Edward Bond

Edward Bond (born July 18 1934) is a English playwright, theatre director, theorist and screenwriter. He is the author of the play Saved (1965), the production of which was instrumental in the abolition of theatre censorship in the UK. His highly controversial work has met with extremes of reaction, from vilification to claims that he is the world's greatest living dramatist.

First plays

In 1958 Edward Bond was invited to join the first writers' group at the Royal Court Theatre in London after submitting two poetic plays, The Fiery Tree and Klaxon in Atreus' Place. Neither has been professionally produced, nor published.

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Bond's first produced play, The Pope’s Wedding, was given as a Sunday night "performance without décor" at the Court in 1962. This is a naturalistic drama set in then contemporary Warwickshire. Bond's next play, Saved (1965) put him on the map theatrically as well as becoming one of the best known cause célèbres in 20th century theatre history. Saved delves into the lives of a selection of working class South London youths, who, suppressed by a brutal economic system, have lost sight of their humanity and become immersed in promiscuity, co-dependence and murderous violence.

Related Topics:
The Pope’s Wedding - Cause célèbre

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Since the eighteenth century, plays for production had been subject to the Lord Chamberlain's approval, although a loophole in the Licensing Act of 1737 allowed for private performances of unapproved plays. Among the many excisions the Lord Chamberlain demanded to Saved was the stoning to death of a baby in its carriage. Bond refused to alter a word, claiming that removing this pivotal scene would destroy the play. The Royal Court became a temporary, members-only club, producing Saved as the "English Stage Society." The Lord Chamberlain prosecuted the English Stage Society, the first club to be arrested for producing a banned play. Despite a passionate defence from Laurence Olivier, then Artistic Director of the National Theatre, the court found the English Stage Society guilty and given a "conditional discharge" that promised severe consequences if they attempted to cross the Lord Chamberlain again.

Related Topics:
Lord Chamberlain - Licensing Act - 1737 - Laurence Olivier - National Theatre

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In 1967 the Court produced a new Edward Bond play, the surreal Early Morning. This portrays Queen Victoria as having a lesbian relationship with Florence Nightingale, the royal Princes as Siamese twins, Disraeli and Prince Albert as plotting a coup and the whole dramatis personae as being damned to a cannibalistic Heaven after falling off Beachy Head. "His Lordship will not allow it" said the censor. The Royal Court produced the play anyway; and within a year the British Parliament had abolished stage censorship.

Related Topics:
Surreal - Early Morning - Queen Victoria - Lesbian - Florence Nightingale - Siamese twins - Disraeli - Prince Albert - Beachy Head - British Parliament

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Bond followed this with the British Empire satire Narrow Road to the Deep North (1968), two agit-prop plays for festival performances, Black Mass (1970) to commemorate the Sharpeville Massacre and Passion (1971). Above all else, in 1971 he composed an epic rewrite of Shakespeare's King Lear, simply entitled Lear.

Related Topics:
British Empire - Satire - Narrow Road to the Deep North - Agit-prop - Sharpeville Massacre - Epic - Shakespeare - King Lear - Lear

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