Reporting from the In-Yer-Face conference

In-Yer-Face conference, a dramaturg’s view
by Hanna Slättne

In September 2002 the University of the West of England hosted a conference on British drama in the 1990’s, named after Aleks Siertz’s book ‘In-Yer –Face Theatre’ (2001). I only attended the second day of the conference[1] in Bristol, but after studying Abigail Gonda’s response to both days in Writernet’s newsletter, I have found my observations to be very similar.

The conference delegate kept returning to problems with the category of ‘In-yer-face’ theatre, a term coined in the 90’s to describe a wave of new writing dealing with contemporary society. Writing in what Siertz sees as a post-ideological society this theatre is experiential and emotive, adopting a confrontational and violent style to explore the zeitgeist. Problems arise from Siertz’s study as it focuses on only a few of these playwrights and new writing development in the 1990’s, to the exclusion and marginalisation of other writing.

This label, absorbed into the new writing parlance, has been to the detriment of the chosen plays in spite of their being dramaturgically different in structure, literary and conceptual merit. They are treated more or less as a coherent group; not so much by Aleks Siertz himself but as a consequence of being labelled under the term ‘In-yer-face’. This was illustrated in the chosen papers for the conference, concerning themselves in particular with Sarah Kane but also with the plays of Mark Ravenhill and Jez Butterworth.

From a dramaturg’s point of view - and from that of the network - a key debate at the conference surrounded discussions concerning the direction of new writing in the present theatrical climate. In the plenary session at the end of the conference the playwright David Grieg outlined a vision of a ‘rough theatre’ inspired by his experiences in Palestine, where theatre exists in the midst of and for a community under attack by bullets and bulldozers. ‘Rough as in a rough draft’, Grieg explained, in a space far away from ‘bullet hole chic’ of today’s new writing spaces.

This rough theatre, resistant rather than political, is a theatre of liberty far from the smooth theatre machinery of the lottery funded new writing houses with their recognisable styles. It is a theatre responding to a need and working against what Grieg sees as the right-wing theatre’s strongest message, a message in which resistance is seen as useless, as psychopathic, and therefore made impotent. Grieg mentioned examples of this in recent new writing.

He believes that theatre is one of the best places for resistance against the management of our imagination by global capitalism, as it is a space that cannot be globalised by the very nature of the space-time-audience-performer relationship. This rough theatre is written, rehearsed and performed fast; it is unfinished, childish, transcendent, cheap, spiritual and unsuccessful. Using Adorno’s metaphor of ‘a tear in the fabric of meanings’ this theatre’s task (according to Grieg) is imagining the unimaginable.

I found myself being seduced by Grieg’s passion and vision at first; but in Palestine the need which theatre can respond to is very direct and part of an everyday living environment. The need in the UK is less direct, very complex and multi layered. It is quite a task to recognise the need and address it without undermining other needs in society. This is a problem I found with many of the plays under the In Yer Face label and one which many of the speakers at the conference highlighted again and again.

As Gonda points out in her conference report, apart from not having taken into consideration the economical survival of those involved in any rough projects, I feel that this idea of theatre making does not take into consideration the nature of today’s audiences, nor the cultural context in which we operate. I find when going to see plays whether in the institutions or on the fringe that the biggest challenge is how to creatively and aesthetically expose the tears in the fabric of today’s issues, not only to actually imagine the imaginable but to make its staging sharp, original and challenging. The need as I see it is to take time to think seriously about our society and lifestyle, and in order to do that, a company needs to ask questions of itself and of its time and boundaries.

I am not sure that this can done if the theatre is written, rehearsed and performed fast. Maybe I misunderstand Grieg’s idea of unfinished and childish, but too much theatre which I see today is unfinished, it is limping and hesitating and strands of thoughts fizzle out without conviction. The requirement seems not only to be daring enough to confront the underlying intellectual structures and ideas of our media-oriented, commercialised and, if you like ‘post ideological society’ but to allow the opportunity for the company to stop, think and feel. To dig a little bit further down into our experiences, to look for the tears in the fabric and have the time to develop those ideas and to stage them. Then maybe we successfully can imagine the unimaginable.

To have a person dedicated to posing questions of the ‘theatre project’ seems to me an efficient and exciting way of doing this, whether theatre happens in a rough space, or in the ‘smooth’ machinery of the subsidised theatres. The dramaturg can function in all types of projects as there are many different types of dramaturgs. The sooner there is an acceptance of the young, dynamic and freelancing dramaturg who can function in this way on the fringe and in unfinished, childish, transcendent, cheap, spiritual and unsuccessful theatre project, if you like, the sooner we can build collaborative partnerships with directors and companies which can take theatre into exciting new spaces in our culture and theatre practice.

Another comment on the future of new writing at the conference in Bristol came from Steve Waters who warned of the ‘vast enterprise of new writing’[2] wanting to keep plays away from the literary managers and the new writing houses. This is less likely to happen; however, I do believe that the dramaturg is essential in this equation, in the guise of the literary manager who invests more into the production by following it through into rehearsals. That kind of move from literary management through literary dramaturgy to production dramaturgy would need the endorsement of the artistic director, the director and the producer.

The dramaturg as an independent agent working in-between a visiting production and the theatre management as well as in-between the writer and the director on a production would potentially carry another enabling function in the theatre project. The dramaturg would in this position, at a minimum, aim to safeguard the project, the plays’s as well as the theatre’s artistic integrity and at best push the production as far as possible, creating the sharp, challenging and resistant theatre that excites and changes us.

Hanna Slattne Dramaturg

[1] In-Yer-Face? British Drama in the 1990s at the University of the West of England, Bristol, 6-7th of September 2002

[1] Abigail Gonda, Writernet Newsletter Autumn 2002

Posted by Hanna at 05:29 PM in Articles | Email this entry

Comments:

No comments yet.

Post a Comment:

<< Back to main