In-yer-face theatre is a term used to describe a confrontational style and sensibility of drama that emerged in Great Britain in the 1990s. This term was borrowed by British theatre critic Aleks Sierz as the title of his book, In-Yer-Face Theatre: British Drama Today, first published by Faber and Faber in March 2001. An adjunct faculty member in Boston University's London graduate journalism programme, and co-editor of TheatreVoice, Sierz uses in-yer-face theatre to describe work by young playwrights who present vulgar, shocking, and confrontational material on stage as a means of involving and affecting their audiences. Etymology With respect to "in-your-face", Aleks Sierz wrote: Sierz has been mistakenly cited as coining the term "In-yer-face theatre", saying that "Although I certainly was the first to describe, celebrate and theorise this kind of new writing, which emerged decisively in the mid-1990s, I certainly did not invent the phrase." In his piece "A brief history of in-yer-face theatre" Sierz outlines a number of instances where the phrase was used directly or indirectly by others prior to him popularising the label. In 1994 Paul Taylor in his review of Philip Ridley's Ghost from a Perfect Place described the violent girl gang in the play as "the in-yer-face castrating trio". In response to Trainspotting being performed at the Bush Theatre, critic Charles Spencer wrote that "You may not like these in-your-face productions; but they are quite impossible to ignore." Later that year when the play transferred to the West End, The Times'''s Jeremy Kingston remarked that the previous two productions of the play had brought "actors within inches of the audience, and such in-yer-face realism". During an interview in November 1995 the playwright Anthony Neilson remarked that "I think that in-your-face theatre is coming back — and that is good." Sierz has stated that "As far as I know, this seems to be the very first coinage of the term "in-your-face theatre"." About a month after this interview the critic Ian Herbert started using the phrase "in-yer-face" in various columns of the publication Theatre Record, for which he was the editor. Sierz Remarked that Herbert "chose the more direct "in-yer-face" formulation over the more staid "in-your-face"". After Herbert's writings in Theatre Record the phrase began to be used by other critics and, according to Sierz, "By the time Mark Ravenhill's Shopping and Fucking opened at the Royal Court in October 1996, the expression was spreading