for this is that in-yer-face theatre has done its job — it has kicked down the door of complacency in the theatre, and, where it led, others have followed. In-yer-face writers give theatre the oxygen of publicity, and help inspire the diverse New Writing culture that has emerged since." In 2004 Sierz hosted a debate on New Writing, which featured the playwrights Mark Ravenhill, Simon Stephens and Richard Bean as panellists. An audience member asked the panel if they thought that in-yer-face theatre "was now no longer at the forefront" of new writing. Bean responded by saying "I think it's quite true that things have moved on". He explained how it no longer is seen as shocking or cutting edge to have sex scenes in plays, stating that "I suppose there came a point where if you went to The Royal Court and somebody got their knob out and spat in their hand, and you think 'oh here we go again'". Sierz added to this comment by jokingly remarking how previously "there was a time in the 1990s that if you didn't see an anal rape on stage, you asked for your money back". Bean pointed out how his 2004 play Honeymoon Suite contained "two fucks and a wank" yet critics felt it was a "very commercial play" and thus wondered why it was "being put on on the main stages of The Royal Court?" Bean felt that this reaction from critics demonstrated how "obviously all that kind of gross behaviour is now perfectly acceptable" in plays. Stephens, who has tutored at The Royal Court's Young Writers' Programme, responded to the question by saying that: "It's fascinating now giving copies of Blasted to a group of young writers in The Young Writers Programme, and they find it completely alien and completely tedious and completely disinteresting. […] They're responding to it with anger, which I find really bracing." He went on to say that he thought this anger towards the play was because "in the wake of [Blasted and] that initial rush of very strong [in-yer-face] plays, an awful lot of lesser plays were written by pale imitators so that images of anal rape became tedious and became kind of signatures. And I think they're maybe not distinguishing between the people who are original with those plays and their imitators, and they just find it a little bit gratuitous […] not