Crave | Sarah Kane
Directed by Katarzyna Minkowska
What do we crave when we long for another person? Love, safety, presence? Or perhaps the reassurance that we exist?
Sarah Kane’s Crave is a powerful dramatic poem about longing, loneliness and loss. Four voices intertwine, drawing together and pulling apart in an exploration of the need for love and the impossibility of fulfilment. Spare, poetic language creates space for emotions, memories and imagined encounters. Words themselves become action: they wound, seduce and reach towards understanding.
First performed at Edinburgh’s Traverse Theatre in 1998, Crave is one of Kane’s most lyrical works. Here, she moves away from explicit stage imagery towards the intensity of language itself, its rhythms and sounds.
In Katarzyna Minkowska’s production, the life of a big city unfolds ceaselessly around the four characters. Their intimate words resonate amid movement, noise and the presence of other people. How can we find intimacy in a world where so much is happening at once?
Sarah Kane (1971–1999) was a British playwright whose work has had a profound influence on contemporary European theatre. Her debut, Blasted, premiered at London’s Royal Court Theatre in 1995, provoking fierce debate about the representation of violence on stage. In her subsequent plays, including Phaedra’s Love, Cleansed, Crave and 4.48 Psychosis, she combined formal daring with an uncompromising exploration of love, suffering and the human need for connection.
Polish translation: Jerzy Korpanty
Premiere: 14 November 2026
Venue: Stefan Jaracz Theatre in Łódź, Main Stage