TR Warszawa’s production
Maybe it's because of my usual sobriety or my lack of imagination, Sarah Kane had never shocked me when I read her plays. But to see it performing on stage was a completely different matter. I was speechless after the show, for I could hardly distinguish if it was a play or a reality, if it's the words of Kane or it's also my own thoughts. To see the play was like an encounter to your own notion of self-destruction. Was it a life that I want to live? It's particularly painful to watch the main character chanted a series of general desires like "to achieve goal and ambition ... to overcome opposition ... to receive attention ...to belong ...to communicate .... to be loved, to be freed". They are so basic, but also so hard to obtain.
The production of TR Warszawa was definitely terrific:
- The sound effect (constant industrial humming, the dreamy and david-lynch-like "when i fall in love", both so illusory and disillusioned).
- The lighting (i especially like the last scene that the main character was gradually engulfed and eaten by the darkness, with a strange non-stop number-counting voice which only grew louder and louder).
- The scene settings (several scene that i love: "the meeting with a female lover" - I interpret that she was her ideal self, the one that she would never have; "the presence of a child" - the original self, or the childhood that lives within oneself, the one who was not aware that what oneself would become; "the naked old woman wandered around the stage" - the decaying self, what one would become if one continues to live)
- and the main actress (she must be very professional to perform it every night without breaking down).
