Crave by Sarah Kane

2006-2007 Season
Long before I had the chance to adore all of you, I adored the bits of you I could see from Crave Nightwood Theatre will proudly present the Canadian premiere of the ground-breaking Sarah Kanes Crave. It will be produced at the Young Centre for the Performing Arts in Torontos Distillery District from April 26 to May 17, 2007. Award-winner Jennifer Tarver will direct this acclaimed work from one of Britains most celebrated, visionary, playwrights of the last decade.
What I can do is put people through an intense experience. Maybe in a small way from that you can change things. Sarah Kane It is up to the audience to decide for themselves. What is unmistakable is the dramatic power of the play, the unflinching, uncompromising darkness of Kanes vision, and her ability to combine it with sudden shafts of gallows humourThe Daily Telegraph Crave is a poetic, musical quartet for four voices, of great formal beauty, with echoes of the Bible, Common Prayer and T.S. Eliot. The Daily Telegraph (Crave) is, in effect, a womans post-mortem on a self as self-destructive as, sadly, Kane turned out to be and theres nothing else like it in the language. The Times Its more or less obligatory to close by saying how unfortunate it is that we will be deprived of Ms. Kanes future greatness. But the sense of Crave is so integral to her own life, and death, that it seems more reasonable just to say we should be grateful for what we were granted. Curtain Up, NYC

About CRAVE
Sarah Kanes fourth play was commissioned by the U.K. play develop company Planes Plough. Kanes penultimate play, is generally considered to be her most mature and calmest, lacking the aggression of her earlier plays. Crave presents four characters, or perhaps four aspects of human nature, set in an unnamed city. Two men and two women, each only having a letter for a name, are linked through various relationships. The ferocity of craving someone, or something, is palpable. Kane paints four portraits of the turbulence of the human heart as these four individuals negotiate the pressures of love, loss and desire. Depressions inadequate. A full scale emotional collapse is the minimum required to justify letting everyone down - from Crave In an interview, Ms. Kane said of Crave: I wanted to find out how good a poet I could be while still writing something dramatic. Crave has been translated and performed in over 10 languages. In 2003, there were 17 simultaneous productions of Kanes work in Germany alone.

About Sarah Kane Sarah Kane was born in Essex in 1971. Both parents were journalists and deeply religious. She studied drama at Bristol University, graduating with first class honours, and then did an MA at Birmingham University. As a teenager, she was involved with local drama groups and went to Bristol with the intention of becoming an actor. She stood out as a talented actress and director, but very quickly lost heart and turned to writing.

Her first play, Blasted, which drew parallels between Britain and Bosnia, created the biggest theatre scandal in London since Edward Bonds Saved in 1965. It catapulted her from being a complete unknown to nationwide notoriety. While critics initially condemned Blasted as depravity, others had a different view. A hand-delivered fan letter from Harold Pinter was just one sign of the excitement rising over this young womans daring vision. Sarah wrote Crave under the pseudonym of Marie Kelvedon to protect her new, more emotional work from bias of critics but, by the time Crave premiered in 1998, virtually all of the critics were left to furiously backpedal from their original dismissal of her work. Sarah struggled with depression for many years, but continued to work, and was for some time the writer-in-residence at the Royal Court Theatre which staged the world premieres of most of her work and, following her suicide in 1999 at age 28, produced a season of her work in 2001. Her influence on the next generation of writers can already be seen in the plays of Debbie Tucker Green, Joanna Laurens and even in Caryl Churchills Far Away.
Crave in Spain

Sarah Kane

Jennifer Tarver

About Jennifer Tarver

Winner of the 2002 John Hirsch Directors Award and the 2006 Pauline McGibbon Award, Jennifer is an acclaimed Canadian director known for pushing the theatrical envelope. She has a passion for international scripts and has been directing, adapting, devising and independently producing new work in Toronto for the last six years. Jennifer is the founder and artistic director of Theatre Extasis: a physically based company focused on devised works and new adaptations of existing texts including the Dora nominated History Play and Not Faust. Her companys most recent work, That Time - a series of short plays by Samuel Beckett, was nominated for eight Dora Awards winning four of them including best director and best production. Jennifer is currently developing Dream Life a new work based on Calderons Life is a Dream. She holds a bachelor degree in performance from the Manhattan School of Music and an MFA degree in directing from the University of Alberta. She is currently the Associate Director at the Theatre Centre, leading their new work development program. She loves music and has directed unique interpretations of classical and modern opera. This season she will be directing Thom Pain at the Tarragon Theatre, Benjamin Brittans A Midsummer Nights Dream for the Royal Conservatory of Music and Susanna Hoods Shes Gone Away at The Theatre Centre.

Crave in Germany

Crave in United Kingdom

Crave in Sweden