Edward Bond

Wesley Ralston

Watching The Broken Bowl as a teenage secondary school student was my opening to Edward Bond and The Big Brum plays. Yet, I had no idea who Edward was at that point. Fast forward several years to studying Drama at Newman University and thank you to my lecturer Kate Katafiasz I was introduced once again to Bond’s work. We started to study his works and his comments on the fractures of society. As a result, all the memories of The Broken Bowl’s simple, effective set, the brilliant four actors and the character Girl running out into the world beyond the stage hoping for change came flooding back. I could never articulate at school why the play impacted me like it did. Only now I think I saw myself in that character and I am grateful to Edward for this gap to explore who I was.

I also sit here feeling very lucky that Bond came and delivered a workshop at Newman and I could then send my questions to him afterwards. To get a response that was honest and inspiring shaped my dissertations and has fed into every venture I have taken on since. When I read Edward had died, I was numb. As I write this, I am hopeful… as there are so many who are, and so many to come who will be, inspired by Bond’s legacy. I will forever en-act for Drama’s potential because of Edward Bond. Thank you Edward. 

Benjamin May

When a friend emailed me to say Edward had died, I didn’t believe it. Absurd. How could Edward be dead? How could that be possible? If he had died that would mean a young undergraduate would never again open a typed letter from the playwright he had studied at 6th form college with total surprise. That would mean the author of one of our most seminal plays, the play that changed the censorship laws in this country, would never again sit in a small amateur theatre and give notes to the actors about the words he had written. That would mean the patron of a young people’s theatre company would never again come and see their work nor write a stunning programme note for the audience. That would mean that the teacher who was working on the role of objects with his year 10 drama students would never again get the most insightful email about how objects interrogate people not visa versa. That would mean we’d never again hear the husband chuckling about how him and his wife got chocolates whilst travelling through Paris in a hurry. That would mean the young undergraduate who grew up to become a teacher, director, partner and father would never again receive the Christmas poem from Great Wilbraham he looked forward to. Yes, it’s absurd that none of these things will happen again. Edward has died but these moments are alive today in all that he did. In the letters he wrote, in the actors’ notes he gave, in the young people’s theatre companies he supported, in the classrooms he inspired and in the plays he wrote and yes in those many many relationships he had both near and far.

May his brilliance, rigor and rage be cherished and championed by us all. Edward, thank-you.

Lewis Frost 

I first met Edward Bond at the National Association for the Teaching of Drama conference in October 1989. I was working with the Actors Group theatre company at the time and following that with the Dukes Theatre in Education Company, which like many others was soon under threat of closure. He gave a key input to the conference - “a potted history of drama”, it was a history of how society has organised itself. It was fascinating and it had the effect of making one see drama’s current situation with a newness and urgency. His conference speech provoked and inspired in equal measure. I started exploring his essays and notes, and I began writing myself, not a play at that point but a manifesto for theatre, written against a backdrop of the closure of the country’s last TIE companies. In the ensuing period Edward was to become a leading voice in the defence of theatre-in-education. 

As a playwright he didn’t just concern himself with the art and craft of writing. He was as invested in every aspect of the production of the play, directing, design, through to how it would engage the audience, and what would happen in the gap in which the audience, the actors and the play met. He seemed to be continually formulating new theories of drama as though reality was always running ahead too fast, which of course in a way it was. Each new theory never superseded or invalidated the previous ones, but added to them. His older ideas and polemics are as relevant as if he’d just written them and I find myself going back to them for sustenance. He most recently thought of the audience as the play-within-the-play. It was another way of articulating the new drama he understood we so desperately need. The audience, being the ‘play-within-the-play’, is how the meaning of their daily lives comes into the gap, it’s how they give the drama “its vulnerable objectivity, it’s cultural presence”, (prompted I believe by Hamlet where the play within the play communicates the truth of the situation), something which he felt that the entertainment industry shuts out from its stories. 

By this time, (I won’t say late in his career, he would despise that term) Bond had already parted company with the mainstream of English theatre, even though he had produced writing widely acknowledged as among the best in post-war Britain. It was after the RSC put on his play the Great Peace (1985), which he said was a “grotesquely bad production” that was the last straw according to him. He began to think that the English main stages could not be trusted to perform his work as he envisaged it and decided to focus on productions in France and Germany. The exception to this was his long collaborative relationship with Big Brum whom he wrote for, and which is where I saw his later work performed. Big Brum’s stage was one of the few places where you could see his work produced in the UK. 

More recently in 2019, I staged a production of his play, ‘Have I None’. We began a regular correspondence. I found Edward’s generosity towards new writers and directors, underscored his passion and striving for a new form of drama. But I believe that it was also that he simply wanted to be useful as an artist, to theatre practitioners and his audiences. His depth of feeling led him to be regarded by some as too serious and a little po-faced or worse. But he regarded humour and comedy as importantly as intelligence in what makes us human, and saw himself as a comic writer. In fact, the farcical nature of ‘Have I None’ was one of the principal reasons I enjoyed working with actors on it. 

Edward’s rigour and exactitude when channelled into his directing work was not always appreciated by some actors. Whilst I never had a first-hand experience of his directing in the rehearsal room, I suspect he was operating in an entirely different paradigm from the more conventional modes many actors are used to. I would have loved to have seen him direct one of his plays, not least because as he said, questions about acting technique could only really be answered in the rehearsal room. After I sent him the reviews I received from my first staging of ‘Have I None’, he picked up on one which referred to me as an ‘actor’s director’. This is what he wrote to me. 

“I see from the review that you are an actor’s (sic) director. (Read actors’). You couldn’t be more highly praised. Please pass my thanks and congratulations to the actors and company.” His playful shifting of the punctuating apostrophe to the possessive in “Read actors’ ”, hinted I suspect at a very different approach. 

In November 2022 I spent a morning in conversation with Edward Bond on camera. This was in advance of a further staging of ‘Have I None’ and the film was to be screened after each performance. He answered my many questions with gravitas and humour. His reactions were often unpredictable, he was always on his guard against the habitual behaviour of others, which he understood as a product of society’s implicit ‘training’. He didn’t challenge or provoke for the sake of it, but he did to take an impish delight in contradicting the conventional wisdom. 

“Shakespeare changed my life, I’d ban him”. He grabs your attention with that statement. But did he really just say that? He chuckles as if he has surprised himself as much as you and then goes deeper to elaborate the why of it. 
“Shakespeare couldn’t possibly ask the right questions as the world has changed so much . . . . why were there no world wars before World War One? Because the situation didn’t make them, the situation has changed therefore Shakespeare can’t really ask the questions that are important for us today.” He was frequently paradoxical in this way, by his own admission often deliberately so. “Listen to the audience, respect the audience and don’t entertain them. So that’s what I believe… no I don’t, because I (myself) like being entertained.” His programme notes were littered with paradoxes and reversals, frustrating for some, but for many including me, they were markers of the rich trails which could be followed. 

With all his theorising I never found Bond’s plays to be didactic. He himself never claimed to have all the answers, but he was most alert to and never turned away from the problems that are so commonly ignored. He leaves behind a tremendous body of written plays, letters, notes and essays on theory. He died in the saddle, with plans to pen a new series of comedies. He said, there is still so much that he has to write and share. He is irreplaceable. It is a huge loss. 

Lisa Bolgar
I grew up in Great Wilbraham and met Edward in 1968 when I was 15. For the next 3 years he was my mentor. I had been at the convent school in Cambridge since the age of 5 and my ideas had been shaped by the nuns. (As well as by my father, an academic, and by EM Forster) Edward gently challenged every idea I had. I would go to his house, walk his dogs and then sit by him as he talked, discussed ideas, read to me and played records. He taught me about his plays, his ideas and views on society.He played me numerous classical records moving into John Tavener's The Whale. Not surprisingly the nuns were alarmed by the changes and complained to my father that I was trying to be an undergraduate before my time. 

For me it was a wonderful privilege to know Edward. I am incredibly proud of the memories he has given me.

Françoise Gomez - Arts and cultural education advisor, Paris 

One day, for some reason, I pushed open the door of the Racine cinema and bought a ticket for a film: Walkabout, by Nicolas Roeg. This story of Western children abandoned by a mad father in the middle of the Australian desert, rescued and then initiated by a young aborigine, could have been a kitschy eco-bluette. But it was astonishingly profound, and the dialogue sounded like Euripides. I remember staying with my pencil in my hand to note the name of the scriptwriter: a certain Edward BOND. Edward Bond, with whom I would later have the chance to talk, as Pascal Charvet and I were going to put him through "baccalauréat"'s theater programs. Thanks to Alain Françon in France, he was one of the greatest dramatic explosions of the last twentieth century. A great voice fighting for peace and social justice. As I walk up the aisles of the Hiroshima Peace Park, it is his work that I hear and see. This eulogy comes as no surprise, because Edward has just died. It's a mourning for anyone who sees theatre as something other than "entertainment". So for us.

Enzo Gattuccio, Playwright, New York
Edward and I never met, though over the last years of his life I was fortunate to number among his many correspondents. He was immensely generous in answering my questions about his work, and the art of drama. 
I believe Edward's plays and ideas represent the most significant achievement in English-language drama of the past several centuries. In gratitude and respect, I will share a few of his insights from our letters:

Working in contemporary theatre is often frustrating. Its like being shipwrecked on a raft in an ocean. You see an Island and paddle towards it. You step onto the shore. The island sinks out of sight. You swivel round for your raft and paddle. They are disappearing over the horizon.
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It must be creepy and depressing to live in a country where Donald Trump is not in prison or a lunatic asylum but is an active politician. If he enters it again The White House should be painted black.
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Writing about drama and human theory. Collectively we face the biggest human crisis ever—all the trouble spots have become one.  When I thought of writing to you it occurred to me that when a dramatist writes a play he or she casts their net into the sea to catch fish but now they catch the sea. Shakespeare and the Greeks couldnt answer the human question but they knew they knew it wasnt how much money will this make at the box office. When Shakespeare died there was a rumour he had been found drunk dead in a ditch.
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At the moment drama in the UK is in a wasteland. Drama and democracy go together – the Greeks knew that drama creates the form of human subjectivity that is necessary for civilized society, for democracy.  But we now have Trump, Boris Johnson, Truss (if you’ve heard of her) and the political gangsters, drug and financier crooks who run almost everywhere in the world. [...] I wrote Human Cannon especially for the main stage of the National Theatre in London but the Artistic Director decided to stage Guys and Dolls instead.

Adrian Buckle Unifaun Theatre Productions, Malta

I met Edward Bond in 2001 when, on the initiative of the local Education Division, he came to Malta to lead some workshops in his plays and theatre ideology. I admit I had not heard about him before and so attended these workshops without knowing what to expect.

The first workshop I attended was held at the University of Malta for students and Drama teachers. I attended as one of a handful of Drama teachers employed with the Education Division of Malta. My colleagues found his ideas and methodology too radical, some said they were too negative and too violent. On the other hand, I was enthralled. It was in those days that I was toying with the idea of branching into Theatre Production but did not know exactly what kind of theatre I wanted to do. I remember though that I was tired of what was being staged in Malta at the time as I found it far too safe and commercial. Edward's work hit me like a thunderbolt. Here were plays that spoke about the truth of our times, that challenged the status quo and that engaged with the soul. I attended all his workshops in Malta.

I was then a member of a local amateur Drama club and I quickly asked them to direct AT THE INLAND SEA for them. However, the committee of the club, after reading the play, told me that I would not find an audience for the play and that it was too different from their style.

I ended up forming my own theatre company, Unifaun Theatre Productions in 2005. The effect of my productions was immediate as people flocked to my plays and thus changed the Theatre landscape in Malta. I introduced Malta to playwrights like Mark Ravenhill, Philip Ridley and Martin McDonagh, none of who were ever performed locally.

It took me until 2013 to garner courage to produce a Bond play. I met then Big Brum Artistic Director Chris Cooper, who was in Malta on invitation of the British Council to work in schools on Edward's methodology. On learning who he was I discussed with him the idea of producing a Bond play in Malta and we finally decided that the play should be OLLY'S PRISON.

OLLY'S PRISON was met with scepticism by the local reviewers. THey described it as "violent" and not adapted to a Maltese audience. I had invited Edward to Malta to view the opening of the show. After the First Night we held a Q&A with Edward in the theatre. Someone in the audience challenged Edward that his plays were unlawful and that we were meant to observe the Law. I remember that an until then quiet Edward Bond suddenly sprang to life and shouted at his interlocutor, "Auschwitz was lawful! Does it make it Just?" A silence pervaded the room but those words continued to mark my admiration for him.

I kept in touch with Edward after that through email and finally convinced the local national theatre to commission him to write a new play for Malta. The result was THE PRICE OF ONE, a wonderful parable of Madness provoked by Violence and War. It was the first time that a playwright of Edward's calibre was commissioned in Malta and audiences flocked to the theatre. This time the reception was warmer and audiences understood the true greatness of the man.

Edward later commented on the play: "The play that you commissioned for your theatre. Inevitably I had forgotten parts of it and its total effect. Re-reading it from the advantage of distance, was a revelation. I think it is a play for our times.UNIFAUN Theatre puts the London West End and the New York Broadway to shame and I really mean that. Malta can br proud of its theatre."

I went on to produce CHAIR in 2023 with a female Billie. I asked Edward to have an autistic actor play the role and he agreed. The effect was tremendous. The actress playing Billie went on to win BEST YOUNG PERFORMER at the National Arts Awards for her portrayal of the character. We had people in the audience in tears at the ending of the play. I forwarded a video recording of the play to Edward and he replied positively, making me the proudest person alive.

Edward's work has influenced me immeasurably. His notes on Drama, his plays and his poems are a beacon in the darkness of our times. We live in time where we are teetering on WW3. In my country, most companies continue to produce farces that lead to nothing and that, in Edward's words, "leave the audience more confused and numb at the end."

Edward's work shines as a beacon of hope.

I appeal to everyone to read his notes, stage his plays and pass on his work to the younger generations. It is the least we can do. We owe him that much.

Jeremy Warr, Freelance Theatre Arts Worker, Co. Durham

I was in touch with Edward for a few years in the mid 80's. He was extremely generous with his time and his work. While a drama student I spent a whole day with him, working through a long series of questions about almost every play he'd written up to then; all of which he answered with his usual calm, impassioned clarity. Afterwards we corresponded about the plays he was then writing - his were either pithy paragraphs typed on blank postcards, or draft scripts with an honest request for feedback. He also gave me permision to put on the first production (after the RSC's premiere) of 'Red Black & Ignorant' - the first of the War Plays Trilogy - when I was the Director at Sheffield Crucible's Youth Theatre.
His understanding of what theatre could and should do, and his skill and technique in how a play can be together, have been a huge influence on my own approach, and still are. And I'm still rereading his plays forty years later.

(That first day I met him, when I arrived in his Cambridgeshire village, I stopped a local man and gave him the name of the house to get directions. "Ah" he said slowly - "that will be Mr Bond" as he pointed to the house. I've always wondered since what the locals made of having this intense and intensely political playwright in their midst!)