3/10/2020 Brief history of In-Yer-Face Theatre - Aleks Sierz

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A BRIEF HISTORY OF IN-YER-FACE THEATRE

Friday 1st July 2016

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Whether or not it really is a foreign country, the past has a tendency to feel like it’s a long way away, and that it needs a tiresome journey to reach
Years pass, and facts we took for granted slip across the horizon. Memories fade. Errors creep in. And oblivion beckons. Ever since the publicatio
my book, In-Yer-Face Theatre: British Drama Today, in 2001 it has been widely assumed that I was responsible for coining the phrase “in-yer-face
theatre”. This is untrue. Not me guv’. Although I certainly was the rst to describe, celebrate and theorise this kind of new writing, which emerged
decisively in the mid-1990s, I certainly did not invent the phrase: indeed, I have made the point (more than once) that my choice of the label “in-ye
face theatre” — as opposed to “new brutalism” or “neo-Jacobean” — to describe this style of avant-garde new writing was precisely dictated by th
that other people were already using the phrase. I did not impose it from above on an already existing theatre phenomenon; I extracted it from
common usage. From below, so to speak. So when was the phrase “in-yer-face theatre” rst used, and by whom? Well, the speci c phrase “in-yer-
theatre” is derived from the general expression “in-yer-face” (often used as an adjective or exclamation in popular culture in the 1990s, sometime
the more genteel form “in-your-face”). Every dictionary now has an entry for this phrase. As regards the speci c label “in-yer-face theatre”, my res
suggests that it began as an adjective used occasionally by theatre critics, was then turned into a rallying cry by at least one theatre-maker, until i
nally matured into a publishing opportunity.

So rst let’s hear from the critics. In April 1994, the Independent’s Paul Taylor reviewed Philip Ridley’s Ghost from a Perfect Place and described the
girl gang as “the in-yer-face castrating trio”. (Incidentally, in his review of the same show the Telegraph’s Charles Spencer used the phrase of “pray
that you won’t part company with your supper”, an image he also used in his reviews of Simon Donald’s The Life of Stu in 1993 and of Sarah Kane
Blasted in 1995.) In the early 1990s, there was much less new writing than in subsequent years, and sometimes weeks went by with very few new
let alone in-yer-face ones, being reviewed. Be that as it may, in January 1995, Blasted opened in the Theatre Upstairs at the Royal Court, although
review used the phrase that had been suggested by Taylor. It’s tempting to call this an oversight, although it clearly wasn’t. Anyway, things got ho
with the arrival of the stage version of Trainspotting, that iconic Generation X story. When in March 1995, Trainspotting visited the Bush in London,
Spencer wrote about the Bush’s staging of “dramas which re ect the violent fragmentation of our times”: “You may not like these in-your-face
productions; but they are quite impossible to ignore.” When, later in the year, the play transferred to the West End, the Times’s Jeremy Kingston
commented: “The two previous productions of the play brought actors within inches of the audience, and such in-yer-face realism is inevitably re
when it is staged, this time by Gibson, for a tour of proscenium arch theatres.”

By now, a theatre maker also steps in. In November 1995, in an interview with Financial Times critic Sarah Hemming, playwright and director Anth
Neilson opined that “I think that in-your-face theatre is coming back — and that is good.” Interestingly, the implication is that this style of drama h
already arrived: otherwise, how could it be coming back? Maybe Neilson was already seeing his back catalogue — Normal and Penetrator — in the
terms. As far as I know, this seems to be the very rst coinage of the term “in-your-face theatre”, and it certainly wasn’t the last. One year later, fo
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example, a Christian theatre group, based in unholy Manchester, was set up, and called itself In Yer Face. It’s a lovely irony that its agenda was qu
di erent from that of the young writers that were emerging on the new writing scene: “Renowned for communicating issues of faith, identity and
skills in a culturally relevant way, the company has long been committed to investing into the lives of young people…”, says its website.

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 t
expression “in-yer-face theatre” an enormous new lease of life, plugging several di erent 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 rst foray was published in January 199
“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 abo
“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 o
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 w
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”.

Then, in May 1996, came Kane’s Phaedra’s Love, her follow up to Blasted — and Theatre Record’s cover announced triumphantly “In Yer Face”. You c
see why: after all, the Jewish Chronicle’s David Nathan’s review included the observation: “Kane, you will remember, wrote Blasted, last year’s sensa
with its baby-eating, eye-gouging, homosexual rape and a lot of other ‘in-yer-face’ activities. Phaedra’s Love is more ‘in-yer-lap’…”, while the Times’s
Bassett noticed how Kane’s play “is in our faces, almost literally as the cast thwack between clumps of seats”. By July 1996, Herbert is referring to
emerging young new writers as the “in-yer-face brigade” and, in the same month, the Financial Times’s Ian Shuttleworth calls the lipstick lesbian m
Voyeurz “so consistently in-your-face (to name only the most northerly region) that it fails utterly to arouse”. By the time Mark Ravenhill’s Shopping
Fucking opened at the Royal Court in October 1996, the expression was spreading rapidly: for example, the Guardian’s Michael Billington called
Ravenhill’s play “a deeply uneven, in-your-face play.” By the nal years of the decade, variations of the phrase were used again and again.

Examples include Herbert’s “This is the territory of Judy Upton, Sarah Kane and our own in-yer-face school (including Crimp himself in Attempts on
Life)” and this summary of the decade by critic Robert Butler: “The rise of ‘in-yer-face’ drama took a play with three asterixes in the title to the new
christened Gielgud Theatre on Shaftesbury Avenue. Mark Ravenhill’s capacity to shock in Shopping and F—ing (1996) was never wholly divorced fr
less appealing streak of puritanism. Blasted, the play that catapulted Sarah Kane to fame in 1995, played in a 60-seat theatre: a smaller seating
capacity, that is, than a double-decker bus.” Oh well, size isn’t everything.

While all this was happening, the original phrase was a common occurence in popular culture. As early as 1991, 808 State named a dance track “I
Face”, and by 1996 the iconic single of the moment of Cool Britannia, the Spice Girls’ “Wannabe” included the lines: “So here’s a story from A to Z,
wanna get with me/ you gotta listen carefully,/ We got Em in the place who likes it in-yer-face,…”. In the Independent newspaper, several reviewers
used it in their descriptions of television shows in the mid-1990s. For example, “[Tony] Parsons sounded as if he were reading out an article from
in-yer-face publication over selected shots of proletarian degradation: peroxide shopgirls tottering down the street, young men at a karaoke nigh
pale, blue-veined bellies that plopped like haggises.” Or “And whether people want this in-yer-face style pantomime when they’re curling up in fro
the box after work is another matter altogether.” It is idle to speculate whether the popularity of the phrase on the Indie’s arts pages helped bring
the attention of theatre critics.

Similarly, the moniker spread through discussions of other art forms: interviewing the Girlie Show’s Claire Gorham in 1996, journalist Janie Lawren
wrote: “Scarcely the most helpful attribute for a show that has been touted as personifying in yer face girl power but is best summed up as the ba
child of Loaded and Blue Peter.” Or how about this review of the lm Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet? “From the opening sequence of a television
followed by a kinetic in-yer-face staccato of imagery, to the softer ballet-like camera work of the passion scenes between the two protagonists, R&
de nitely cinema of cool.” Or this from the BBC? “The Turner Prize could not have been won by a nicer fellow than lm-maker Steve McQueen. Gi
the blanket coverage roused by beaten front-runner Tracey Emin’s in-yer-face stubborn stains, it is an irony that the prize should have gone to an
who avoided publicity and let his work speak for itself…” And this: “But what he [Billy Connolly] is selling is still gritty, in-yer-face-Jimmy Scottishne
which there will always be a market as long as the English are shockable, Americans are prissy and third-generation Aussies are seeking an identi
Not even the cops could escape, as this New Statesman piece makes clear: “He is likely to be younger, better educated (there are now 10,000 grad
cops), less deferential. His style is ‘in yer face’ and he considers himself ‘professional’, not in the sense a doctor is professional, but as a footballer
Last but not least, in his book on The English (1998), Newsnight broadcaster Jeremy Paxman describes Manchester’s Moon Under Water pub as “no
in-your-face and on a Saturday evening packed with hundreds of young men and women getting aggressively drunk”.

Not surprisingly, the idea of writing a book about in-yer-face theatre was originally Ian Herbert’s. After all, he had used the term several times in p
A former publisher, as well as a critic and editor of Theatre Record, he was in a good position to see a market opportunity. After the Royal Court re
of Jez Butterworth’s Mojo in October 1996, he spoke to Peggy Butcher, drama editor at Faber, saying that — in the words of his 2009 email to Sier
he “had the germ of a book that would address what was by now an identi able movement. I said I’d call it ‘In-Yer-Face Theatre’. Peggy was intere
and asked me to put in an outline, at which point I realised that a book would mean actual work, something to which I am not accustomed. Your
interest in new writing at the time made you an obvious candidate for the job, and I suggested to you that you take it on, while apologising to Peg
pulling out and telling her that I thought I had found a very good replacement — you.” His ironic tone notwithstanding, it is clear why Herbert was
busy to embark on a book: not only was he editor of Theatre Record, but also Honorary Secretary of the Critics’ Circle and was about to be made
president of the International Association of Theatre Critics.

Journalism, and that includes theatre criticism, is a thing of the moment; publishing takes time. A long time. Once the editor (Herbert) had put the
(Sierz) in touch with the publisher (Butcher), it would have been great if things had moved fast. But they didn’t. For example, it wasn’t until about
1997 that Sierz started using the term “in-yer-face theatre”. In one article, published in July 1997 but written much earlier, he was still talking abou
writing rather than in-yer-face theatre: “Despite regional gloom, London theatres produce so many smart and snappily written plays by 20-year-o
that the 1990s may one day be seen as a decade of great new writing.” However, it was when he came to write up a key event, David Edgar’s ‘Abo
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Now’ — the Eighth Birmingham Theatre Conference (held on 11–13 April 1997) — that he rst started using the expression “in-yer-face theatre”. H
used it in an article for the Independent and then in a report for New Theatre Quarterly. Sierz met Butcher at the ‘About Now’ conference but in sum
and autumn 1997 he was still thinking of writing a much more general survey of theatre in the 1990s, including chapters on Shakespeare, classica
revivals, physical theatre, as well as new writing. Only one chapter was to deal with what his draft called ‘From Old Country to Cool Britannia (in-y
face theatre)’. The plan was simply to discuss Blasted, Mojo and Shopping and Fucking.

Some time in autumn or winter 1997, Sierz and Butcher talked more seriously about the book, although the journey from Herbert’s original idea t
Sierz’s book contract was a rather long one. Early on, Butcher vetoed the idea of calling the book Cool Britannia, on the grounds that in a couple o
years no one would have any respect for that label — and how right she was. In December 1997, Sierz was writing to Simon Trussler, editor of Ne
Theatre Quarterly, about the idea of submitting “my next piece, on ‘New writing in contemporary British theatre’”, to him. In January 1998, he was t
an academic, Nadine Holdsworth, that “I am also putting together some sample chapters and a book proposal for a publisher, so thanks for your
encouragement.” Then, in April 1998, Sierz got himself an agent, John Parker of MBA, and began to expand the chapter on in-yer-face theatre into
book proposal. In June, he went to the ‘European Theatre: Justice and Morality’ conference at the University of London’s Senate House, and gave a
paper on “Shocking and Fumbling: Censorship and British Theatre Today”, which included an account of the censorious reception of Kane’s Blaste
Ravenhill’s Shopping and Fucking. This event was the rst time Sierz had to defend the work of the 1990s experiential and in-yer-face playwrights
against academic skepticism. In fact, when Sierz interviewed Kane on 14 September 1998, he showed her this paper and she commented on it. At
time, although many critics had been won over by her more overtly literary Crave, there were very few academics who took her work seriously. Ap
from a couple of articles, and an interview in Heidi Stephenson and Natasha Langridge’s Rage and Reason: Women Playwrights on Playwriting, nothi
had been published in the academy. It was a gap that Sierz was keen to ll. By August 1998, he had submitted a pitch to Faber & Faber about bot
general book on British theatre in the 1990s and one on In-Yer-Face Theatre, and after Butcher said she preferred the in-yer-face pitch, they bega
discussing the structure and content. A contract must have been signed in August or September 1998. By then, Sierz was already busy reading pl
researching information and interviewing playwrights. In the end, and during the course of 1999, Butcher read two complete drafts of the entire
and gave detailed notes on its content. Meanwhile, Sierz’s rst academic article about cutting edge new writing, ‘Cool Britannia? “In-yer-face” writi
the British theatre today’, was published in New Theatre Quarterly. This was based on that original chapter about Blasted, Mojo and Shopping and
Fucking.

But the reason that Sierz wrote the book originally was not only because of the theatrical impact of the shocking new plays which exploded onto
London theatre scene in the 1990s, but also because of the interest shown by Herbert and Butcher, who both acted as his mentors. He also had s
other inspirations: early on, he wanted to write a book similar to Martin Esslin’s The Theatre of the Absurd and to John Russell Taylor’s Anger and Af
Likewise, he was fed up with seeing books by complacent British academics, which had titles such as Contemporary British Theatre, which were ab
people such as Edward Bond or Arnold Wesker or John Arden, playwrights who were surely no longer “contemporary” any more. Sierz still thinks
many academic books about theatre are worthless, full of jargon about theory and really thin on the meaning of plays and the experience of goin
the theatre. So he clearly thought he could do better, and this antagonistic attitude sustained him during the time, in 1998 and 1999, when he wa
researching and writing the book. He had a point to prove, and that kept him going. He was also helped by David Tushingham, a critic and transla
who had also edited a book called Live 3: Critical Mass (which featured extracts from what the cover called “the current EXPLOSION in British
playwriting”, published in 1996). Some time in 1998 or 1999, Sierz had an email exchange with him in which he argued for the use of the concept
experiential theatre as the de ning aesthetic of 1990s cutting edge drama, and Sierz had no problem with accepting this. It was, after all, Sarah K
who stressed the importance of this de ning idea of compelling drama.

Sierz nished the book in January 2000, and it was published by Faber and Faber in March 2001. But by the time it came out, the phenomenon th
was describing had already begun to slide back into the past. Such is the fate of all contemporary interventions. In fact, Sierz has since argued on
various occasions that the year 1999 (when Kane committed suicide) could be used as a convenient end date for the rst, hot, phase of 1990s
experiential theatre. And indeed, the passing years seem to support this suggestion.

By the 2000s, mentions of in-yer-face theatre became more and more numerous. Theatre makers embraced it, whether snarling with anger, as in
Simon Gray’s Japes (“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!”)
with self-re exive humour, as in April De Angelis’s stage direction in A Laughing Matter: “Act Two, Scene Three: In-Yer-Face Theatre.” In one intervie
2003, Bush supremo Mike Bradwell said, “The line between being exciting and o ensive is a ne one, new writing must be provocative but we hav
entertain. Relentless In yer face Theatre rapidly becomes tedious.” Writers have tended to be skeptical of the label. Joe Penhall, for example, says
I was put in the book, there’s a chapter on me. He’s kind of opportunistic, Aleks Sierz — and he opportunistically wrote, ‘Joe isn’t really part of the
yer-face crowd, but I want to write about him anyway.’” Ironically, having helped coin it and popularise it, Neilson soon grew sick of the label: in 20
he wrote: “I will presume that you know about the ‘In-yer-face’ school of theatre, of which I was allegedly a proponent.” In the same year, howeve
journalist Brian Logan reminded us: “For the rst decade of his career, Neilson was the myth incarnate. He pioneered the so-called “in-yer-face” t
movement of the 1990s; Ravenhill and Sarah Kane were his protégés. His breakthrough play, Penetrator (1993), de ned the decade’s visceral, bloo
and-sperm theatrical mode. In 1997 he had a porn star defecate on the West End stage in The Censor. His 2002 drama Stitching involved Auschwit
sexual role-play and a woman who sews up her vagina.”

By 2009, Frantic Assembly could look back and remember that “The term ‘In Yer Face’ theatre was already very popular at that time [summer 199
and it was felt that, even looking at it [a dance move] diagrammatically in our notebooks, the idea was in danger of being ‘In Yer Face’ made terrib
real.” Since 1996, the year that Herbert popularized the phrase, there has even been an In Yer Face theatre company, which suggests that this
sensibility can be godly as well as unholy. Throughout the past decade, reviewers have continued their love a air with the phrase: “[Gregory] Bur
meteoric rise and a higher rate of ‘****s’ and ‘****s’ per 100 words than Irvine Welsh make him a press o cer’s dream, at a time when the bruta
of ‘in-yer-face’ theatre seems to be the sine qua non for a theatre wishing to appear young and relevant,” wrote one critic. In 2005, Billington wrot

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review of David Eldridge’s Incomplete and Random Acts of Kindness, “Ten years ago, the Royal Court was the focus for what became known as ‘in-ye
face’ theatre.”

Other commentators valued the phrase as an index of the zeitgeist. For example, in his history of pop and rock music, nicely named Black Vinyl, W
Powder, Simon Napier-Bell wrote: “This was the nineties — the ‘lottery age’ — the ‘in-yer-face’ age. Modesty and reticence were out.” In 2002, journ
David Lister assessed Channel 4’s The Tube: “Jools Holland and Paula Yates presented the coolest youth programme ever broadcast: irreverent, in
face, image-obsessed, but with a saving sense of humour.” By 2007, the Sunday Times printed the following: “As soon as he came out of art schoo
however, he set about provoking the hell out of anyone who was watching with a series of creepy portrayals of masturbating men. The most
memorable of these in-yer-face onanists, a blobby chap in a spooky painting called The Big Night Down the Drain, is apparently a portrait of the Iris
poet Brendan Behan, who had turned up on stage in Berlin so drunk that he didn’t realise his ies were open. According to Baselitz, Behan’s dang
howitzer seemed to bring a sense of occasion to the event.” Thank you, Waldemar Januszczak.

And the wider population loved the idea of being in-yer-face too. One BBC messageboard reaction to the incident in 2001 when John Prescott pu
a protestor inspired this re ection: “Despite clear video evidence, to the contrary showing an out-of-wellied crowd of about 30 disgruntled Welsh
farmers, in ve years there will be about 50,000 people able to tell you how they were there, in the front line of British politics’ ‘In Yer Face’ Years.
2003, Tony Thorne’s Buzzword Quiz had the following de nition: “In yer face (end of British reserve and new enthusiasm/assertiveness in public a
private behaviour) also terms like ‘up for it’, ‘upfront’, ‘go for it’ — slogans expressing aggressive individualist ambition and self-ful lment. In yer fa
started as a phrase that was used to criticise aggressive behaviour. In black American street slang, you would hear ‘she was in my face’ or ‘get out
face’ meaning that someone was being too assertive or intrusive or pushy. Now in media-talk and casual conversation it’s used almost approving
meaning very con dent and powerful and uninhibited (and that last one is the clue — it’s the British throwing o their traditional reserve and
shyness).” So, it’s part of our national character now. Other usages are understandable, if a bit bizarre. Two examples from 2005: “In Yer Face are
sussex based function/covers band o ering a refreshing alternative to the traditional show band formula” and “IN YER FACE is a relaxed cruise clu
open from 6pm until 9pm every Monday and Wednesday”. And how about this for sports equipment: “Carlton In Yer Face Badminton Racket.” Gr
stu . All in all, the past two decades were the years of in-yer-faceness, and theatre was certainly not isolated from the general temper of the time

© Aleks Sierz, June 2009

An earlier version of this account appeared on the In-Yer-Face Theatre website.

a laughing matter about now anthony neilson april de angelis bill morrison blasted books brian logan charles spencer david edg

david eldridge david nathan david tushingham experiential faber frantic assembly generation x ghost from a perfect place

heidi stephenson ian herbert in-yer-face theatre incomplete and random acts of kindness japes jez butterworth joe penhall

john russell taylor judy upton kate bassett mark ravenhill martin crimp martin esslin michael billington mike bradwell mojo

nadine holdsworth natasha langridge paul taylor peggy butcher phaedra's love philip ridley royal court sarah hemming sarah kane

shopping and fucking simon donald simon gray simon napier-bell simon trussler stitching the life of stu theatre criticism

theatre critics theatre record trainspotting

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