''Only love can save me and love has destroyed me'': Interpersonal and self-inflicted violence in Sarah Kane's theatre

6 Chapter I The 1990s’ London theatre scene and the shock of ‘In-Yer- Face’ theatre 1.1 A short step back in time After having spent some hours wandering among London’s streets and neighbourhoods, it would be hard to deny that today this city is the great capital of European theatre. Both students and tourists remain astonished as they realise how England encourages the dramatic art and its artists to regularly produce something new. This statement can be confirmed by the enormous amount of drama students who arrive from all over the world to audition for Academies of Dramatic Arts such as the LAMDA or the RADA (two of the most prestigious and oldest drama schools in the country), or by the millions of pounds earned every year by West End’s globally acclaimed productions. The incredible variety of shows offered nowadays by London’s stages would probably not be as wide as it is today if it was not for the large number of new talents, writers and new ideas that appeared in the last decade of the twentieth century. The legacy of the “nasty nineties” 1 still influences directors, actors and playwrights of the new millennium. The avant-garde called ‘In-Yer-Face’ theatre or ‘New Brutalism’, which will be shortly outlined, is a part of this legacy. Actually, it was this phenomenon that saved British theatre writing from mediocrity and staleness. And within this phenomenon, someone had enough talent to go beyond ‘In-Yer-Face’ theatre and beyond every label, speaking of the power of love and hope through the staging of violence, explicit sex, pain and cruelty: Sarah Kane. In this chapter I will describe briefly the several trends characterising drama in England at that time, especially London, but before this description I propose a short panoramic 1 Aleks Sierz, In-Yer-Face Theatre : British Drama Today, London: Faber and Faber, 2001, p. 30