Theatre as another "mighty moment" for in-yer-face-theatre. Sierz says that Daldry "not only enjoyed shocking people, but was skilled at getting funding for new projects", while being "Adept at playing the media, he not only programmed provocative plays, but defended them vigorously in public". Appointed as the theatre's artistic director in 1992, the first play that Daldry programmed was Weldon Rising by Phyllis Nagy, which Sierz states "sent a signal, influencing other young writers". Sierz credits a turning-point for the theatre when Daldry remodelled his programming policy in 1994 from focusing on American work and "gay physical theatre to text-based drama [where] he decided to stage a large number of first-time dramatists". Daldry said that "From autumn 1994, the Court doubled its amount of new productions in the Theatre Upstairs and focussed on young writers". Daldry's first season of work by new writers in 1994-95 included a number of in-yer-face plays, such as Some Voices by Joe Penhall, Peaches by Nick Grosso and Ashes and Sand by Judy Upton. Sierz notes "the key play" of this season being Blasted by Sarah Kane. Sierz says that "one of the lynchpin moments of the 1990s was the script meeting [at The Royal Court] that decided to stage Sarah Kane's Blasted. Although promoting new writing was a deliberate policy, this meeting might have chosen to pass on Blasted, and the history of the rest of the decade might have been so very different." When Blasted premiered some critics were so offended by the play's depiction of horrors (including physical violence, defecation, rape and cannibalism) that they contacted news outlets to voice their outrage. This caused a media frenzy which resulted in the play being at "the centre of the biggest scandal to theatre since Mary Whitehouse tried to close Howard Brenton's The Romans in Britain in 1981." Sierz says that "Within days after its opening […] Blasted became the most talked about play for years, the hottest show in town. Pretty soon, it became clear that it would be the most notorious play of the decade". Sierz also states that "the resulting media furore of the shocking content and unsettling form of the play put British new writing on the map", with the controversy becoming a "significant cultural moment" and that with Blasted "a new exciting sensibility arrived". While away on a fundraising trip to New-York Daldry was called back to England to