In-yer-face theatre

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In-yer-face theatre is a form of drama that sprang up in Great Britain in the 1990s.

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[edit] Description

'In-yer-face theatre is a phrase coined by Aleks Sierz, a British theatre critic and adjunct faculty member in Boston University's London Graduate Journalism program, and popularized in his book, In-Yer-Face Theatre, first published by Faber and Faber in March 2001.[1] Created by young playwrights, in-yer-face theatre intends to involve and affect the audience by presenting vulgar, shocking, and confrontational material on the stage.

The term "in your face" used to describe contemporary theater dialogue occurs in Simon Gray's play Japes (which premiered in London, in early February 2001).[2] Sierz appropriates and adapts this phrase in his more colloquial coinage in-yer-face theatre.

[edit] Problems of definition

The "sensibility" of "In-yer-face theatre" was attacked at a two-day conference at the University of the West of England in 2002 by critics in attendance.[3] A conference report states: "to be shackled to a specific era or genre places a responsibility on a play and creates expectations before reading or performance. In essence, it disrupts the artistic integrity through preconceived notions of a play because of a simplified label."[citation needed][4]

[edit] The "In-Yer-Face" ("In Your Face") style of writing

[edit] Sources

In the early 2001 play Japes, by Simon Gray, Michael Cartts, a middle-aged author, raves against that new kind of writing. 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? They meant "I've fucked you and now I need to fuck you again, and possibly a few more times after that and I'll be jealous, insane with jealousy if anyone else fucks you" [. . . .] All they do is fuck each other and all they talk about is how they do it, and who they'd really rather be doing it with or to—and they don't cloak it in their language [. . . .] No words that even hint at inner lives, no friendships except as opportunities for sexual competition and betrayal, no interests or passions or feelings, as if the man were the cock, the cock the man, the woman the cunt, the cunt the woman, and the only purpose in life to ram cock into cunt, jam cunt over cock [. . . .] And you know—you know the worst thing—the worst thing is that they speak grammatically. They construct sentences. Construct them! And with some elegance. Why? Tell me why? (Little pause.) Actually, I know why. So that the verbs and nouns stick out—in your face. In your face. That's the phrase, isn't it? That's the phrase! In your face!
   
”

[edit] People associated with in-yer-face theatre

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ Boston University International Programs: Academic faculty including a brief biography of Aleks Sierz.
  2. ^ See Lizzie Loveridge, Review of Japes, CurtainUp February 8, 2001.
  3. ^ "News 2002: 'Shocking' Plays have Academic Appeal," press release, University of the West of England, August 30, 2002.
  4. ^ For further information about the two-day conference, see Saunders and D'Monté:

    Despite its title, the conference also became a forum in which the current state of new writing in British theatre was discussed. David Eldridge, in the opening address, saw many of the plays from the period as a direct response from 'Thatcher’s Children' - the generation who had grown up in a period in which the British Left seemed fractured and directionless, the Cold War escalated and free market economics brutally re-shaped our society and culture. 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.

[edit] References

[edit] External links

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