Still In-Yer-Face? Towards a Critique and a Summation

2002 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 17-24 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aleks Sierz
Keyword(s):  
The Past ◽  
British Drama ◽  
New Brutalism ◽  
Sarah Kane

The dramatic upsurge of contemporary new writing on British stages in the past decade, and the emergence of a fresh generation of playwrights led by such talents as Mark Ravenhill, Philip Ridley, Joe Penhall, Phyllis Nagy, Patrick Marber, and the late Sarah Kane, has been variously characterized as the ‘New Brutalism’ or even, in Germany, as the ‘Blood and Sperm Generation’. Here, Aleks Sierz summarizes the argument for ‘In-Yer-Face Theatre’ as the most pertinent and inclusive description for the phenomenon, listing its salient characteristics and suggesting the areas in which it is most vulnerable to criticism. Aleks Sierz is theatre critic of Tribune and writes about theatre for several publications. He is the author of In-Yer-Face Theatre: British Drama Today (London: Faber, 2001) and teaches journalism at Goldsmiths College, University of London. An earlier version of this article was given as a paper at the In-Yer-Face Theatre: Sarah Kane and the New British Dramaturgy conference at Stendhal University 3, Grenoble, in May 2001.

scholarly journals ‘Out Vile Jelly’: Sarah Kane's ‘Blasted’ and Shakespeare's ‘King Lear’

2004 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 69-78 ◽  
Author(s):  
Graham Saunders
Keyword(s):  
King Lear ◽  
Senior Lecturer ◽  
The Past ◽  
Radical Structure ◽  
Dramatic Form ◽  
History Of ◽  
Theatre Studies ◽  
Sarah Kane ◽  
Contemporary Reality ◽  
The University

Sarah Kane's notorious 1995 debut, Blasted, has been widely though belatedly recognized as a defining example of experiential or ‘in-yer-face’ theatre. However, Graham Saunders here argues that the best playwrights not only innovate in use of language and dramatic form, but also rewrite the classic plays of the past. He believes that too much stress has been placed on the play's radical structure and contemporary sensibility, with the effect of obscuring the influence of Shakespearean tradition on its genesis and content. He clarifies Kane's gradually dawning awareness of the influence of Shakespeare's King Lear on her work and how elements of that tragedy were rewritten in terms of dialogue, recast thematically, and reworked in terms of theatrical image. He sees Blasted as both a response to contemporary reality and an engagement with the history of drama. Graham Saunders is Senior Lecturer in Theatre Studies at the University of the West of England, Bristol, and author of the first full-length study of Kane's work: ‘Love Me or Kill Me’: Sarah Kane and the Theatre of Extremes (Manchester University Press, 2002). An earlier version of this article was given as a paper at the ‘Crucible of Cultures: Anglophone Drama at the Dawn of a New Millennium’ conference in Brussels, May 2001. Saunders is currently working on articles about Samuel Beckett and Edward Bond.

Towards a Theory of Cruel Britannia: Coolness, Cruelty, and the 'Nineties

2004 ◽  
Vol 20 (4) ◽  
pp. 354-372 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ken Urban
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
New York City ◽  
Los Angeles ◽  
Cultural Context ◽  
Modern Drama ◽  
Rutgers University ◽  
British Drama ◽  
Theatre Company ◽  
Sarah Kane ◽  
The University

The explosion of ‘in-yer-face’ theatre that dominated the British stage in the 'nineties has had both vocal champions and detractors. Here, Ken Urban examines the emergence of this kind of theatre within the cultural context of ‘cool Britannia’ and suggests that the plays of writers such as Mark Ravenhill and Sarah Kane explore the possibilities of cruelty and nihilism as a means of countering cynicism and challenging mainstream morality's interpretation of the world. Ken Urban is a playwright and director, whose plays The Female Terrorist Project and I [hearts] KANT are currently being produced by the Committee Theatre Company in New York City. His play about the first US Secretary of Defense, The Absence of Weather, will premiere in Los Angeles at Moving Arts Theatre Company, which has named it the winner of its national new play award. At the request of the Sarah Kane Estate, Urban directed the New York premiere of her play Cleansed. He teaches Modern Drama and Creative Writing in the English Department at Rutgers University, New Brunswick. An early version of this article was first presented at the ‘In-Yer-Face? British Drama in the 1990s’ conference at the University of the West of England, Bristol, in September 2002.

‘Look Again’: Indeterminacy and Contemporary British Drama

2011 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 71-85 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emilie Morin
Keyword(s):  
Performance Art ◽  
Conceptual Art ◽  
Marcel Duchamp ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
British Drama ◽  
The Status ◽  
Event Score ◽  
Sarah Kane ◽  
And Performance ◽  
The University

The integration into conceptual art of techniques inspired by Fluxus (the international aggregate of artists who saw indeterminacy as imaginatively and linguistically enabling) has, in turn, given rise to a specific line in British playwriting since the mid-1990s, as evidenced in plays by Martin Crimp, Sarah Kane, and Tim Crouch which gesture towards conceptual art, performance art, and the event score. In this article Emilie Morin brings to light the affinities between this artistic moment in contemporary British theatre and the international avant-garde. She discusses the shared interest of Crimp, Kane, and Crouch in indeterminacy and the fusion between artistic media, paying particular attention to Crouch's redefinition of the status of the modern artwork in his play for galleries England (2007). Critical recognition of the experimental mode in which these playwrights operate has remained subsumed under a non-specific appreciation of their relationship to conceptual art, leaving important questions of form and legacy unaddressed. Here, the proximity between this marginal trend in British playwriting and developments in experimental music and performance art exploring ideas of indeterminacy is highlighted, and the contemporary problematization of performance as event and concept is reconfigured in relation to the legacies of Marcel Duchamp, John Cage, and Fluxus. Emilie Morin is Lecturer in the Department of English and Related Literature at the University of York and the author of Samuel Beckett and the Problem of Irishness (Palgrave Macmillan, 2009). Her research interests lie in European modernism and the avant-garde.

Philip Venables 4.48 Psychosis, Royal Opera House at Lyric Hammersmith, London; Liza Lim Tree of Codes, Musikfabrik, Cologne Opera, Cologne

Tempo ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 70 (278) ◽  
pp. 90-92
Author(s):  
Tim Rutherford-Johnson
Keyword(s):  
The Past ◽  
School Of Music ◽  
Opera House ◽  
Sarah Kane

As the first Doctoral Composer-in-Residence of the Royal Opera House and Guildhall School of Music and Drama, Philip Venables has – some might say bravely – chosen to adapt 4.48 Psychosis, the last play by the late British playwright Sarah Kane. Brave for several reasons. Kane's work is renowned for its naked, sometimes brutal, expression and themes, and the nihilism and violence of her plays have caused critical uproar in the past. Moreover, her estate has until now been understandably protective of her legacy; Venables's opera, premiered in May, is the first adaptation they have permitted, and came with instructions to remain as true as possible to the text.

No Longer ‘The Best in the World’: The Challenge of Exporting British Television Drama

2005 ◽  
Vol 115 (1) ◽  
pp. 33-47
Author(s):  
Jeanette Steemers
Keyword(s):  
Western Europe ◽  
The United States ◽  
Export Markets ◽  
The Past ◽  
Policy Debates ◽  
British Drama ◽  
Specific Factors ◽  
International Success ◽  
Service Channels ◽  
Recent Policy

Within the broader context of globalisation and the transformation of world television markets, this article sets out to address the extent of British drama's international presence, and the factors which either promote or inhibit that presence in Britain's major television export markets in the United States, Western Europe and Australasia. Alongside an examination of recent policy debates, which raised concerns about the exportability of British drama series, this article pinpoints and assesses the culturally specific factors that affect overseas acceptance of British drama. These include the continuing decline of traditional public service channels, the different needs of distinctive nationally based television ecologies, and the growing demand for more locally originated programming. Sales of British drama are stagnant or declining, but alternative export strategies, including coproduction and the export of scripted formats, have had only limited success. Increasingly, Britain's export successes are dominated by programming genres (children's, factual) and entertainment formats, which can be indigenised and adapted by the receiving culture, and in their more ‘universal’ appeal are quite different from the identifiably British detective series, historical and literary-based drama on which Britain's international success was judged in the past.

Observations of the continuum near the galactic centre

1967 ◽  
Vol 31 ◽  
pp. 405
Author(s):  
F. J. Kerr
Keyword(s):  
Galactic Centre ◽  
The Past ◽  
Centre Region ◽  
The Continuum

A continuum survey of the galactic-centre region has been carried out at Parkes at 20 cm wavelength over the areal11= 355° to 5°,b11= -3° to +3° (Kerr and Sinclair 1966, 1967). This is a larger region than has been covered in such surveys in the past. The observations were done as declination scans.

The Origin of the Moon and its Relationship to the Origin of the Solar System

1962 ◽  
Vol 14 ◽  
pp. 133-148 ◽  
Author(s):  
Harold C. Urey
Keyword(s):  
Solar System ◽  
The Moon ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Earth ◽  
Short Period ◽  
Origin Of The Moon

During the last 10 years, the writer has presented evidence indicating that the Moon was captured by the Earth and that the large collisions with its surface occurred within a surprisingly short period of time. These observations have been a continuous preoccupation during the past years and some explanation that seemed physically possible and reasonably probable has been sought.

On The Possibility of an Autonomous History of Modern Southeast Asia

1961 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 73-105 ◽  
Author(s):  
John R. W. Small
Keyword(s):  
Southeast Asia ◽  
Contemporary History ◽  
The Past ◽  
History Of

It is generally accepted that history is an element of culture and the historian a member of society, thus, in Croce's aphorism, that the only true history is contemporary history. It follows from this that when there occur great changes in the contemporary scene, there must also be great changes in historiography, that the vision not merely of the present but also of the past must change.

Stellar Evolution

1962 ◽  
Vol 11 (02) ◽  
pp. 137-143
Author(s):  
M. Schwarzschild
Keyword(s):  
Solar System ◽  
Stellar Evolution ◽  
Space Craft ◽  
New Techniques ◽  
Substantial Body ◽  
Individual Stars ◽  
The Past ◽  
Evolution Of Galaxies ◽  
History Of ◽  
Fast Flow

It is perhaps one of the most important characteristics of the past decade in astronomy that the evolution of some major classes of astronomical objects has become accessible to detailed research. The theory of the evolution of individual stars has developed into a substantial body of quantitative investigations. The evolution of galaxies, particularly of our own, has clearly become a subject for serious research. Even the history of the solar system, this close-by intriguing puzzle, may soon make the transition from being a subject of speculation to being a subject of detailed study in view of the fast flow of new data obtained with new techniques, including space-craft.

Novae in the Magellanic Clouds

1979 ◽  
Vol 46 ◽  
pp. 96-101
Author(s):  
J.A. Graham
Keyword(s):  
Large Magellanic Cloud ◽  
Magellanic Cloud ◽  
Magellanic Clouds ◽  
University Of Michigan ◽  
The Past ◽  
Spectroscopic Information ◽  
Objective Prism ◽  
The University ◽  
Small Cloud ◽  
Low Dispersion

During the past several years, a systematic search for novae in the Magellanic Clouds has been carried out at Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory. The Curtis Schmidt telescope, on loan to CTIO from the University of Michigan is used to obtain plates every two weeks during the observing season. An objective prism is used on the telescope. This provides additional low-dispersion spectroscopic information when a nova is discovered. The plates cover an area of 5°x5°. One plate is sufficient to cover the Small Magellanic Cloud and four are taken of the Large Magellanic Cloud with an overlap so that the central bar is included on each plate. The methods used in the search have been described by Graham and Araya (1971). In the CTIO survey, 8 novae have been discovered in the Large Cloud but none in the Small Cloud. The survey was not carried out in 1974 or 1976. During 1974, one nova was discovered in the Small Cloud by MacConnell and Sanduleak (1974).

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