Supposedly, this is also the time when the mind is at its clearest.

What does it feel like to reach the brink of sanity and the depth of despair, where taking one’s own life seems to be the only way of dealing with the future? Hopefully we will never know such levels of depression and self-loathing, but too many people do.

Groundbreaking British playwright Sarah Kane (1971 – 1999) and Director Ismet Prcic offered a disturbingly authentic glimpse into this world through Kane’s last play that premiered posthumously in 1999 – a glimpse made all the more stunning thanks to the imaginative and insightful staging by a handful of UCSD students and alumni. In what is incredibly his directorial debut, Ismet interpreted this script – that has no stage directions – with a brilliant eye and ear, blending in a chaos of background sound and video that draws us into the black whirlpool that a young woman is slipping down, sinking into a fate she can see but can’t seem to resist.

“At 4.48 I will kill myself. I do not want to die.”

Starring as the young woman is Monique Fleming who, desperate to save herself from herself, checks into a mental institution, but finds only frustration and further despair as the doctors are unable to connect with her. She comes close to feeling a kinship with one female doctor, but it begins to become clear that the bond is only a façade, and that the doctor does not see her as an individual, but only as a patient like any other. “Ask me why!” the woman demands again and again, trying to force her doctor to get to her true inner feelings rather than assuming a standard clinical diagnosis. But it is in vain. The connection and friendship the young woman thought she might have with the doctor is simply not there. Her doctor, missing the woman’s emotional needs, leaves no doubt as to their relationship when she candidly tells her, “I need my friends to be sane.” With that, her last chance to save this woman disappears completely.

Monique Fleming completely transforms into the doomed young woman with powerful emotions ranging from despondency, livid anger, frustration, fear, hope, despair, and nausea (which includes a charming vomiting scene). The background video, which consists of all manner of bizarre images, also contains several scenes in which you see her as a happy person laughing and enjoying herself at a party – a person barely recognizable as the woman in the mental institution. She is joined by Sandra Ruiz and Rafael Ruiz who both play several parts. Sandra’s main role is as the doctor who has the best chance to save her, but instead finds herself moving further and further away from her patient, both psychologically and physically. Through subtle expressions and movements, you still see that Sandra is human -- not just a cold psychiatrist with no concern for her patient. But being human also makes her fallible. Rafael is often silent, but adds much to the madness throughout, at one point wearing a wreath of Christmas lights on his head representing a crown of thorns, then humorously running back and forth countless times at the back of the stage, each time as if embarrassed to have stumbled into the middle of a play.

The writing moves in brief clips of dialog, rarely remaining on one thread of thought for long, but building the sense of insanity from the start with a turbulent dream sequence, then moving artfully and inexorably toward the obvious conclusion which is performed chillingly – but unseeingly. In the final, or perhaps initial, masterful stroke, the cast took their bows to begin the show. We do not see them after the conclusion. The end is final.