Enacting the Lost : Theatrical Form of Mourning in Sarah Kane's Cleansed

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Cleansed (1998) premiered at the Royal Court Theatre as the third play by Sarah Kane (1971-1999). Set within a male institution, this drama portrays romantic relations of characters, and Grand-Guignolesque atrocities suffered by the inmates. As the author states, this play inherits a key setting from Twelfth Night (1600). Its heroine, Grace, is a cross-dresser imitating the appearance of her late sibling Graham, just as Shakespeare's Viola dresses herself the same way as her lost brother Sebastian. In this article, our analysis focuses on closely looking at the theatrical within Cleansed. Starting with a comparison of disguised heroines in this piece and Twelfth Night, Section II and III demonstrate that Grace's partial imitation of her late brother can be interpreted as a theatrical form of mourning to produce her private illusion that Graham is alive. In the last section, referring to Grace's final remark "help me" to another inmate of the institution, our discussion reveals how the function of her quasi-transformation into her sibling allegorically represents the staging of this play, whose performance is to be completed by imaginary commitment of the audience to reunite its fragments.

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  • 英米文化

    英米文化 45 (0), 31-40, 2015

    英米文化学会

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