The Catastrophic Theatre presents CLEANSED by Sarah Kane. In a former university, society’s “undesirables” are subjected to a series of tortures designed to test the limits of human love on the battlefield of the human body. Explosively aching, hauntingly poetic, and disarmingly tender, CLEANSED is a fever-dream fable of unimaginable brutality and miraculous beauty. CLEANSED is about how love survives the most extreme circumstances. Violence is merely the obstacle. The story is one of righteous need and unrelenting hope. Every character of Kane’s CLEANSED would be at risk in today’s America. Put differently, CLEANSED can be interpreted as a queer play about locating, healing, and learning to love one’s authentic self. 25 years after it was written, producing this nightmarishly prescient play feels like a urgent and necessary cause. The regional premiere of CLEANSED is co-directed by Jason Nodler and T Lavois Thiebaud , reuniting the team that created last season’s production of Kane’s 4.48 Psychosis, which The Houston Press called “an imaginative bulldozer of a production” and “a testament to the collaborative work that happens when two theater artists are performing at the top of their game.”
