Abstract
In this chapter Boles describes his introduction to In-Yer-Face Theatre via the 1997 Royal Court productions of Mark Ravenhill’s Shopping and Fucking and Martin McDonagh’s The Beauty Queen of Leenane. After citing these two plays as his impetus to become an In-Yer-Face scholar, he discusses his disappointment when Aleks Sierz’s announced in 2002 that the In-Yer-Face movement had officially ended, especially because he had seen so few of the original productions. However, Boles argues that while the In-Yer-Face movement may be over, the influence from it continues to permeate mainstream culture, and he cites the post-In-Yer-Face careers of Jez Butterworth, Martin McDonagh, and Joe Penhall as examples of this point. Rather than being In-Yer-Face, they have now become “Part-of-the-Crowd.”
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Notes
- 1.
For more detail about these two productions, see William C. Boles, “Violence at the Royal Court: Martin McDonagh’s The Beauty Queen of Leenane and Mark Ravenhill’s Shopping and Fucking,” Theatre Symposium VII (1999): 125–135.
- 2.
Six years later I would once again see an audience again react with multiple screams of horror during McDonagh’s The Pillowman .
- 3.
Aleks Sierz, “Still In-Yer-Face: Towards a Critique and a Summation,” New Theatre Quarterly 69 (2002): 17–18.
- 4.
Other academics were also using this new material in the classroom. Mark Ravenhill recounted an experience in 1998 at the National Student Drama Festival, when he introduced himself to a group of students in a pub:
There was quiet. And then—oh, horror!—eyes rolled to the ceiling. “Oh, you,” groaned one of the students. “We have to study you.” En masse they moved swiftly away. Who wants to stand next to their reading list when they’re having a pint with mates? I was shocked. I hadn’t realised how quickly a play could move from the stage to the classroom. After all, it had only been two years since the play premiered in a small studio theatre. (Mark Ravenhill, “In 1998 I was suddenly very, very cool,” Guardian, December 10, 2006, https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2006/dec/11/theatre1 [accessed March 1, 2019].)
- 5.
Richard Alleyne, “Audience walks out from ‘depraved’ Royal Shakespeare Company production,” The Telegraph, October 24, 2011, https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/theatre/theatre-news/8844513/Audience-walks-out-from-depraved-Royal-Shakespeare-Company-production.html (accessed July 5, 2018).
- 6.
Anthony Neilson, “Marat/Sade director: ‘I prefer the critics on Twitter,’” Guardian, October 25, 2011, https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2011/oct/25/rsc-director-attacks-print-critics (accessed July 5, 2018).
- 7.
Laura Barton, “Why do plays about sex and violence written by women still shock?” Guardian, February 27, 2016, https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2016/feb/27/why-do-plays-about-sex-and-violence-written-by-women-still-shock-sarah-kane-cleansed (accessed 15 July 2018).
- 8.
Boles compares the narrative structure of these two new works by Ravenhill and McDonagh with their attention-grabbing plays Shopping and Fucking and The Beauty Queen of Leenane. See William C. Boles, Review of Mark Ravenhill’s The Cane and Martin McDonagh’s A Very Very Very Dark Matter, Miranda: Ariel’s Corner 18 (2019), https://journals.openedition.org/miranda/18344.
- 9.
Aleks Sierz, “What Happened to In-Yer-Face Theatre?” April 1, 2006, http://www.sierz.co.uk/writings/what-ever-happened-to-in-yer-face-theatre/ (accessed 2 June 2019).
- 10.
See Jez Butterworth, Mojo & A Film-maker’s Diary (London: Faber & Faber, 1998): 143–176.
- 11.
Suzy Evans, “Jez Butterworth Spills All His Secrets in ‘The Ferryman,’” Hollywood Reporter, May 10, 2019, https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/playwright-jez-butterworth-spills-all-his-secrets-ferryman-1209467 (accessed July 30, 2019).
- 12.
Rupert Christiansen, “If you’re the greatest you must prove it,” The Telegraph, January 11, 1997, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/4707096/If-youre-the-greatest-you-must-prove-it.html (accessed January 26, 2016).
- 13.
See, among many, Maeve McDermott, “The growing racial backlash against ‘Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri,’ explained,” USA Today, January 3, 2018, https://www.usatoday.com/story/life/entertainthis/2018/01/03/growing-racial-backlash-against-three-billboards-explained-explaining-growing-backlash-against-oscar/977024001/ (accessed July 23, 2019); Joe Sommerlad, “Three Billboards is not a racist film,” The Independent, January 27, 2018, https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/three-buildings-outside-ebbing-missouri-racism-row-twitter-martin-mcdonagh-oscars-frances-mcdormand-a8178861.html (accessed July 23, 2019); and Alissa Wilkinson, “How Three Billboards went from film fest darling to awards-season controversy,” Vox, February 22, 2018, https://www.vox.com/2018/1/19/16878018/three-billboards-controversy-racist-sam-rockwell-redemption-flannery-oconnor (accessed July 23, 2019).
- 14.
For further discussion of McDonagh’s view of film versus theater, see William C. Boles, “Murder Amidst the Chocolates: Martin McDonagh’s Multifaceted Uses of Death in In Bruges,” in Narrating Death: The Limit of Literature, ed. Daniel Jernigan, Walter Wadiak, and W. Michelle Wang (London: Routledge Press, 2018), 176–179.
- 15.
Fintan O’Toole, “Martin McDonagh,” BOMB, no. 63 (Spring 1998), https://bombmagazine.org/articles/martin-mcdonagh/ (accessed April 20, 2016).
- 16.
Aleks Sierz, In-Yer-Face Theatre: British Drama Today (London: Faber & Faber, 2000), 4.
- 17.
Sarah Tejal Hamilton, “Joe Penhall—the interview Part 2,” Writerly, April 24, 2017, https://writerlyblogblog.wordpress.com/2017/04/24/joe-penhall-the-interview-part-2/ (accessed July 5, 2018).
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Boles, W.C. (2020). Introduction: Reflections on In-Yer-Face from the Other Side of the Atlantic. In: Boles, W. (eds) After In-Yer-Face Theatre. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-39427-1_1
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