Your problem, Buckle, is that you’re dealing with someone who has been involved in theatre for around 40 years. In-yer-face may impress pre-pubescents, but that’s about it. It’s pretty much like Playboy (to heterosexual males): the first time you see it you get a hard-on visible from Pluto, but after a few, it’s just (yawwwnnn) Playboy. Same with crap plays . . . get it?

It is not the artist that is living four decades ago, by all respect I think it is you. Why all this taboo and awe?
There are cartoons of ministers nearly everyday on our local newspapers – isn’t that supposed to be banned too or criticised?
If you don’t like the artist’s art or simply don’t understand it, DON’T GO AND SEE THE EXHIBITION!!!!

[Daphne – I think you need to take a couple of courses, one in reading and the other in logic. Nowhere did I say that this installation should be banned or that people shouldn’t see it. I said that it’s time the artist moved on, that Woodstock was 40 years ago and that the sort of thing he has done no longer has shock value. It is merely tiresome and irritating. The sort of art we are talking about here is art pared down to a message. It is a language, a form of communication, and I think I am more than qualified to speak about that in the social context. It is what I do, but in visual rather than written form, which is why it is far less effective. People who can read prefer to get their political messages in words rather than in convoluted images.]

[Daphne – It isn’t art criticism. It’s social observation. You might also be surprised at what I do know about art criticism.]

HP Baxxter:
Now you almost make me want to watch it just to see if that is true.

Oh yeah, Pat, sure. Like “Nine Songs”, the silliest film ever made. Ever.

On the other hand, In-Yer-Face theatre also attracts performers who love the attention and gossip that this genre generates.

There is always a twist… Lars von Trier – of Dogme 95 fame – was a few years ago about to produce a series of intellectual pornographic films for women, although I’m unsure what happened to the project.

All right, Adrian, let’s be frank: I’d rather watch porn. At least it doesn’t pretend to be intellectual.

@Aleks Sierz

Do you seriously think that an old fart like me, who’s been around, can be shocked, unsettled and disturbed by the language, frankness and questioning of moral norms in a production put on at St. James Cavalier? I have been dragged to one of these unmemorable plays, and I nodded off.

I’ll tell you what does slightly shock me (actually – not really – because I’ve grown accustomed to it from university students) and that is when people like Adrian Buckle unabashedly plagiarize from websites like Aleks Sierz’s In-Yer-Face Theatre site.