Sarah Kane - Life

Life

Born in Brentwood, Essex, and raised by evangelical parents, Kane was a committed Christian in adolescence. Later, however, she rejected those beliefs. After attending Shenfield High School, she studied drama at Bristol University, graduating in 1992, and went on to take an MA course in playwriting at the University of Birmingham, led by the playwright David Edgar.

Kane struggled with severe depression for many years and was twice voluntarily admitted to the Maudsley Hospital in London. However, she wrote consistently, if slowly, throughout her adult life. For a year she was writer-in-residence for Paines Plough, a theatre company promoting new writing, where she actively encouraged other writers. Before that, she had worked briefly as literary associate for the Bush Theatre, London. Kane died in 1999, when, two days after taking an overdose of prescription drugs, she committed suicide by hanging herself by her shoelaces in a bathroom at London's King's College Hospital.

Read more about this topic:  Sarah Kane

Famous quotes containing the word life:

    The only living works are those which have drained much of the author’s own life into them.
    Samuel Butler (1835–1902)

    A written word is the choicest of relics. It is something at once more intimate with us and more universal than any other work of art. It is the work of art nearest to life itself. It may be translated into every language, and not only be read but actually breathed from all human lips;Mnot be represented on canvas or in marble only, but be carved out of the breath of life itself. The symbol of an ancient man’s thought becomes a modern man’s speech.
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)

    the sheets and towels of a life we were going to share,
    The milk-stiff bibs, the shroud, each rag to be ever
    Trampled or soiled, bled on or groped for blindly,
    Came swooning out of an enormous willow hamper
    Onto moon-marbly boards.
    James Merrill (b. 1926)