4.48 Psychosis (Excerpt)

4.48 Psychosis was first performed at the Royal Court Jerwood Theatre Upstairs, London, on 23 June 2000. The cast was as follows:

Daniel Evans
Jo McInnes
Madeline Potter

Directed by James Macdonald
Designed by Jeremy Herbert
Lighting by Nigel J Edwards
Sound by Paul Arditti

- - - - -

(A very long silence.)

– But you have friends.

(A long silence.)

You have a lot of friends.
What do you offer your friends to make them so
supportive?

(A long silence.)

What do you offer your friends to make them so
supportive?

(A long silence.)

What do you offer?

(Silence.)

- - - - -

a consolidated consciousness resides in a darkened banqueting
hall near the ceiling of a mind whose floor shifts as ten
thousand cockroaches when a shaft of light enters as all
thoughts unite in an instant of accord body no longer expellent
as the cockroaches comprise a truth which no one ever utters

I had a night in which everything was revealed to me.
How can I speak again?

the broken hermaphrodite who trusted hermself alone finds the
room in reality teeming and begs never to wake from the
nightmare

and they were all there
every last one of them
and they knew my name
as I scuttled like a beetle along the backs of their chairs

Remember the light and believe the light

An instant of clarity before eternal night

don't let me forget

- - - - -

I am sad

I feel that the future is hopeless and that things cannot improve

I am bored and dissatisfied with everything

I am a complete failure as a person

I am guilty, I am being punished

I would like to kill myself

I used to be able to cry but now I am beyond tears

I have lost interest in other people

I can't make decisions

I can't eat

I can't sleep

I can't think

I cannot overcome my loneliness, my fear, my disgust

I am fat

I cannot write

I cannot love

My brother is dying, my lover is dying, I am killing them both

I am charging towards my death

I am terrified of medication

I cannot make love

I cannot fuck

I cannot be alone

I cannot be with others

My hips are too big

I dislike my genitals

At 4.48
when depression visits
I shall hang myself
to the sound of my lover's breathing

I do not want to die

I have become so depressed by the fact of my mortality that I
have decided to commit suicide

I do not want to live

I am jealous of my sleeping lover and cover his induced
unconsciousness

When he wakes he will envy my sleepless night of thought and
speech unslurred by medication

I have resigned myself to death this year

Some will call this self-indulgence
(they are lucky not to know its truth)
Some will know the simple fact of pain

This is becoming my normality

- - - - -

- - - - -

It wasn't for long, I wasn't there long. But drinking bitter black coffee I
catch that medicinal smell in a cloud of ancient tobacco and something
touches me in that still place and a wound from two years ago opens
like a cadaver and a long buried shame roars its foul decaying grief.

A room of expressionless faces string blankly at my pain, so
devoid of meaning there must be evil intent.

Dr This and Dr That and Dr Whatsit who's just passing and
thought he'd pop in to take the piss as well. Burning in a hot
tunnel of dismay, my humiliation complete as I shake without
reason and stumble over words and have nothing to say about
my 'illness' which anyway amounts only to knowing that there's
no point in anything because I'm going to die. And I am
deadlocked by that smooth psychiatric voice of reason which
tells me there is an objective reality in which my body and mind
are one. But I am not here and never have been. Dr This writes it
down and Dr That attempts a sympathetic murmur. Watching
me, judging me, smelling the crippling failure oozing from my
skin, my desperation clawing and all-consuming panic
drenching me as I gape in horror at the world and wonder why
everyone is smiling and looking at me with secret knowledge of
my aching shame.

Shame shame shame.
Drown in your fucking shame.

Inscrutable doctors, sensible doctors, way-out doctors, doctors
you'd think were fucking patients if you weren't shown proof
otherwise, ask the same questions, put words in my mouth, offer
chemical cures for congenital anguish and cover each other's
arses until I want to scream for you, the only doctor who ever
touched me voluntarily, who looked me in the eye, who laughed
at my gallows humour spoken in the voice from the newly-dug
grave, who took the piss when I shaved my head, who lied and
said it was nice to see me. Who lied. And said it was nice to see
me. I trusted you, I loved you, and it's not losing you that hurts
me, but your bare-faced fucking falsehoods that masquerade as
medical notes.

Your truth, your lies, not mine.

And while I was believing that you were different and that you
maybe even felt the distress that sometimes flickered across
your face and threatened to erupt, you were covering your arse
too. Like every othoer stupid mortal cunt.

To my mind that's betrayal. And my mind is the subject of these
bewildered fragments.

Nothing can extinguish my anger.

And nothing can restore my faith.

This is not a world in which I wish to live.

- - - - -