appear on Newsnight and The World at One to defend the play amid the controversy. Sierz says that with this "Daldry realised his new role. When he defended [Kane], he was also defending himself and rediscovering the Court's mission. The noise of controversy told him that provocation was the right method: as well as bringing in new audiences, it renewed his sense of identity. As the Court rediscovered its roots as a controversial theatre, Daldry became the impresario of in-yer-face drama." Other notable in-yer-face plays that The Royal Court programmed while Daldry was artistic director include Penetrator (1994) by Anthony Neilson, Mojo (1995) by Jez Butterworth, The Beauty Queen of Leenane (1996) by Martin McDonagh, Shopping and Fucking (1996) by Mark Ravenhill and The Censor (1997) by Anthony Neilson. Martin Crimp's Attempts on Her Life Sierz included Martin Crimp's play Attempts on her Life as one of the "mighty moments" in the development of in-yer-face theatre. Performed in 1997 at the Royal Court, Sierz described the premiere production as "an event that secured [Crimp]'s reputation as the most innovative, most exciting and most exportable playwright of his generation." Presented by Crimp as "seventeen scenarios for the theatre", the play has been cited as a pioneering work for its unconventional form and structure. Sierz has described the play as "a postmodernist extravaganza that could be read as a series of provocative suggestions for creating a new kind of theatre. The recipe was: subvert the idea of coherent character; turn scenes into flexible scenarios; substitute brief messages or poetic clusters for text; mix clever dialogue with brutal images; stage the show as an art installation. The playtext doesn't specify who says which lines, but Tim Albery's production brought out the acuity and humour of Crimp's writing, with its characteristic irony, and its pointed comments on the pointlessness of searching for a point." Sierz has called Attempts on Her Life "one of the most influential pieces of contemporary theatre" and has lauded the play as being "Crimp's masterpiece", "the best play of the [1990s]" and stated in 2005 that the play "has a good claim to be considered one of the very best British plays of the past 25 years". Decline of in-yer-face theatre Towards the end on the 1990s there were declining numbers of new in-yer-face plays being performed in Britain. In January 1997 Stephen Daldry said that "When I first arrived