Astonishing for its violence and unstintingly graphic depiction of trauma, British writer Sarah Kane’s 1998 play Cleansed has been described as “impossible to stage”. Full of nightmarishly grotesque incidents – torture, assault, drug use and surgical procedures – it seems written to defy the creative imagination as much as it challenges audiences to sit through it; among the more baroque of Kane’s stage directions is one that requires a character’s severed feet to be carried offstage by rats. And some won’t sit through it: when the play was revived in 2016 at the Dorfman in London, dozens of audience members left the auditorium. Several fainted.
None of that has deterred Sydney-based director Dino Dimitriadis, who is creating a new production of this seldom-seen “in-yer-face” drama at the Old Fitz Theatre in Woolloomooloo, Sydney. But how do you go about rehearsing an “impossible” play? And in a time when the emotional and physical wellbeing of actors is closely scrutinised, how do you look after those in Kane’s unplayable play, night after night? In fact, why do it at all?
