The term "in-yer-face theatre" has been used to characterize and account for the myriad of shocking elements found in Sarah Kane's plays. The term was not linked to a movement or a formal set of principles, but rather was a term originated by critic Aleks Sierz to describe a particular aesthetic that he saw as emblematic of British drama and cinema in the mid-1990s.
Other works besides the plays of Sarah Kane that Sierz grouped in the "in-yer-face" category include Trainspotting, Mojo, The Pitchfork Disney, Closer, and The Beauty Queen of Leenane. He argued that "in-yer-face theatre" was not simply invested in shock for shock's sake, but was actually a searing comment on and critique of modern society and its pretenses. Sierz said of the category, "In-yer-face theatre was never a movement and I've never said that it was. You can't sign a manifesto, buy a membership card or join a march in favour of in-yer-face theatre and, as I never tire of explaining to the people who email me about it, in-yer-face theatre is not an actual theatre building, nor is it a theatre company. […] Instead, in-yer-face theatre is both a sensibility and a series of theatrical techniques."
In-yer-face works are connected by their use of visceral and at-times-shocking imagery, their unflinching approach to vulgarity, and their stripped-down and hyper-theatrical rendering of the everyday. Sarah Kane is considered one of the main pioneers of in-yer-face work, and in an article for The Artifice, Rachel Elfassy Bitoun writes of Kane, "Kane’s work deals with themes such as sexual desire, death, pain, redemptive love and psychological and physical suffering. The poetic intensity of her language explores the use of extreme violence in a new form of theatre, which deconstructs conventional stage practices. Kane suffered from severe depression through many years of her life, but kept writing, and her own life experiences acted as a reservoir of inspiration for her plays. She originally wanted to be a poet, but found herself unable to express her feelings through poetry. Theatre allowed her to convey her deepest thoughts because, as she once wrote: ‘theatre has no memory, which makes it the most existential of the arts’."
