In-yer-face theatre

[1] An adjunct faculty member in Boston University's London graduate journalism programme, and co-editor of TheatreVoice,[2] Sierz uses in-yer-face theatre to describe work by young playwrights who present vulgar, shocking, and confrontational material on stage as a means of involving and affecting their audiences.

[1] With respect to "in-your-face", Aleks Sierz wrote: The sanitized phrase 'in-your-face' is defined by the New Oxford English Dictionary (1998) as something 'blatantly aggressive or provocative, impossible to ignore or avoid'.

'In-your-face' originated in American sports journalism during the mid-1970s as an exclamation of derision or contempt, and gradually seeped into more mainstream slang during the late 1980s and 1990s, meaning 'aggressive, provocative, brash'.

[3]Sierz has been mistakenly cited as coining the term "In-yer-face theatre", saying that "Although I certainly was the first to describe, celebrate and theorise this kind of new writing, which emerged decisively in the mid-1990s, I certainly did not invent the phrase."

In his piece "A brief history of in-yer-face theatre" Sierz outlines a number of instances where the phrase was used directly or indirectly by others prior to him popularising the label.

In 1994 Paul Taylor in his review of Philip Ridley's Ghost from a Perfect Place described the violent girl gang in the play as "the in-yer-face castrating trio".

After Herbert's writings in Theatre Record the phrase began to be used by other critics and, according to Sierz, "By the time Mark Ravenhill's Shopping and Fucking opened at the Royal Court in October 1996, the expression was spreading rapidly".

A lot of tricks that tired by the end of the Nineties, the rimming, the sadism, the antibodies, the sexual frankness, the cool irony in the face of outrage, began with Fraser".

[8] Sierz has said that Brown unknowingly was "opening the long road that led to Anthony Neilson, to Mark Ravenhill (who was influenced by the work of Canadian Brad Fraser) and to that 1990s youth anthem, Trainspotting".

"[6] Another "mighty moment" that Sierz attributes to the development of in-yer-face theatre is the real-life murder of James Bulger, who was only two years old when he was abducted, tortured and killed by two ten-year-old boys in 1993.

[19] Appointed as the theatre's artistic director in 1992, the first play that Daldry programmed was Weldon Rising by Phyllis Nagy, which Sierz states "sent a signal, influencing other young writers".

[19] Daldry's first season of work by new writers in 1994-95 included a number of in-yer-face plays, such as Some Voices by Joe Penhall,[21] Peaches by Nick Grosso[22] and Ashes and Sand by Judy Upton.

"[6] When Blasted premiered some critics were so offended by the play's depiction of horrors (including physical violence, defecation, rape and cannibalism) that they contacted news outlets to voice their outrage.

This caused a media frenzy which resulted in the play being at "the centre of the biggest scandal to theatre since Mary Whitehouse tried to close Howard Brenton's The Romans in Britain in 1981."

[26] Sierz also states that "the resulting media furore of the shocking content and unsettling form of the play put British new writing on the map",[27] with the controversy becoming a "significant cultural moment"[28] and that with Blasted "a new exciting sensibility arrived".

Performed in 1997 at the Royal Court, Sierz described the premiere production as "an event that secured [Crimp]'s reputation as the most innovative, most exciting and most exportable playwright of his generation.

The recipe was: subvert the idea of coherent character; turn scenes into flexible scenarios; substitute brief messages or poetic clusters for text; mix clever dialogue with brutal images; stage the show as an art installation.

"[18] The next event that Sierz cites is "the failure of Irvine Welsh's shock-fest You'll Have Had Your Hole"[33] which "received deservedly terrible reviews when it opened at the West Yorkshire Playhouse in 1998 and on its arrival in London in early February 1999".

[34] David Eldridge wrote that "Perhaps, 'in-yer-face' only really lasted from 1994 to 1997", likewise citing The Weir as "signalling a change of direction" and stating that "by the time Ben Elton was mocking the form in a novel [Inconceivable published in 1999] it was over.

He explained how it no longer is seen as shocking or cutting edge to have sex scenes in plays, stating that "I suppose there came a point where if you went to The Royal Court and somebody got their knob out and spat in their hand, and you think 'oh here we go again'".

Sierz added to this comment by jokingly remarking how previously "there was a time in the 1990s that if you didn't see an anal rape on stage, you asked for your money back".

"[37] In an essay published in 2008, Sierz wrote that "Although some playwrights, such as Philip Ridley, debbie tucker green and Dennis Kelly, use some of the techniques of in-yer-face theatre, the general scene has moved on".

Eldridge warned of the mythologies and self-aggrandising agendas that can grow up when writers are placed in 'movements', and what [alluding to the Donmar Warehouse] he called the current trend of 'Donmarization' in British theatre, whereby major Hollywood stars have been recruited in order to make a new play more palatable to audiences.

[49]Another conference report, published by Writernet, states: "to be shackled to a specific era or genre places a responsibility on a play and creates expectations before a reading or performance.

After watching a new play by a young playwright, Cartts describes the stage characters as follows: [They] had the impertinence, no, the hubris to utter those most terrifying of words, "I love you," [but] what did they mean by them?

In your face!In the 2006 film Venus the elderly actor Maurice Russell takes the young woman Jessie to see a play at The Royal Court Theatre Upstairs.

Although the published screenplay written by Hanif Kureishi featured swearing in this scene, the dialogue used in the film is more explicit, with a line delivered by one of the stage actors being changed from "silly cow" to "stupid cunt".

Hayman, whose breakout play was Hysterectomy 5-9-1, is described as the "Les Enfant Terribles of British theatre" with "a reputation for staging the unstageable or what some would call the unwatchable" and is "famous for repulsing and occasionally hospitalising audiences".

Jeremey attends a play of Hayman's called Razor F**K, which is described as a "site-specific, cross-platform, multi-media, immersive experience containing strong language and explicit violence".

The episode has Maureen Lipman playing herself as an actress appearing in an ill-fated West End revival of Noël Coward's Present Laughter, which Hayman re-stages with scenes of violence.