In-yer-face Theatre: British Drama Today

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a b Sierz, Aleks (24 May 2012). Modern British Playwriting: The 1990s: Voices, Documents, New Interpretations. Great Britain: Methuen Drama. p.55. ISBN 9781408181331. Font, Jeremy (18 October 2016). "Bella Hayman". Incredible Women. Series 5. BBC. BBC Radio 4 . Retrieved 3 March 2021. 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". 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-Yer-Face? British Drama in the 1990s”. University of the West of England, Bristol.( 6–7 September 2002), Writernet 2003. (Conference report posted on writernet.co.uk, in both HTML and PDF versions). Sierz, Aleks (21 October 2015). Introduction. The Pitchfork Disney. By Ridley, Philip. Modern Classics (Reissueed.). Great Britain: Methuen Drama. pp.1–24. ISBN 978-1-4725-1400-4. Spencer, Charles (14 April 2006). "That kitchen sinking feeling". The Telegraph. Archived from the original on 23 May 2009 . Retrieved 29 March 2021. Holden, Nicholas (17 October 2011). "Chapter 2: "In the Pursuit of New Writers": The Royal Court Young Peoples' Theatre and the Development of First-Time Playwrights in the 1990s". In Boles, William C. (ed.). After In-Yer-Face Theatre: Remnants of a Theatrical Revolution. Palgrave Macmillan. pp.27–29. ISBN 978-3-030-39426-4. a b c d e f g h i j David Eldridge, "In-Yer-face and After" [ permanent dead link], Intellect 23.1 (Mar. 2003): 55–58. (Abstract.)THE THEATREVOICE DEBATE: NEW WRITING Audio recording and Transcript. Hosted by Aleks Sierz featuring Richard Bean, Simon Stephens and Mark Ravenhill. Sierz, Aleks (2001). In-Yer-Face Theatre: British Drama Today. London: Faber and Faber Limited. p.33. ISBN 978-0-571-20049-8 . Retrieved 12 November 2020. Sierz also states that the murder "resulted in calls for the censorship of films, of television and of art works" [18] 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". [6] Stephen Daldry at The Royal Court Theatre [ edit ] Finally, it’s time for a publisher to spread the word. About a month after Neilson’s interview, Ian Herbert, critic and editor of Theatre Record, gave the expression “in-yer-face theatre” an enormous new lease of life, plugging several different variations of it in his ‘Prompt Corner’ column in Theatre Record. Happily, he chose the more direct “in-yer-face” formulation over the more staid “in-your-face”. His first foray was published in January 1996: “Last year’s in-yer-face theatre gets the welcome addition of in-yer-heart emotional commitment.” In the next issue, Herbert was talking again about “in-yer-face playwrights” and, anticipating critic David Nathan’s comment on Kane’s Phaedra’s Love, he also wrote: “it’s vital, engaged work, going on in tiny spaces where the actors are as likely to be in your lap as in yer face”. Even at an early stage, this style of experiential theatre was associated with small studio spaces. In March, Herbert was taking a historical perspective on the new young Turks, or — to give one of his preferred formulations — the “in-yer-face school”, commenting that veteran playwright Bill Morrison “was doing in-yer-face a decade or more ago”. Taylor, Paul. "Rainbow Kiss, Royal Court Upstairs, London". The Independent . Retrieved 29 March 2021.

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. [6] 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. The play features a scene with three girls in their late-teens speaking to one another with explicit language. 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". [71] [72] In-yer-face theatre is a term used to describe a confrontational style and sensibility of drama that emerged in Great Britain 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. [1] Still In-Yer-Face? Towards a Critique and a Summation". New Theatre Quart. 18.1 (2002): 17–24. Published online by Cambridge University Press, journals.cambridge.org. Retrieved 9 June 2008. (Abstract. Subscription required for full access.) Dromgoole, Dominic. The Full Room: An A-Z of Contemporary Playwriting. London: Methuen, 2002. ISBN 0-413-77134-2.Eldridge, David (2014). 'Serving It Up' & 'A Week With Tony' . Bloomsbury Methuen Drama. p.162. ISBN 978-1-4081-7630-6. Spencer, Charles (24 May 2001). "Bleak but brilliant slice of modern British life". The Telegraph. Archived from the original on 7 August 2012 . Retrieved 2 April 2021. Sierz, Aleks (March 2001). In-Yer-Face Theatre: British Drama Today. London: Faber and Faber Limited. p.36. ISBN 0-571-20049-4. Ruble, Blair A. (2011). Urals Pathfinder: Theatre in Post-soviet Yekaterinburg (PDF). Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. p.17. ISBN 978-1-933549-77-4.

Sierz, Aleks (24 May 2012). Modern British Playwriting: The 1990s: Voices, Documents, New Interpretations. Great Britain: Methuen Drama. p.233. ISBN 9781408181331. In-Yer-Face? British Drama in the 1990s". University of the West of England, Bristol. 6–7 September 2002, Writernet 2003. Retrieved 9 June 2008. (Conference report posted on writernet.co.uk, in both HTML and PDF versions). Sierz, Aleks. In-Yer-Face Theatre: British Drama Today. London: Faber and Faber, 2001. ISBN 0-571-20049-4.Sierz, Aleks (March 2001). In-Yer-Face Theatre: British Drama Today. London: Faber and Faber Limited. pp.215–219. ISBN 0-571-20049-4. However, despite the near ubiquity of in-yer-face theatre, the ‘movement’ burned brightly but briefly. Audiences and playwrights alike began to tire of on-stage brutality. Many established stage writers, such as Martin Crimp, Martin McDonagh and the American playwright Tracy Letts owe their careers to explosive starts in in-yer-face theatre. However, the anger of their younger work is largely missing from their recent, more ‘mature’ work. Notable Figures