Get ready for a new kind of play as the Cornell Department of Theatre and Dance presents “4.48 Psychosis” as an immersive audio experience Feb. 20–23.

The play, written by Sarah Kane in a stream-of-consciousness style, famously does not come with any character designations or stage directions. It’s up to each director and cast to interpret the text. For this group of Cornell actors, it’s all about sound.

No actors will be on stage. Instead, the show will unfold around the audience in a surround-sound audio installation. The audience size will be limited to 50-60 people per show. They’ll enter a sound-isolated environment to experience the piece, and lighting shifts will be the only visual presentation.

“Think listening to a highly-produced podcast, but in a movie theater,” said Shawn Ketchum Johnson, who is directing the show. “The voices, music, and sound will move around and above the audience as the play unfolds. This is an unusual modality, but it’s a way for our students to experience continuing trends in the art world around audio installation exhibits and explore the current audio engineering obsession with spatial audio experiences.”

Tickets can be purchased online and are $15 for adults, $12 for students and seniors, and free to Cornell students, faculty, and staff with their Cornell IDs. The show will begin at 7:30 p.m. on Feb. 20–22 and at 2 p.m. on Feb. 23.

“4.48 Psychosis” is a fragmented dream play with a constantly shifting reality. It focuses on an individual who suffers from depression and clinical psychosis, depicting their challenges in domestic life, their constant struggle with suicidal ideation, and their fraught relationship with the mental health care field. The playwright uses her own experiences with these conditions to present this story in a nonlinear, prismatic way.

This production involves a cast of 18, two audio engineers, one stage manager, and a crew of four—all Cornell students. As an audio installation, the cast captured recordings of all of the text during long sessions of in-studio voice acting, which has been a new experience for most.

“It can be disorienting to be alone in a sound booth, listening to your own voice in your headphones as you deliver lines without a scene partner in sight. But this is exciting, critical experiential training for our students,” said Johnson, who is also a lecturer and technical director at Cornell.

Johnson says he’s proud of the cast and crew for their sensitivity and fierce empathy for the subject matter. Students hope audiences will listen to the message. Here’s what three of them said:

Sky Kieft class of 2028: “This is not a play that’s performed in front of you, rather it’s something you have to focus on listening to. I think this speaks to the community about really listening to what might be going on in someone’s mind and how dangerous not listening could be.”

Elise Zielinski Gutierrez class of 2027: “This play speaks to me as someone who has struggled with mental health issues and feels confirmed by the poetry of the language. I think that this play has the ability to really teach people about empathy with those they may not immediately understand.”

Claudia Collazo class of 2027: “‘4.48 Psychosis’ has the potential to speak to our community, by putting the audience in the shoes of a person that is in a constant battle with their own mind.”

This show is for mature audiences and contains loud sounds, along with discussions and imagery of suicide and mental illness.