ABSTRACT
This chapter describes the discourses surrounding Sarah Kane’s oeuvre by considering Phaedra’s Love as a form of translated drama. Although the idea that Kane transported the concept of Antonin Artaud’s Theatre of Cruelty into Phaedra’s Love is conjecture, there is evidence indicating that she deliberately translated numerous linguistic and paralinguistic aspects of Seneca’s play. Kane’s Hippolytus immediately contrasted with Seneca’s version of the character. Kane’s employment of a similar opening structure and thematic emphasis to Phaedra foregrounded the complex engagement between Phaedra’s Love and the classical source text that ran throughout the remainder of the play. Kane’s denouement was set outside a courthouse, where Hippolytus was on trial for the rape of Phaedra. Kane’s conclusion was largely misunderstood because critics viewed it as hallmark of the supposed ‘in-yer-face’ aesthetic, and consequently full of merely superfluous sexual and violent imagery.
