The Rise of In-Yer-Face Theatre

In 1995, Sarah Kane’s Blasted (1995) caused a commotion. The play includes scenes of violence and uses shock tactics. Critic Aleks Sierz makes the claim that 21st Century theatre is interspersed with provocation, only to implode in the 90s. He defines the 90s wave as “Most in-yer-face theatre challenges the distinctions we use to define who we are: human/animal; clean/dirty; healthy/unhealthy; normal/abnormal; good/evil; true/untrue; real/unreal; right/wrong; just/unjust; art/life. These binary oppositions are central to our world-view; questioning them can be unsettling,” (In-Yer-Face Theatre 6).
In-yer-face theatre included nudity, vile language and deliberately broke down the taboos of swearwords. Moreover, one of the most contentious features of the theatre is it use of violence. For example, Anthony Neilson’s Normal (1991) is about a serial killer and includes an extended scene in which he kills one of his victims using an oversize knife.
The subject-matter of in-yer-face theatre is bold and shocking. It presents taboos such as parricide, incest and sexuality. Sierz studies provocative theatre in his book In-Yer-Face Theatre: British Drama Today (2000), where he traces controversial plays and playwrights as early as George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion (1912). He believes the most remarkable event to be John Osborne’s Look Back in Anger (1956). The angry tone of the play and Jimmy Porter’s ranting caused some uneasiness among middle-class theatregoers. Shock came in many forms and playwrights including Joe Orton, Howard Barker and Edward Bond wrote plays notorious for scenes of gratuitous violence. Nonetheless, in-yer-face theatre violence became unprecedentedly unbearable to watch.