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: [6] The influence of North American plays and Scottish theatre [ edit ] If a play is good, it breathes its own air and has a life and voice of its own. What you take that voice to be saying is no concern of mine. It is what it is. Take it or leave it.’ Works Cited The Life of Stuff and In-Yer-Face Theatre – Theatre503 The Life of Stuff and In-Yer-Face Theatre – Book online or call the box office 020 7978 7040". theatre503.com. Archived from the original on 4 March 2016 . Retrieved 31 May 2017. Sierz, Aleks (March 2001). In-Yer-Face Theatre: British Drama Today. London: Faber and Faber Limited. pp.215–219. ISBN 0-571-20049-4.

a b Sierz, Aleks (2013). The Theatre of Martin Crimp (Seconded.). Bloomsbury Methuen Drama. pp.48–49. ISBN 978-1472517012. a b Sierz, Aleks (2001). In-Yer-Face Theatre: British Drama Today. London: Faber and Faber Limited. pp.38–39. ISBN 978-0-571-20049-8 . Retrieved 12 November 2020. a b c d " 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). a b c Sierz, Aleks (2001). In-Yer-Face Theatre: British Drama Today. London: Faber and Faber Limited. pp.234–235. ISBN 978-0-571-20049-8 . Retrieved 12 November 2020.The last key event Sierz cites is the death of Sarah Kane in February 1999 [33] which he has referred to as "a convenient end point". [34]

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.) Martin Esslin, The Theatre of the Absurd, 3rd ed. With a new foreword by the author (1961; New York: Vintage [Knopf], 2004). 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. 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.

When confronted to the difficult issue of conceptualization and categorisation, a play or a form of theatre can easily find itself crushed under expectations and responsibilities generated by its attribution to a specific genre. The report on the conference published by Writernet stipulates that ‘ it disrupts the artistic integrity through preconceived notions of a play because of a simplified label. Plays and playwrights risk being annexed or ‘ghetto-ised’ when given a superficial monolithic focus.’ Thus critics have contemplated the works of the people associated with in-yer-face theatre through the lenses of different pre-established theories, such as metaphysical theatre, postmodernism, Artaud’s theatre of cruelty and Lacan’s post-structuralism. But in-yer-face theatre desired to claim its own existence outside any previous literary and cultural thesis. Yet Sierz accepted the restrictions of the label and recognized in-yer-face theatrical practices as London-centric and limited in their scope. Thus, it has mainly remained a British experience, and although it has expanded abroad, its international impact is quite narrow, mostly reaching Anglo-Saxon countries. Many well-known places have welcomed in-yer-face plays, such as the Royal Court Theatre, the Bush Theatre, the Hampstead Theatre, the Soho Theatre, the Theatre Royal Stratford East, the Tricycle, the Finborough and the Almeida, all based in London. It spread in other English cities like Manchester, Birmingham, Newcastle, Bolton and West Yorkshire, and widened to Edinburgh and to America. Phaedra’s love by Sarah Kane, Arcola Theatre Sept/Oct 2011. Photo credits: Simon Kane Sierz, Aleks (March 2001). In-Yer-Face Theatre: British Drama Today. London: Faber and Faber Limited. p.36. ISBN 0-571-20049-4. In the 1990s, a revolution took place in British theatre. Out went all those boring politically correct plays with tiny casts portraying self-pitying victims; overthrown were all those pale imitations of European directors’ theatre; brushed aside were all those shreds of self-regarding physical theatre and long-winded, baggy state-of-the-nation plays.

It might seem strange to attribute so much time and effort to in-yer-face theatre, given that the movement—in contrast to the rest of the history of drama—is a flash in the pan. So what is its legacy? Or, to be more frank: why should we care?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. [13] [14] Ridley identifies himself as a contemporary of the Young British Artists (also known as the YBAs). [15] These artists are regarded to have started with Damien Hirst's exhibition Freeze in 1988 [16] 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". [7] 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. [17] 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." [6] The murder of James Bulger [ edit ] 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. [5] History [ edit ] Aleks Sierz's 'five mighty moments' [ edit ] 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 included Martin Crimp's play Attempts on her Life as one of the "mighty moments" in the development of in-yer-face theatre. Performed in 1997 at the Royal Court, Sierz described the premiere production as "an event that secured [Crimp]'s reputation as the most innovative, most exciting and most exportable playwright of his generation." [29] Presented by Crimp as "seventeen scenarios for the theatre", the play has been cited as a pioneering work for its unconventional form and structure. Sierz has described the play as "a postmodernist extravaganza that could be read as a series of provocative suggestions for creating a new kind of theatre. The recipe was: subvert the idea of coherent character; turn scenes into flexible scenarios; substitute brief messages or poetic clusters for text; mix clever dialogue with brutal images; stage the show as an art installation. The playtext doesn't specify who says which lines, but Tim Albery's production brought out the acuity and humour of Crimp's writing, with its characteristic irony, and its pointed comments on the pointlessness of searching for a point." [30] Sierz has called Attempts on Her Life "one of the most influential pieces of contemporary theatre" [6] and has lauded the play as being "Crimp's masterpiece", "the best play of the [1990s]" [29] and stated in 2005 that the play "has a good claim to be considered one of the very best British plays of the past 25 years". [31] Decline of in-yer-face theatre [ edit ]