highlights the suffering of the Ego that is divided between the understanding of things to the absolute degree and Of the psycho-social collapse, as long as the hope of healing is steadily removed. The contribution of Nalyssa Green’s music is essential because it illuminates and balances with her simple lyricism the darkness of the play. As indeed Parthenopi Bouzouri’s rendition was exceptional – a true soul deposit. Heartbreaking and carrying a truth that you do not often meet on stage.”
- Matina Kaltaki
http://www.lifo.gr/mag/columns/6173
“Angela Brouskou who also signs the translation, the design of the room and handles the camera, has transfuse in an exemplary way the essence of the work in a performance - I think it is her best performance or at least the most complete one - it shows rough and raw but definitely has a tremendous work on detail, a work that (very well) is not overt. The conclusion: A suffocating representation of a desperate work that demands the viewer's mental strength but eventually compensates him.”
- Yiorgos Sarrigianis
http://totetartokoudouni.blogspot.gr/2014/02/blog-post_9.html?spref=fb
“4.48 Psychosis. A performance – masterpiece.
When I saw the performance I was stunned. I saw the most perfect performance of Angela Brouskou but also the revelation of Parthenopi Bouzouri. A thrilling actress who from the moment she appears, she sweeps everything: feelings and emotions”
- Nikos Mouratidis
http://www.nikosonline.gr/4-48-ψύχωση-μια-παράσταση-αριστούργημα/
Interview at http://www.postmodern.gr – April 15, 2017
“Angela Brouskou announces "4.48 Psychosis" and calls on an ongoing artistic movement”
Interview with Dimitris Kalantzis
Before sunrise, at 4.48, a large number of suicides are committed. It is the moment of extreme spiritual clarity when the mind weighs the burden of existence and makes the decision to continue the struggle or to expedite the inevitable end.
"4.48 Psychosis" is the last theatrical play by Sarah Cain, a masterly "suicide note" that in Greece we were fortunate to see a few years ago in an immersive performance by Angela Brouskou and Theatro Domatiou.
On the occasion of the new staging of the play for just eight performances at "Thissio - An Arts Theater" I asked the great director to have a discussion about the performance, about our collective psychosis during the years of the crisis, but also about the A "manifesto" recently published under the title of Under Construction, which invites artists to act jointly towards a landscape of cannibalism that goes to consolidate culture and art.
Mrs. Brouskou, you have a long array of artistic successes that have met the acceptance of the audience, but "4.48 Psychosis" was the performance that was glorified from audience and critics.
It was a performance that was not advertised at all, a “hand – made” production from Theatro Domatiou. It was spread from mouth to mouth and from 2013, when it was first presented, we were constantly meeting people who ask us if we will play it again. So we decided to re-run a small cycle of performances in Athens and then we can go to Cyprus and Thessaloniki.
The success of the performance was that it gave an ingenious theatrical substance to Sarah Kane's speech,who, for that play, had given no directional direction.
In our performance, ideas, thoughts and personal experiences met in a subcutaneous way. A love relationship was created. We felt no fear about the play. We made it ours.
But it is a theatrical play very heavy, depressing ...
I find the play very bright and bright even though it is occurred in a darkness of soul. Do you want to see it as a farewell note? Manifesto? A protest? A scream? However, it is not a delusion that no one understands. It's definitely not a classic work with "neat" in strictly framed characters. It's more people's voices. I find the work very bright and bright even though it is played in a darkness of soul. Want to see it as a farewell note? Manifesto? A protest? A scream; However, it is not a delusion that no one understands. It's definitely not a classic work with "neat" in strictly framed characters. It’s more the voices of a person. One voice but also many voices of the same person. It is man and his relationship to culture. It is love, the desperate love. How much we want to love and be loved. The play is full of emotion. An emotion that we manage with delicacy and discretion. The mirrors, the camera, the person that speaks, the listener, the music by Nalyssa Green who has written original songs, has been singing some of Sarah Kane's lyrics because the work is deeply poetic.
The discovery of vanity is not crushing?
As Sara Kane says, when man makes contact with mortality, when he realizes that he is perishable, they he will grow old and die, he must find ways of reconciliation. He is going to have children or to create works so that it's not all in vain. Yes, we are born with an expiration date, but if you stick this in your mind, you will not be able to taste life. I believe creation is not a vain thing.
Sarah Kane wrote four stunning theatrical plays, was recognized as an amazing talent in her era but chose suicide ...
In the play she says she wants to live, she wants to create, she wants the light and she does not want the darkness. She treats man's relationship with life with extreme clarity in her plays and stands in the violence, the violence of mankind. Violence has to come to the surface and we have to deal with it. We see today the killing of children by chemical weapons, we see horror images ... We kill each other for a "good purpose," by refreshing the violence. It is psychosis of humanity. Sarah Kane had the courage to write about all that but how long to endure? When you come into deep contact with things, your limits are tested.
Is it a matter of empathy?
Anyone who has empathy is very sensitive and very vulnerable. He is wounded because he cannot pass through all the violence around him. He can not say "I close my eyes, I cannot bear to see more". And if you get in touch with everything, you become insane.
Are the boundaries between logic and psychosis in many cases inconspicuous?
We will have a night at the theater where psychiatrists and psychoanalysts will come to discuss this after the show. Finally who is the sick? The one who talks or the one who closes his ears and he pretends that he doesn’t listen and doesn’t see?
If Sara Kane was still alive, do you think that her work would have lost some of his truth? I mean, if Karyotakis wrote poems up to his old age or if Ian Curtis still believed that everything was a dead-end, would not the "truth" of their works be undermined?
Life and work are really connected but what a creator does in his life can not affect the independent truth of a work. If the work carries a lot of clout and is the result of a coherent and meaningful thought, then it is delivered to the collective culture without the accompaniment of the creator's "curriculum vitae". But it is true that with art you are in danger. When you write you are in danger, when you perform you're in danger ...
What is the risk of an artist?
You come in contact with things that push you inside. You're entering areas of madness. You are dealing with this dark source that raises life and death. Some may and may take distance from the source, such as doctors who will dissect a patient. But others are deeply affiliated and it’s hard for them to endure. The limits of madness and creativity meet and the artist is called upon to manage them. You can easily slip away, identify with the "truth" of the play and lose your personal balance. Art always wants you to open wounds and not trying to close them. The artist / creator does not struggle for oblivion but to keep the wounds open so that others can see them. Sarah Kane opens a hat on her work and through this you can see the abyss.
Our country is also sinking in an abyss the last 7-8 years of the economic crisis that has become a crisis of values and trust. How does a creator work in such a framework?
Creation always invigorates and revives you but I'm really tired of repetition. The last 30 years I hear that there is no money for art. It is like art has always been in crisis because there was a state that did not support culture. Of course, it's getting even harder now because the audience has no money to go to theater, buy a book or go to an exhibition. In theater, it has become a rule that you will not be paid for the rehearsals, you have no salary, but you will get rates from the tickets. So cannibalism and man-eating starts... We have come to the point where we ask for a patron, "pimp", to do a job, like whores, who cannot start their own "home" without protection. I’m sorry speaking with these terms, but this is the harsh reality. I do not generalize, but the tendency is to need a patron to work.
How could the trend reverse?
One solution is collectivity. Το find a way to meet some people and help each other.
You took an initiative in this direction with a text / manifesto, Under Construction.
The whole situation was oppressing me for a long time and I felt the need to talk, make a call to meet people who feel the same. We made a text and a website, Under Construction, on how can we, artists, exist in a different way, how we can re-establish ourselves, how we can have dialogue and not compete in a Darwinian universe.
You write in the manifesto harsh truths about performances that gain substance from tickets and sold out ...
I think we have lost our orientation. We are not interested in what is happening on stage but we are interested in what is happening in the square. I do not know if you've noticed that now, the most pictures that are shown are from the performance and its actors, but from the full square. They photograph the audience instead of photographing the artists. I hear about performances that before they even start, they declare sold out. It may rarely be true, but it is not common to have such a waiting for a performance that has not started, unless the waiting has been artificially created through an extensive promotional network. But I will go to the bottom. A show that is not full every day means that it has not any artistic value? I still see that only specific people and actors are being promoted by electronic media.
Do you think this is the result of a transaction or the convenience of journalists not looking for artists beyond what they already know?
I can not rule out anything, what I find is that become "cliques", "cartels" which constantly project the same people to a degree of hysteria. All those who do not participate in this system are excluded; young and senior artists who have something new to testify art.
What you say has great importance because you are a creator that has been recognized by both the audience and critics.
The truth is that I do not know what an "artistic interest" means for the media. I also do not believe that everyone can write reviews when they do not have the tools, the education to do it. The audience is headed. It chooses to go somewhere that reads something related, anything "something", without knowing what it really is going to see, and whether what it sees has the premise for it to like it.
How the state could help?
He has a great responsibility for what's going on. We are all in a neo-liberal market and we are trying to survive as survivors. We have sadly become a Reality.
With strategies, tactics and “finges”?
Unfortunately, I see this even more strongly. Some moves are obvious and some are made in a very “artistic” way.
You write in Under Construction about the guidance of the audience with the "stars", this assessment made by some sites with the "poll" of the audience.
I believe that audience’s critics are not authentic. The actors of a performance themselves write in these reviews, reviewing their own work and at the same time writing ugly, for actors of other performances. In this context, everyone is leveled, everyone is equated and in the end those who have a better PR network dominate.
But let's go back to the state. What could be done?
The state could find money and help teams and artists. It could make choices that do not cost a lot of money, but they have great value. There are so many derelict places in Athens. They could become living cells of culture. Why can not the Municipality of Athens be able to finance a cultural program? Also in our relations with abroad. It can not be possible for a group to travel abroad for 30 years, as we bring large groups of claims and high costs to Greece. Why networks are not created? Why we don’t have co-productions? All foreigners are co-producing with 15 theaters. We only import foreign products and do not export any of ours. So there is something wrong with those who hold positions of responsibility in culture.
You teach, you get in touch with young people who want to become actors. What do you say?
I discourage them. Art is a very difficult task to learn in its essence. And it takes years. You see starting groups of youngsters, in which one makes the director, the others do the actors and alternately. New people with aspirations end up becoming consumables for the media theatre owners. They burn like fireworks.
How optimistic are you that Under Construction can work and bring artists close?
The initiative started from my pessimism about what I was seeing around me. The fact that many people who feel the same responded made me optimistic. We will see how it’ll go on. It will surely take time to mature. And we will have to stop thinking passively that we cannot change anything...
Link of the interview in Greek: http://www.postmodern.gr/h-antzela-brouskou-anevazi-4-48-psychosi-ke-kali-se-ena-kallitechniko-kinima-under-construction/
