In-yer-face theatre is a term used to describe a confrontational style and sensibility of British drama that emerged in the 1990s. This term was borrowed by British theatre critic Aleks Sierz as the title of his book, In-Yer-Face Theatre: British Drama Today, first published by Faber and Faber in March 2001.
An adjunct faculty member in Boston University's London graduate journalism programme, and co-editor of TheatreVoic,Boston University International Programs: Academic faculty including a brief biography of Aleks Sierz. 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.
Etymology
With respect to "in-your-face", Aleks Sierz wrote:
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".
In response to Trainspotting being performed at the Bush Theatre, critic Charles Spencer wrote that "You may not like these in-your-face productions; but they are quite impossible to ignore." Later that year when the play transferred to the West End, The Times'''s Jeremy Kingston remarked that the previous two productions of the play had brought "actors within inches of the audience, and such in-yer-face realism".
During an interview in November 1995 the playwright Anthony Neilson remarked that "I think that in-your-face theatre is coming back — and that is good." Sierz has stated that "As far as I know, this seems to be the very first coinage of the term "in-your-face theatre"."
About a month after this interview the critic Ian Herbert started using the phrase "in-yer-face" in various columns of the publication Theatre Record, for which he was the editor. Sierz remarked that Herbert "chose the more direct "in-yer-face" formulation over the more staid "in-your-face"". 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".
Sierz has stated that "the idea of writing a book about in-yer-face theatre was originally Ian Herbert's" as he originally spoke about the concept to Peggy Butcher, who was the drama editor of Faber and Faber. Herbert also decided to name the book 'In-Yer-Face Theatre' and was asked by Butcher to write an outline for it. However, Herbert was unable to provide an outline, jokingly stating that "I realised that [writing] a book would mean actual work, something to which I am not accustomed." Sierz however states that Herbert "was too busy to embark on a book" due to his many work commitments. As a result Herbert pulled out of writing the book and told Butcher that it should be written by Sierz instead because his "interest in new writing at the time made [him] an obvious candidate for the job". Early during the development of the book Sierz considered renaming it to Cool Britannia but Sierz says that this was vetoed by Butcher "on the grounds that in a couple of years no one would have any respect for that label - and how right she was." Sierz finished writing the book in January 2000, and it was published by Faber and Faber in March 2001 under the title In-Yer-Face Theatre: British Drama Today.Blog post: A BRIEF HISTORY OF IN-YER-FACE THEATRE on Aleks Sierz's website
History
Aleks Sierz's 'five mighty moments'
In his lecture entitled Blasted and After: New Writing in British Theatre Today Sierz cites "five mighty moments in the history of the 1990s" that shaped in-yer-face theatre. Outside of this lecture Sierz has gone into greater detail about the importance of these moments:Audio recording of lecture given by Aleks Sierz entitled 'Blasted and After: New Writing in British Theatre Today' at a meeting of the Society for Theatre Research, at the Art Workers Guild, London on 16 February 2010
The influence of North American plays and Scottish theatre Sierz first cites Ian Brown, artistic director of Edinburgh's Traverse Theatre, who during the late 1980s started looking "for provocative plays from Canada and America" to be staged at the theatre, namely those written by Brad Fraser and Tracy Letts. Brown described himself as "a risk-taker; I had a taste for doing plays that are a bit between-the-eyes: most London theatres didn't dare put on Brad Fraser['s plays] because of the explicit sex". Fraser has been hailed by director Dominic Dromgoole as "the early prophet, the John the Baptist of the brutalist school that flourished in the mid-nineties. 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". Brown also developed "Scottish work with Scottish actors" such as the "provocative" 1992 play The Life of Stuff written by "local actor" Simon Donald. 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".
Sierz also claims that Brown's programming was part of a broader "Scottish theatricality" that "kick-started" the in-yer-face theatre of London (such as Jeremey Weller's Edinburgh-based company the Grassmarket Project, which influenced the work of Sarah Kane) and that "Scottish playwriting [had] a profound effect […] on the in-yer-face sensibility".
Young British Artists and Philip Ridley The second "mighty moment" that Sierz cites is Philip Ridley's play The Pitchfork Disney being performed at the Bush Theatre in 1991. Sierz has declared that The Pitchfork Disney "is not only a key play of the 90s; it is the key play of that decade... Its legend grew and grew until it became the pivotal influence on the generation of playwrights that followed. It is a foundation text; it separates then from now." Sierz goes on to write that the play "introduced a totally new sensibility into British theatre [that] signalled a fresh direction for contemporary playwrighting: one that eschewed realistic naturalism, political ideology and social commentary, and turned auditoriums into cauldrons of sensation", adding that the play was "an agenda setting work: the era of experiential theatre began here." The artistic director of the Bush Theatre, Dominic Dromgoole, wrote that The Pitchfork Disney "was one of the first plays to signal a new direction for new writing. No politics, no naturalism, no journalism, no issues. In its place, character, imagination, wit, sexuality, skin and the soul."
Ridley started writing the play during the 1980s while he was an art student at St Martin's School of Art, with the play evolving out of a series of performance art monologues he had created in his final year of study.Ridley, P., & Sierz, A. (2009). 'Putting a New Lens on the World': The Art of Theatrical Alchemy. New Theatre Quarterly, 25(2), 109-117. doi:10.1017/S0266464X09000207 Ridley identifies himself as a contemporary of the Young British Artists (also known as the YBAs). These artists are regarded to have started with Damien Hirst's exhibition Freeze in 1988Young British Artists (YBAs) on the Tate website and have been described by Sierz as "the in-yer-face provocateurs of the art scene [whose] 1997 Sensation exhibition was an immensely influential example of that 1990s sensibility". Ridley has claimed that he knew "most of the people that went on to be in the controversial Sensation show". Although Ridley's early plays were produced years before this exhibition, he states that his plays share the same "sensibility" as Sensation, particularly in the plays' use of imagery. Sierz in part attributes Ridley's originality as a playwright from him training at an art school instead of attending a drama school or a theatre's 'new writing programme'. Sierz therefore feels that the history of new writing during the 1990s should not start with The Royal Court Theatre, but "perhaps, more accurately" should look instead at "St Martin's College of Art and Goldsmiths College. Culturally, there's clearly a nexus between the YBAs, Cool Britannia and Brit Pop."
The murder of James Bulger
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. Sierz states that this was "arguably a key event" of 1990s culture.
In 2004 the playwright Mark Ravenhill gave a lecture entitled 'A Tear in the Fabric: the James Bulger Murder and New Theatre Writing in the 1990s'. In this lecture Ravenhill explained how the Bulger murder prompted him to make his "first attempt at writing a play". Ravenhill believes that the murder may have inspired other playwrights from the 1990s: "I wonder if I was alone? I doubt it. I wonder how many other people there were who started to write with that CCTV picture of the boy led away somewhere in their head? […] How many of the young British playwrights of the 1990s — the so-called in-yer-face playwrights — were driven, consciously or unconsciously, by that moment?"
Sierz also states that the murder "resulted in calls for the censorship of films, of television and of art works"Blog post: WHATEVER HAPPENED TO IN-YER-FACE THEATRE? on Alek Sierz's website because "in 1994 the judge in the boys' trial explained the murder by speculating that they had been exposed to a violent video, Child's Play 3, this created a media storm which, I would argue, is the cultural context for the media uproar over Blasted".
Stephen Daldry at The Royal Court Theatre
Sierz cites the programming by artistic director Stephen Daldry at The Royal Court Theatre as another "mighty moment" for in-yer-face-theatre. Sierz says that Daldry "not only enjoyed shocking people, but was skilled at getting funding for new projects", while being "Adept at playing the media, he not only programmed provocative plays, but defended them vigorously in public". 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".
Sierz credits a turning-point for the theatre when Daldry remodelled his programming policy in 1994 from focusing on American work and "gay physical theatre to text-based drama [where] he decided to stage a large number of first-time dramatists". Daldry said that "From autumn 1994, the Court doubled its amount of new productions in the Theatre Upstairs and focussed on young writers". 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, Peaches by Nick Grosso and Ashes and Sand by Judy Upton.