An Example Of Usage Of Violence In In-Yer-Face Theatre: Pillowman

Drama is the one of the instrument to express the feelings, desires and ideas of humanbeing. Throughout the history it is the fact that individual’s conflicts within himself, within society, within the authority are the subject of drama. In 21st century a new movement, in –yer-face theatre, is seen in British theatre which challenges the distinctions such as human/animal, clean/dirty, normal/abnormal, good/evil etc. In-yer-face theatre aims to show the dark side of individual through using shocking techniques, provacative language and abnormal setting etc. The playwrights give especially the physical and psychological violence directly to the audience to confront them by showing pain, humiliation and degradation. They try to show that violent actions go beyond words and thus can get out of control. In-yer-face theatre is about intimate subjects, it touches what is both most central to our humanity and most often hidden in the daily life. In this theatre the playwrihgt especially studies the themes that are forbidden with shock tactis. It forces the audience to look at ideas and feelings that people normally avoid because they are too painful, too frightening, too unpleasent or too acute. It employs shock tactics to underline disturbing subjects or to explore difficult feelings. Shock is one way of waking up the audience. Thus the playwright prefers to use vioelence as a too. Violent actions are shocking because they bereak the rules of debate, they go beyond words and tuhs can get out of control. Violence onstage also distrubs when the audience feel the emotion behind the acting, or catch themselves enjoying the violence vicariously. Martin McDonagh, one of the contemporary Irısh/English playwright is known as one of the most important playwright of in-yer-face theatre. He is known with his play Leenane Üçlemesi/Leenane Triology in Turkey, also writes the play Pillowman that he deals with violence in society especially in the family in a fairy tale atmosphere that shocks the audience/reader. He deals with subjects which are taboo in society that the audience are not familar to see such things on the stage. In this play two detectives question a writer for some of his stories resemble recent child murders. The hero, Katurian, is a writer who has been arrested by the police and detective in a totalitarian state. His crime is not, as we initially assume, political subversiveness: it is that his short stories, dwelling on persecuted children, bear a resemblance to some child murders. Although Katurian protests his innocence, it transpires that his retarded brother committed the crimes. The question facing Katurian is whether he should sacrifice his own life and that of his brother in order to ensure the preservation of his stories. McDonagh uses fairy tales of Katurian beside this main theme and gives the violence of individual through these stories. The main subjects or victims of these stories are just the innocent children that deepen the feeling of hatred, anger, etc. The aim of this study is to analyse the play Pillowman regarded as one of the in-yer-face play, in terms of violence that begins in family, and questions the place of vioelence in individual’s life and at the same time the freedom of individual, his responsibilities in the societiy, govermental terror, the relation between the individual and government, the role of government and family on the identity, the responsibility of the writer in the society.