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THE SARAH KANE LEGEND "I write the truth, and that's killing me." Sarah Kane Sarah Kane (1971 - 1999), who opted to commit suicide at age 28, left behind a legacy of radical and extreme works, five plays permeated by a common language - the theatre of cruelty: Blasted, 4.48 Psychosis, Cleansed, Phaedra's Love and Crave. The force of her writing and her characters, who are literally and figuratively torn apart, rapidly revolutionized contemporary English theatre. Translated and performed all over Europe but little known in North America, these plays speak to the unconscious and the impulsive, describing a world in the throes of depression and the struggling and grappling of human beings within that dark universe. She speaks also of love. In fact, Sarah Kane's plays speak incessantly of love, "I have more or less internalized Sarah Kane. Her violence has become my violence, A violence (...) that stems from a fear of life." Krzysztof Warlikowski With Cleansed, Krzysztof Warlikowski "metamorphoses" the excess of the piece, transposing brutality and atrocious behaviour without apology in a masterly theatrical form that conveys a symbiosis between the various elements of his theatrical vocabulary and the uncompromising commitment of his actors. Without cheating and without complacency, he takes on Kane's obsessive fears by adroitly putting on stage the very material of which theatre is made - human beings. Krzysztof Warlikowski is part of a new generation of artists that has managed to “take Poland out of classical theatre and history, thrusting it into the real world". Only 40 years old, he studied the history of theatre in Paris and also directing in Krakow, where he mounted his first plays. He has worked as assistant director with major figures of European theatre (Krystian Lupa, Peter Brook and Georgio Strehler), in

addition to directing plays by Shakespeare, Sophocles, Kafka, Koltes and Gombrowicz. His work has been presented in several cities in Poland, and in recent years he has criss-crossed Europe directing both plays and operas, RAW, CRUEL THEATRE Sarah Kane committed suicide at age 28, leaving behind radical and extreme writing of a rare violence, plays that highlight horror and rip our remaining illusions to shreds. The brutal echo of her work still rings out on stages around the world. Director Krzysztof Warlikowski is the blood brother of this tender, tormented soul from London. A big admirer of Dostoyevsky, he goes straight to the heart of the matter with theatre that is capable of both unbearable tenderness and compelling violence, making Cleansed a veritable Way of the Cross replete with punishment, redemption and, at the close of the journey, purification. Perceptive, honest and courageous, Warlikowski and his actors, living incarnations of truth and generosity, take us very far indeed, bringing us to the throbbing heart of all things. Climb aboard for a journey to the end of night. KRZYSZTOF WARLIKOWSKI Born in 1962. He graduated from the Faculty of Directing of the National Academy of Theatre of Krakow, where he studied under the guidance of Krystian Lupa. He mentions Lupa as one of his three masters, together with Peter Brook and Giorgio Strehler, to whom he was an assistant. Warlikowski met Brook during a workshop in Krakow. That's when his director's diploma was created. He also assisted Brook during the staging of the Impressions de Pelleas opera, based on Claude's Debussy Pelleas and Melisade (Buffes du Nord, Paris). The Polish director went back to the opera with the international premiere of The Music Programme by Roxanna Panufnik and Ignoramus and Madman by Pawel Mykietyn , composer with whom he always collabrates in the theatre, Warlikowski's style became known after the production of Roberto Zucco by Bernhard-Marie Koltes (Teatr Nowy, Poznan 1995), This staging also won him the renown of an agitator. Soon he started a series of Shakespeare stagings with The Merchant From Venice. In Poland and abroad he staged, among others, The Taming of the Shrew, Hamlet, Winter Story and Storm. Invited by Strehler, he staged Pericles in Piccolo Teatro di Milano. Warlikowski's third fascination, besides the theatre of Koltes and Shakespeare, is antique theatre. His Plectra in Balkan decorations, or tested the personifications of the myth in the contemporary world, which is characteristic for all his stagings: the director reads antique texts through the contemporary world prism, and this way he provokes the spectator to think about the mechanisms of reality, which surround him. As he said in an interview with Piotr Gruszczynski (Tygodnik Powszechny 15-11-98), The theatre is not to wear a white shirt, take a nice purse and spend a nice evening, to see what we expect to see. (...) It is not about shocking, about using exaggerated effects. It's about stimulating people to think".