WHAT?
In-yer-face
theatre is the kind of theatre which grabs the audience by the scruff
of the neck and shakes it until it gets the message. 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'. 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.
In-yer-face theatre shocks audiences
by the extremism of its language and images; unsettles them by its emotional
frankness and disturbs them by its acute questioning of moral norms. It
not only sums up the zeitgeist, but criticises
it as well. Most in-yer-face plays are not interested in showing events
in a detached way and allowing audiences to speculate about them; instead,
they are experiential - they want audiences to feel the extreme emotions
that are being shown on stage. In-yer-face theatre is experiential
theatre.
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WHEN?
Although the upsurge of in-yer-face theatre in Britain had many antecedents,
especially in the alternative theatre of the 1960s, it only took off as
a new and shocking sensibility in the decade
of the 1990s. Just as the origins of provocative and confrontational theatre
can be found in the theories of Alfred Jarry and Antonin
Artaud, at the start of the 20th century, so it was that in the 1990s
it gradually became the dominant style of much new
writing.
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WHERE?
In-yer-face drama has been staged by new writing
theatres such as the Royal
Court, Bush, Hampstead,
Soho Theatre, Finborough,
Tricycle, Theatre Royal Stratford
East, and even the trendy Almeida, all of
which are in London. But experiential theatre
is not an exclusively metropolitan phenomenon. The Traverse
in Edinburgh was really important - as were Manchester, Birmingham, Bolton,
West Yorkshire, and so on. Especially Live theatre
in Newcastle. Of course, this is not an exclusively English or Brit affair
either. Americans such as Phyllis Nagy, Naomi
Wallace and Tracy Letts made a vital contribution
to new writing in English - as did Scottish writers such as David
Greig and David Harrower.
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WHO?
The big three of in-yer-face theatre are Sarah Kane,
Mark Ravenhill and Anthony
Neilson. Other hot shots include Simon
Block, Jez Butterworth, David Eldridge, Nick Grosso, Tracy Letts, Martin
McDonagh, Patrick Marber, Phyllis Nagy, Joe Penhall, Rebecca Prichard,
Philip Ridley, Judy Upton, Naomi Wallace and Richard Zajdlic. Of course,
some writers wrote one or two in-yer-face plays
and then moved on. Like all categories, this one can't hope to completely
grasp the ever-changing reality of the explosive new
writing scene.
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WHY?
My basic argument is really simple: in-yer-face
theatre is contemporary theatre. What was distinctly new about 1990s
drama, what could not have been written 20 years earlier, is the type
of in-yer-face play which shocked and disturbed audiences, creating a
new aesthetic sensibility. In other words, in-yer-face theatre is to the
1990s what absurdism was to the 1950s, or what kitchen-sink drama was
to the Macmillan years.
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HOW?
How can you tell if a play is in-yer-face? Well,
it really isn't difficult: the language is filthy, there's nudity,
people have sex in front of you, violence breaks
out, one character humiliates another, taboos are broken, unmentionable
subjects are broached, conventional dramatic structures are subverted.
Expect tales of abuse; don't worry about the subversion
of theatre form; expect personal politics, not
ideology. Above all, this brat
pack is the voice of youth. At its best, this
kind of theatre is so powerful, so visceral, that it forces you to
react - either you want to get on stage and stop what's happening or you
decide it's the best thing you've ever seen and you long to come back
the next night. As indeed you should.
• Flashback: the top ten new writers of
the 1990s
• And
flash forward: the best of now
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Plus: new writing bibliography
Doubleplus: A brief history of in-yer-face
