The Search for Epic Drama: Edward Bond's Recent Work

The Search for Epic Drama: Edward Bond's Recent Work PHILIP ROBERTS In our recent study of Edward Bond's works for the stage, we noted in the Preface: "Given that Bond is a developing writer, this book is hardly the last word.'" Since writing The Bundle (July-October 1977), Bond has completed Orpheus, "a story in six scenes," which, with music by Hans Werner Henze and choreography by William Forsythe, was performed by the Stuttgart Ballet Company in March 1979. Orpheus was written between December 1977 and February 1978. After Orpheus came a full-length play, The Worlds, written during Bond's tenure of the Northern Arts Literary Fellowship in the universities ofDurham and Newcastle, and first performed in March 1979 by a cast of students at the Newcastle Playhouse. The Worlds was subsequently performed by the Royal Court Theatre's Activists Youth Theatre Club at the Theatre Upstairs in November 1979 and received its first professional production at the New Half Moon Theatre, London in June 198I. Published with The Worlds was an important group of theoretical writings, developed over two years, and titled The Activists Papers (see note 13 below). A libretto, The English Cat, followed The Worlds . It was written between March and May 1979 with music again by Henze and, after a series of postponements, is to receive its premiere at Schwetzingen in May 1983. Two more full-length plays followed. Restoration: A Pastoral, written between July 1979 and October 1980, received its first performance at the Royal Court in July 1981. Summer: A European Play goes into rehearsal in December 1981 for production in January 1982 in the Cottesloe auditorium of the National Theatre. In note form in April 1980, Summer was completed in January 1981. As I write, another play, "The Human Cannon," the first notes for which are dated July 1979, is in progress. The catalogue above illustrates both a remarkably steady output of work and emphasises the truth of my opening sentence, for in these works, Bond has developed the theoretical and practical range ofhis work to a remarkable degree. Edward Bond's Recent Work 459 In all his work, Bond has concentrated upon fundamental themes: the urgency of the time in a world poised to destroy itself; the necessity for realisation and action to meet such imminent danger; the prevailing and insidious effect of outworn political mythologies; the need to understand and interpret fruitfully the burden of the past, most particularly the recent past; and the insistence that, despite the horrors of our century, it is still absolutely possible for the species to remake itself and survive. For, "Our understanding of man is so radically changed that we need a new vision ofhim - a new art that will enable him to know himself. I do that, or I fail as an artist: I would have merely picked among the dustbins of the past for a few scraps from a feast to give us the illusion we may still eat like lords."'It will be small comfort to Bond that recent events in Britain appear to underwrite the ideas in his plays. The attempted censorship of Brenton's The Romans in Britain under, be it noted, an act never designed with the arts in mind; the arbitrary destruction by the Arts Council of some of the best theatre groups in the country; the inevitable consequences of a rigidly monetarist national policy - high unemployment, high inflation and riots on the streets; most threatening of all, the wastage of money in the pursuit of an even more aggressive nuclear posture, and the tacit encouragement of a climate which would virtually guarantee nuclear war - all these are developments more sharply apparent in Britain during the last two years. All these, now focussed in a clearer manner than before, are at the root of Bond's work. Whether set in Japan, Europe or the U.S.A., in the seventeenth, the eighteenth or the tum of the nineteenth centuries, the plays from the earliest to now address themselves totally to the contemporary crisis. The debate, to which his plays contribute, is finally about survival. In Orpheus, survival is not simply living. It is remaking the...