Theatre History Overview - Part 105 - In-Yer-Face Theatre

In yer-face-theatre is a term applied to many plays written in Britain during the 1990s. The term refers to plays that were written in order to present vulgar, shocking, and confrontational material on the theatrical stage. This was usually done by young playwrights of the time. Aleks Sierz called it "theatre which grabs the audience by the scruff of the neck and shakes it until it gets the message."

The reason for the style is that they wanted to involve the audience by making them feel the emotions that come with the extremes of distressing issues.

The languages of such plays was often raw and course. Swear words were often used liberally throughout the scripts. Uncomfortable stage images were also presented. Things such as rape and cannibalism may have been shown on the stage without any censoring.

Some people claim that Aleks Sierz coined the term "in-yer-face theatre," however he denies this. He claims that he adopted the term from people that were already using it and he was only the first to celebrate the form and popularize it. It seems that the first coinage of the term "in-yer-face theatre" may have happened in November 1995 in an interview between Sarah Hemming, a critic with Financial Times and the director and playwright Anthony Neilson.

Some people may refer to in-yer-face theatre as new brutalism. However, the reason that in-yer-face theatre works better is because it doesn't describe just the content of the play. It also describes the relationship of the stage to the audience. New brutalism would describe the content of the play. Some people see in-yer-face theatre as a renewal of Theatre of Cruelty. However, theatre of cruelty depended more upon visuals while in-yer-face theatre depends both upon visuals and the language used.

Some of the significant plays of this genre are Blasted by Sarah Kane, Shopping and Fucking by Mark Ravenhill, and Infidelities by Richard Zajdlic. In 2002, a conference was held on the form of in-yer-face theatre. At that time, it was acknowledged that the form was a historical phenomenom. While this seems to be true in general, at times, playwrights may still write in this form.

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