In-Yer-Face Theatre

This PhD dissertation presents a close analysis of one of the ageless discourses of human life – apocalypse, or the End – within the highly controversial In-Yer-Face drama of the 1990s British stage. The study particularly argues that there is a strong apocalyptic sense in the plays of the decade, and it discovers that the apocalyptic representation within these plays varies. Five plays by three prominent playwrights of the decade are used to illustrate and expand the focus. After a detailed examination of the apocalyptic discourse, it is claimed that Mark Ravenhill’s Shopping and F***ing and Faust is Dead are based on certain philosophical ideas of the End, Anthony Neilson’s Normal and Penetrator reveal the apocalyptic through an extreme use of violence, and Sarah Kane’s 4.48 Psychosis comingles representations of the apocalyptic and psychological trauma.

Ensuing John Osborne's Look Back in Anger in 1956, a new angry young generation has appeared with more provocative and shocking works which have later been called 'in-yer-face' theatre by critic Aleks Sierz. It would not be wrong to say that Sarah Kane with her first play Blasted is the key figure of 'in-yer-face' theatre. Presenting dirty language, sex, nudity, violence on stage are shocking techniques that leave an indelible impression. In Blasted, Kane connects the interpersonal violence with the forgone conclusions of the war which is dirty, and she depicts this idea in a harsh way in which audiences may feel that as if Kane throws up on them while telling her story.The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the characteristics of in-yer-face theatre in Sarah Kane's Blasted.

Abstract
This chapter studies the relations between the experiential theater of Sarah Kane and Hans-Thies Lehmann’s postdramatic theater theory. Postdramatic theater is a new interpretation of the artful representation of the human-being through a set of novel aesthetics that get rid of the traditional dramatic concepts such as authoritative dramatic text, mimesis, representation, and linear and regular flow of events. In this sense, this study examines how and to what extent some significant characteristics of Kane’s plays, especially their breaking away from the text and traditional plot construction, and the apocalyptic discourse are conducive in revealing the postdramatic in Crave and 4.48 Psychosis. (Although the original study is in Turkish, I have its English translation as well. If you are interested in reading the chapter in English please contact me.)

Caryl Churchill's plays thematically embody elements of many-isms such as feminism, sexism, capitalism, and socialism, labeling her dramaturgy as an eclectic combination of social philosophies and political ideologies. Although genuinely creative and original in her writing and theatrical practices, Caryl Churchill does not refrain from making use of preceding European theatrical theory, practice, and culture. In this sense, she is a playwright who benefits considerably from the thematic and technical aspects of the Brechtian epic theatre, which can be observed in her Mad Forest. Sarah Kane, on the other hand, with her experimental dramaturgy that stretches and twists features of realism and naturalism into new post-dramatic forms, is no less different from her predecessor Caryl Churchill in terms of embracing challenging, confrontational ideas and reflecting them in her plays. Notwithstanding with her openness to novel dramatic styles, Sarah Kane, too, acknowledges earlier dramatic aesthetics as seen in her Phaedra's Love, which is an adaptation of the classical Roman playwright Seneca's Phaedra. Likewise, it can be observed that Sarah Kane utilizes certain features of the Brechtian epic theater in her Cleansed. Considering these, this article studies how and to what extent Caryl Churchill and Sarah Kane maintain the Brechtian dramatic elements in their Mad Forest and Cleansed, respectively. By examining this tripartite interaction among Bertolt Brecht, Caryl Churchill and Sarah Kane, the study also tries to reinterpret the dramatic relations among these seemingly distant playwrights of different generations.

This paper figures the new principle for British modern theatre in particular, in the frame of ‘post-traumatic’ history which will free all repressed traumas of history and community that is neglected by them, and be taken back to them with inherent violence of their images. Last decade of 20th century began with the harsh and brutal performances of the group of opposing young directors whom had a problem with their generation. Categorizing them in the same group, Aleks Sierz named them ‘in-yer-face theatre’. This much of violence on the stage exemplified deep traumas which were buried in the traumatic history. Sarah Kane one of the main figures of this group fulfilled the aim of political theatre by the process I borrowed from recent psychoanalytic researches. She wrote her fifth and last play, ‘4.48 psychoses’, just before her suicide in 1999. Mentioning reinterpretation of traumas after the mid 20th century, I focus on Judith Herman and Cathy Caruth’s surveys, as the members of PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder) studies. This group has posed new definition for traumatic dreams and memories by devising the term ‘traumatic reenactment’. The victim who suffers from these kinds of dreams and memories is lack of drama. It seems part of him has died and everything has stood in that horrible moment which belongs to the past. In this sense, this singular possession by the past extends beyond the bounds of a marginal pathology and has become a central characteristic of the survivor experience of our time. Yet, what is particularly striking in this singular experience is that its insistent reenactments of the past do not simply serve as testimony to an event, but may also, paradoxically enough, bear witness to a past that was never fully experienced as it occurred. Curing these traumas, we both urgently demand historical experience. By reinterpretation of new tragedy in the frame of post-dramatic theatre we could access to a traumatic history. The relationship between community and individuals is inseparable and there will be the unity and tension simultaneously between them. By this relation the spectator acts as a witness and even victim since at the same time he was the observant of his own trauma and others too. So, the entire scene becomes traumatic reenactment of a singular traumatic event which has been fixed in the specific moment of past. By reenacting the past, each actor or spectator stays in the liminal state, as a ritual performance. This moment is the moment of pure consciousness. This will be happened by transgressing the boundaries between the Real and reality, as Jacque Lacan mentioned.  Thus, this will be the reborn of the new tragedy which is happened as a tension between two senses: terror/ need. As a result, in the explosion of the Real the missing memory is transformed to narrative language which moves both groups to the shared memory, and this is the aim of political theatre. ‘4.48 psychoses’ can be an appropriate scene for representing this kind of tragedy. 

Keywords: British theatre, tragedy, traumatic reenactment, Sarah Kane, 4.48 psychoses

This study focuses on Philip Ridley's Mercury Fur (2005), a play which explores various meanings related to a physical labyrinth, memory as a maze, mirror/glass as a labyrinth, etc. The present study aims to disclose primarily the significance of the physical labyrinth, presented in Ridley's play mostly as a radical space, a reminiscent of Foucault's "heterotopia", in which the characters cannot be domiciled, but are rather haunted, their inevitable entrapment creating a perpetual existential feeling of anxiety. This study also attempts to discuss the issue of memory as a maze, revealing the playwright's concern for the precariousness of memory while the national or individual identities are pursued. In a space in which everyone and everything is manipulated, Ridley's characters, in their struggle for survival, are forced to renegotiate all the known thresholds of cruelty and transgression in order to discover the path leading them to humanness and morality. PHILIP RIDLEY'İN KÜRKLÜ MERKÜR ADLI OYUNUNDA LABİRENTİMSİ MEKANIN TEMSİLİ Öz Bu çalışma, Philip Ridley'in bir labirent olarak hafıza ve ayna olarak labirent gibi fiziksel labirent ile bağlantılı çeşitli anlamları inceleyen Kürklü Merkür (2005) adlı oyununa odaklanmaktadır. Bu çalışma, öncelikle Ridley'in oyununda Foucault'nun "heterotopya"sını hatırlatan bir şekilde radikal bir alan olarak yansıtılan ve karakterlere yersizliğin ve yönsüzlüğün musallat olduğu fiziksel labirentin önemini ortaya koymayı amaçlar. Karakterlerin kaçınılmaz tutsaklığı onlarda bir varoluşsal kaygı yaratır. Bu çalışma ayrıca labirent olarak hafıza kavramını tartışarak milli ya da bireysel kimlikler konu edilirken oyun yazarının hafızanın güvenilmezliğine dair vurgusunu ortaya koyar. Herkesin ve her şeyin manipüle edildiği bir alanda varoluş mücadelesi veren Ridley'in karakterleri, kendilerini insanlığa ve ahlaka götüren yolu 1 Assoc. Prof. Dr.,

Özellikle arkaik toplumlarda, terminolojide ruh ve gölge kavramları aynı anlamda kullanılmaktadır. Fakat insan, gölgenin kötücül özünü bilinçaltına iter ve reddeder görünür, çoğunlukla gölgeden habersizmiş gibi yaşar. Ancak bu gizli benlik ortaya çıkmak için uygun ortam ve koşulların oluşmasını bekler. Tiyatronun 1990 sonrası İngiliz Tiyatrosu'ndaki hareketlilikler ve özellikle de Suratına (In-Yer-Face) Tiyatro'nun ortaya çıkışı ile seyircisi ile iletişim kurma biçimi değişmeye başlar. Suratına Tiyatro, izleyicisine bastırılmış dürtüsel kodlarla ulaşır ve benliğin bu keşif sürecinde kışkırtan olur, onu katarsise, gölge ile personanın yapay himayesinden kurtararak ulaştırır.

The essay revisits the Gezi Uprising which was sparked as an environmentalist and political protest in Istanbul in 2013 and rapidly spread to many cities and towns across the nation. It explores  the unsavory neighborhood of political forces which have since claimed agency in the movement or, alternatively,  disavowed their implication in it, such as global Regime-Change actors and their financiers, European and North American institutions of Literary Awards and the patterns discernible in their selection of rewardees, performance arts and industry, Islamism and ethnic-identity politics and their global networks , and not the least, the history of the Counter-Revolution.

As a much-discussed part of the human mind, memory today is an interdisciplinary subject studied by a variety of academic fields such as psychology, sociology, psychiatry, cultural studies, and literature. In British drama, it finds a reflection with the term "memory plays" whose representative playwright in the twentieth century is Harold Pinter. On the other hand, it can be observed that Anthony Neilson, emerging as a voice of the British In-Yer-Face drama of the 1990s, makes an emphatic use of memory in his plays like his predecessor. In this sense, this paper argues that Anthony Neilson's playwriting shows resemblances to Harold Pinter's, which is acknowledged as the Pinteresque, that, more specifically, Pinter's Old Times (1971) and Neilson's Penetrator (1993) share much in their use of memory, and analyses the particularities each playwright employs in their utilisation of this concept within their plays.

The essay revisits the Gezi Uprising which was sparked as an environmentalist and political protest in Istanbul in 2013 and rapidly spread to many cities and towns across the nation. It explores  the unsavory neighborhood of political forces which have since claimed agency in the movement or, alternatively,  disavowed their implication in it, such as global Regime-Change actors and their financiers, European and North American institutions of Literary Awards and the patterns discernible in their selection of rewardees, performance arts and industry, Islamism and ethnic-identity politics and their global networks , and not the least, the history of the Counter-Revolution.

CEZARY WAS (Museum of Architecture in Wrocław) / The traditions of the ancient drama as a structure of Mark Ravenhill’s piece Shopping and Fucking

Beside plays of Sarah Kane and Anthony Neilson, performances based on the texts of Mark Ravenhill, especially on his first big play Shopping and Fucking from 1996, are regarded in the contemporary theatre as extremely distinct representations of problems of feelings of alienation and axiological emptiness of residents of big cities. Not denying this opinion it should be noted, however, that despite appearances created, among others, through the use of vulgar language expressions and references to the social situation in the UK after a period of extreme liberalism during the rule of Margaret Thatcher (1979–1990), the drama of Ravenhill in a wide range refers both to issues of substance and basic formal patterns of the ancient drama. Comparison of individual scenes of the piece with the knowledge of the Greek drama clearly indicates that a proper understanding of the author’s presentation is only possible in the context of historical research on the classical traditions of stage works.
Excessive exposure in the piece of the British author issues of sexuality reminds about the sources of the Greek drama inherent in songs and poems in honour of Dionysus. Disgusting scenes of vomiting, murders and mutual instruct aim at shaking the recipient, but also at arousing the feelings of compassion for people who find themselves in a situation of a culpable or non-culpable misfortune. Such function of art would therefore be consistent with Aristotle’s definition of tragedy, which assumed that it is a “representation of action […], which by way of pity and fear leads to the purification of those feelings”. Vicissitudes of characters of the performance start from a wanton conduct of one of them, go through a set of situations in which they defend themselves against the effects of errors resulting from their personal vices, and finally end almost happily. Such a scheme for a comedy also belongs to those described by Aristotle in his Poetics. In addition, any reference to the role of money and describing them as parent for the fate of a man, despite appearances of reflecting the condition of the contemporary world, were also a problem for poets of the ancient Greece. In the end, the thread, running through the entire play, of unceremoniously presented homosexual intercourses (along with a number of their perversions) can as well find its pattern in the Greek art of the Archaic and Hellenistic period.

Przyglądając się motywom samobójczym w wybranych dramatach przedstawicieli ogólnie pojmowanego dramatu współczesnego naturalizmu, stworzyłam dla własnych potrzeb podział ze względu na sposób przedstawiania zjawiska. Wyróżniam trzy typy wykorzystania motywu samobójstwa: „dramat o samobójcy”, „dramat o samobójstwie” oraz „dramat samobójcy” (czyli dzieło uchodzące za list pożegnalny). Dwa pierwsze dotyczą sytuacji, kiedy samobójstwo jest jednym z motywów przedstawionym w kontekście różnych innych problemów dotykających bohaterki i bohaterów. Dramat o samobójcy dotyczy aktu samobójstwa, które jest tłem dla losów postaci. Analizie poddane zostały: „Legoland” Dirka Dobbrowa, „Pasożyty” Mariusa von Mayenburga, „Norway.today” Igora Bauersima oraz „Ścianę” Elfriedy Jelinek. W dramacie o samobójstwie główny nacisk położony jest na samobójstwo, które staje się tym samym wydarzeniem kulminacyjnym, sytuacją graniczną. Dramatem o samobójstwie są wspomniane: „Norway.today” – ponieważ oprócz ukazania postaci samobójców, ukazuje samo samobójstwo (które staje się tematem dramatu), „Pasożyty” – ze względu na pokazane umieranie bohaterów lub ich dojrzewania w umieraniu, „Legoland” – w którym samobójstwo towarzyszy bohaterom akcji. A także „Łucja i jej dzieci” Marka Pruchniewskiego. Dramat samobójcy dotyczy tekstów, w których istnieje tylko samobójca i jego śmierć, a wszystko inne tworzy jedynie absurdalne tło, które potęguje poczucie osamotnienia i bezsilności bohaterki lub bohatera dramatu. W tym przypadku samobójstwo jest tematem, nie tylko motywem. „4.48 Psychosis” jest tekstem, który z jednej strony prezentuje samobójcę, z drugiej zaś samobójstwo. Jednocześnie zyskał on rangę listu pożegnalnego, ze względu na okoliczności swego powstania. Dramat ten ukazał się bowiem już po samobójczej śmierci Sarah Kane.

This chapter focuses on the premiere of Sarah Kane’s plays in Portugal. By considering the intensive and extensive work that the Lisbon theater company Artistas Unidos carried out regarding "Blasted", "Crave", "Phaedra’s Love" and "4.48 Psychosis", as well as Nuno Cardoso’s production of "Cleansed", this chapter relates Sarah Kane’s oeuvre to the Portuguese historical and cultural context. In addition, besides examining how critics reacted to the performances and staged readings, it also explores the impact said oeuvre had on the audience. This chapter concludes with a brief analysis of the repercussion the work of Sarah Kane had on the Portuguese artistic landscape and questions whether or not it would make sense to go back to it almost twenty years later.
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[This chapter is available on: https://www.palgrave.com/gp/book/9783030394264]

The traumatic experience of violence is a predominant feature of contemporary culture and especially in the realm of literature. Yet, love represents the most suitable solution for the human trauma. The paper, therefore, examines how love of different sorts can conduce to the healing of many traumatic experiences in Sarah Kane " s Cleansed. The play is a representation of the human trauma caused mainly by the growing instability during the 1990s which had a profound impact on the whole Europe. It is about a number of characters who live in a university campus, and they are subject to different traumas; but love helps them overcome these traumas in the end. Sarah Kane in her play Cleansed seems to be a more positive and hopeful person regardless of the fact that the first reading of the play may engender the impression that it expresses a sense of loss, trauma, and social disintegration, and this is somehow true.

This article addresses the problematic ontology of postdramatic theatre. In particular, it looks at examples of “in-yer-face” productions, such as Sarah Kane’s 4.48 Psychosis and Cleansed, as well as Caryl Churchill’s The Skriker and Far Away. In doing so, it aims to uncover a novel way of positioning the notion of mimesis within the ontological texture of these non-Aristotelian works for the theatre. Herein mimesis becomes a constitutive principle and a generative procedure that guarantees continuity between disparate entities, such as words and worlds, pre-representational regions and representation, infinite indetermination and finitude. It is similar in form and function to Deleuze’s notions of “expression” and “re-expression” within Spinoza’s substance–essence–attribute and attribute–mode–modification triads as described in Expressionism in Philosophy.

Just as expression carries forward a progression from the infinite to the finite whereby the expressible (substance) becomes expressed sense, so does mimesis assume the role of a generative intermediary in the composition of literary worlds in postdramatic theatre. As a relational and transmissive component, Deleuze’s “expression” does not agree with Romanticist treatments of the term as “the internal made external” but captures the very motion of the expression of substance within what Thacker defines as a regime of “a radical Neoplatonism without a centre.” Thus described, expression becomes a topological progression. It precipitates the emergence of literary worlds from a vantage point of univocity, acting as a fluxional immanent substratum that is fundamentally generous, affluent, and flowing forth.

Assuming this vantage point, one begins to notice that postdramatic works for the theatre—albeit nonsensical to the habitual gaze—exhibit a quasi-causal logic governed by the continual interaction of Deleuzian “expression” and “sense.” This becomes especially visible in “in-yer-face” plays. Rather than explaining such plays in experiential terms, the present paper assumes the stance that their “nonsensical” infusions expose the work of an event of sense within a play’s ontological texture. Confronted with the consolidation of an event of sense within the motion of expression, plays are at pains to readjust, recompose, and thus incorporate the supernumerary within their textual fabric. The result is an inimical, injurious immanence.

“Mark Ravenhill’in Shopping and Fucking İsimli Oyununda Argo Kullanımının Önemi.” “Significance of the Use of Slang in Mark Ravenhill’s Shopping and Fucking” published in a monthly literature journal in Turkish, HECE. Hece: Lisan-ı Erazil II, 14 (166). Ankara, October 2010. 113-16. Print.

This article shows how postdramatic works for the theatre invite us into conceptual regions wherein the distinction between the diegetic and the mimetic modes is effectively blurred. Not only does this interfusion of mimesis and diegesis make the boundaries between the ‘fictitious’ theatrical reality and the non-theatrical somewhat permeable, but it also invites us to re-conceptualize mimesis as an act of production within a work. This auto-generative mimesis accounts for a self-propelled, non-purposive, and fluxional becoming that allows a given arrangement within a play to ever constitute itself anew. In order to arrive at a definition of mimesis as a dynamic constitutive motion from within a work, I look at the generative ontology of philosopher Gilles Deleuze and his concept of ‘expression’. This type of mimesis becomes capable of showing how plays are involved in self-constitutive processes that recompose their fabric from within. In being such, mimesis assumes the role of a generative force in the composition of literary worlds in drama.

..."In such a liquid society, where cruelty, circumstances and demands are so powerfully violent, is it possible for one to mould themselves, or are they, inevitably, moulded by their environment?
“Plasticine” is a deeply humane play, heart-rending but compassionate and tender, qualities one cannot see if one looks only at the cruelty.  The rawness of this play, as it is experienced by the audience, is the same that is experienced by Maxim, the one that drives him to smother his own needs and desires and, in the end, his own identity.
The play and its characters, shape and indirectly define and differentiate themselves through conditions, circumstances, contexts but, most of all, through other people. Thus, highlighting the duality of cruelty and tenderness becomes the main directing objective"...