Generational Politics: The In-yer-face Plays

Abstract

In the mid-1990s, a new impulse shook up British theatre and altered its direction. Young and unknown playwrights working in small-scale venues associated with new writing confronted audiences with amoral characters, shocking scenes of violence, and crudely explicit language. Sarah Kane, who has become an iconic figure of the post-Thatcher generation, was the first of these young playwrights to gain widespread attention, though the initial public reaction was almost unanimously negative. When Kane’s play Blasted was performed at the Royal Court Theatre Upstairs in 1995, critics catalogued its surreal but explicit acts of violence, noted the inexperience of the 23-year-old playwright, and condemned the play as a juvenile attempt to shock audiences. The play turned into a cause célèbre with extraordinary media attention, defences of the play by prominent playwrights, sold-out performances, and a new interest in theatre by younger audiences. The turbulent reception of Kane’s debut play focused public attention on the presence of young dramatists and the urgency of their voices. The apparent drama of youthful anger breaking through a miasma of tradition may have owed more to the received memory of the angry young men of the late 1950s than it did to the actual unfolding of events in the 1990s. However, it did create the condition for recognizing writers born around 1970 as a generational cohort, and it did encourage those writers to express their desires, fears, and anger in terms that can be identified with a particular historical moment.