ENGLISH THEATRE DEFINITIONS T7:

VIOLENCE ON THE STAGE AT THE TURN OF

THE CENTURY: IN-YER-FACE THEATRE

INTRODUCTION TO THE UNIT AND TEACHING OBJECTIVES

In this unit students are introduced to British theatre of the 1990s and to the features of the
so-called In-yer-face Theatre.

Through a close reading of Sarah Kane’s Blasted (1995) the objective of this unit is to try to
understand the reasons behind the use of extreme, confrontational violence on the stage.

This and other plays of the1990s were deliberately provocative and it might be difficult to
understand the recourse to extreme aesthetics. A critical engagement with this text will be a
means to address the willingness of a generation of young playwrights to connect with
audiences through visceral experiences.

WHO AND WHERE?

As we have seen throughout this course, what characterises British theatre during its Golden
ages of creativity –Elizabethan and Jacobean, Restoration, Edwardian and post-war– is not
its actors, nor its directors, nor its theorists, but its writers. We remember Shakespeare,
Webster, Congreve, Wilde and Shaw, Osborne, Delaney, Pinter, Stoppard. The nineties
were likewise an exciting decade for new dramatic writing.

Central to the story of new writing is Sarah Kane’s Blasted, which opened at the royal
Court Theatre in January 1995. Soon followed, however:

ØThe stage version of Irvine Welsh’s novel Trainspotting (1996)

ØJez Butterworth’s Mojo (1995)

ØMark Ravenhill’s Shopping and Fucking (1996)
ØPatrick Marber’s Closer (1997)

WHAT IS IN-YER-FACE THEATRE?

The most comprehensive definition and critical engagement with this drama we find in
theatre critic and professor Aleks Sierz’s book In-Yer-Face Theatre: British Drama Today,
published by Faber and Faber in 2000

“The widest definition of in-yer-face theatre is any drama that takes the audience by the
scruff of the neck and shakes it until it gets the message. It is a theatre of sensation: it
jolts both actors and spectators out of conventional responses, touching nerves and
provoking alarm. Often such drama employs shock tactics, or is shocking because it is
new in tone and structure... Questioning moral norms, it affronts the ruling ideas of
what can or should be shown onstage; it also taps into more primitive feelings,
smashing taboos, mentioning the forbidden, creating discomfort. Crucially, it tells us
more about who we really are. Unlike the type of theatre that allows us to seat back and
contemplate what we see in detachment, the best in-yer face theatre takes us on an
emotional journey, getting under our skin. In other words, it is experiential, not
speculative.” (Sierz 4)

The sanitised phrase 'in-your-face'

“is defined by the New Oxford English Dictionary (1998) as something 'blatantly
aggressive or provocative, impossible to ignore or avoid'. The Collins English Dictionary
(1998) adds the adjective 'confrontational'. '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'. It implies being forced to see something close up, having your
personal space invaded. It suggests the crossing of normal boundaries. In short, it
describes perfectly the kind of theatre that puts audiences in just such a situation.”
(Sierz 4)

COMMON FEATURES

● The language is usually filthy

● Characters talk about unmentionable subjects
● They take their clothes off
● They have sex and humiliate each other
● They experience unpleasant emotions or become suddenly violent.

As Sierz claims: “At its best, this kind of theatre is so powerful, so visceral, that it forces
audiences to react: either they feel like fleeing the building or they are suddenly convinced
that it is the best thing they have ever seen, and want their friends to see it too. It is the kind
of theatre that inspires us to use superlatives, whether in praise or condemnation”

HOW TO TROUBLE THE AUDIENCE EMOTIONALLY

The vocabulary of disgust nearly always involves ideas about what is dirty, what is natural,
what is human, what is right and what is proper. Most in-yer-face theatre challenges the
distinctions we use to define what we are. Questioning these binary oppositions that are
central to our world can be very unsettling (Sierz 6).

Human/Animal
Clean/Dirty
Healthy/Unhealthy
Normal/Abnormal
Good/Evil
True/Untrue
Real/Unreal
Right/Wrong
Just/Unjust
Art/Life
BLASTED
SARAH KANE (1971-1999)
PLAYS CHRONOLOGY

January 1995, Blasted, Royal Court Theatre Upstairs

May 1996, Phaedra’s Love, Gate Theatre

June 1997, Skin, Channel 4

April 1998, Cleansed, Royal Court Theatre Downstairs

August 1998, Crave, Traverse Theatre

June 2000, 4.48 Psychosis, Royal Court Jerwood Theatre Upstairs.