ABSTRACT
The British playwright Sarah Kane (1971-1999) came to the myth of Phaedra via its Senecan version. In 1996 she was approached by the Gate Theatre (London) to contribute a play to a season of modem revisions of dramatic classics. Abandoning her initial choice, Brecht's Baal, to avoid potential copyright problems, Kane accepted the theater's suggestion of Seneca's first-century Roman tragedy, despite the relentless criticism she had tended to bestow upon classical drama: "I've always hated these plays-everything takes place in the off, characters stand on stage talking and anyway, what's the point" (Tabert 11, my translation).
