Imprisonment in 4.48 Psychosis and Clara 69.

Clara 69 isn’t a play in itself; it’s only part of a play called Le triomphe de l’échec, by Gildas Milin. It’s a play within a play, using the usual and classical mise en abime that we can find in Elizabethan and Shakespearian theatre. But we can consider Clara 69 as an autonomous play because it has been presented alone in Anne Caillère’s interpretation and mise-en-scene in 2007. And this choice can be easily explained by the fact that Clara can be considered as a story in itself (a character, a place, and a tale) and has only fine connections with the main play. Anne Caillère’s interpretation is also inspired by her visit in the detention centre of Fleury-Mérogis. Confronted to the prisoners she wondered:« comment saisir la parole, comment entrer en contact, par-delà la demande d’augmentation de prescription de méthadone ou de subtex que réclament plusieurs des patients de la journée » ? How does she succeed in understanding prisoner’s voice, the voice of someone who is imprisoned both physically and mentally? The same question seems to emerge from Sarah’s Kane last play, 4.48 Psychosis1. In a hospital, patients are completely locked in themselves, unable to communicate with others, dispossessed of their capacities to be subjects. Like Clara, they’re unable to escape from this physical place (the prison/ the hospital) but also from themselves, they’re psychotic characters. There are numerous links between the two plays, both of them show the loneliness of human beings and psychosis, both are a reflexion on language, but I want to show how the two directors, Milin and Kane, represent the modern problematic of the imprisonment, because it encompasses all the others issues. At first, imprisonment is seen in a very classical manner as a space, in one case it’s a hospital, in the other one, it’s a prison, then in a modern sense, actual imprisonment appears to be the one that the characters carry within themselves.

I.