Mark Ravenhill’s Dialectical Emotions: In-Yer-Face as Post-Brechtian Theater

Abstract

This chapter argues that the In-Yer-Face sensibility can be considered a reinvigoration not only of political drama in Britain at the turn of the millennium, but also of dialectical aesthetics as inspired by Bertolt Brecht. Drawing on Mark Ravenhill’s Some Explicit Polaroids, Hartl proposes a metatheatrical reading to show how the play engages with the question of the forms and functions of Brechtian theater against the background of an experience of ambivalence and uncertainty. What Ravenhill’s work initiates as a result is a fresh approach to Brecht’s legacy based on a revaluation of emotions as dialectical instruments of analysis, critique and change, thereby laying the ground for a new understanding of Brechtian dialectical theater for the twenty-first century.