Edward Bond (born July 18, 1934) is an 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. July 18 is the 199th day (200th in leap years) of the year in the Gregorian Calendar, with 166 days remaining. ... 1934 (MCMXXXIV) was a common year starting on Monday (link will take you to calendar). ... Motto: (French for God and my right) Anthem: Multiple unofficial anthems Capital London Largest city London Official language(s) English Government Constitutional monarchy  - Queen Queen Elizabeth II  - Prime Minister Tony Blair MP Unification    - by Athelstan 927  Area    - Total 130,395 km² (1st in UK)   50,346 sq mi   - Water (%) Population... A playwright, also known as a dramatist, is someone who writes dramatic literature or drama. ... A theatre director is a principal in the theatre field who oversees and orchestrates the mounting of a play by unifying various endeavors and aspects of production. ... Screenwriters, scenarists or script writers, are authors who write the screenplays from which movies and television programs are made. ... Edward Bonds Saved was first produced at the Royal Court in November 1965. ... A dramatist is an author of dramatic compositions, usually plays. ...

Early life

Edward Bond was born on July 18, 1934 into a working class family in Holloway, North London. As a child during World War II he was evacuated to the countryside where his exposure to the violence and terror of war shaped themes in his work. At fifteen he left school and worked in factories and offices, followed by two years in the British Army. Holloway is an area in North London in the London Borough of Islington and follows the line of the A1 road. ... North London is that part of London which is north of the River Thames. ... Combatants Allies: Soviet Union United Kingdom United States and others Axis Powers: Germany Italy Japan and others Commanders Winston Churchill Franklin Roosevelt Joseph Stalin Adolf Hitler Benito Mussolini Hideki Tojo Casualties Military dead: 17,000,000 Civilian dead: 33,000,000 Total dead: 50,000,000 Military dead: 8,000... // Initial Preparations In the 1930s, aerial bombing became an ever larger spectre in the minds of the government and the public (see Trenchard, Douhet, Spain). ... The British Army is the land armed forces branch of the British Armed Forces. ...

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. The Royal Court Theatre is a non-commercial theatre in Sloane Square, in the Chelsea area of London noted for its contributions to modern theatre. ...

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 Essex. 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. A cause célèbre (of which the plural is causes célèbres) is an issue or incident arousing widespread controversy, outside campaigning and/or heated public debate. ...

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. The Lord Chamberlain or Lord Chamberlain of the Household is one of the chief officers of the Royal Household in the United Kingdom, and is to be distinguished from the Lord Great Chamberlain, one of the great offices of state. ... The Licensing Act or Theatrical Licensing Act of 1737 was a landmark act of censorship of the British stage. ... Events 12 February — The San Carlo, the oldest working opera house in Europe, is inaugurated. ... Laurence Kerr Olivier, Baron Olivier, OM (22 May 1907–11 July 1989) was an Academy Award winning English actor, Academy Award nominated director, and an Academy Award winning producer. ... Several countries have a National Theatre. ...

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. A cow standing on a pole. ... Victoria (Alexandrina Victoria) (24 May 1819 – 22 January 1901) was the Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland from 20 June 1837, and the first Empress of India from 1 January 1877, until her death in 1901. ... A lesbian is a female who is aesthetically, sexually, or romantically attracted to other females. ... Florence Nightingale, OM (12 May 1820 – 13 August 1910), who came to be known as The Lady with the Lamp, was a pioneer of modern nursing. ... A painting of Chang and Eng Bunker, circa 1836 Conjoined human fetuses Conjoined twins can occur in non-human animal species. ... Benjamin Disraeli, 1st Earl of Beaconsfield, KG, PC, FRS (21 December 1804 – 19 April 1881) was an English statesman and literary figure. ... Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha (Francis Charles Augustus Albert Emmanuel, of the Saxe-Coburg-Gotha branch of the House of Wettin) (26 August 1819 - 14 December 1861) was the husband and consort of Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. ... Beachy Head (grid reference TV587955) is a chalk headland on the south coast of England, close to the town of Eastbourne in the county of East Sussex. ... The Parliament of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is the supreme legislative institution in the United Kingdom and British overseas territories (it alone has parliamentary sovereignty). ...

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. The British Empire in 1897, marked in pink, the traditional colour for Imperial British dominions on maps. ... The World According To Ronald Reagan - a Finnish satirical poster from 1984 Satire is a technique of writing or art which exposes the follies of its subject (for example, individuals, organizations, or states) to ridicule, often as an intended means of provoking or preventing change. ... Statue of Bashō at ChÅ«sonji, Hiraizumi, Iwate Oku no Hosomichi (Japanese: 奥の細道, meaning Narrow road to/of the interior but conventionally referred to as The Narrow Road to the Deep North) is a major work by Matsuo Bashō. Oku no Hosomichi was written based on a journey taken by Bash... Agitprop is short for отдел агитации и пропаганды (otdel agitatsii i propagandy), i. ... South African police officers standing over people killed in the Sharpeville massacre. ... William Shakespeare—born April 1564; baptised April 26, 1564; died April 23, 1616 (O.S.), May 3, 1616 (N.S.)—has a reputation as the greatest of all writers in English. ... King Lear and the Fool in the Storm by William Dyce (1806-1864) King Lear is generally regarded as one of William Shakespeares greatest tragedies. ... Lear is a play in Three Acts by Edward Bond, an epic rewrite of Shakespeares King Lear. ...

Contribution to the cinema

Bond also made some important contributions to the cinema. He wrote an adaptation of Nabokov's Laughter in the Dark (1968, dir. Tony Richardson) and the aborigine drama Walkabout (1971, dir. Nicolas Roeg); as well as contributing dialogue to Blow-Up (1966, dir. Michelangelo Antonioni) and Nicholas and Alexandra (1971, dir. Franklin J. Schaffner). Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov (Russian: Владимир Владимирович Набоков; pronounced ) (April 22 [O.S. April 10] 1899, Saint Petersburg – July 2, 1977, Montreux) was a Russian-American author. ... Tony Richardson (June 5, 1928 - November 14, 1991) was a British theatre and film director and producer. ... Walkabout is a 1971 Australian film. ... Nicolas Jack Roeg, born on August 15, 1928 in London, is an internationally-known cinematographer and film director. ... Categories: Movie stubs | 1966 films | British films | Italian films ... Michelangelo Antonioni (born September 29, 1912, Ferrara, Emilia Romagna) is an Italian modernist film director whose films are widely considered as some of the most influential in film aesthetic. ... DVD cover Nicholas and Alexandra is a 1971 biographical film which tells the story of Czar Nicholas II of Russia and his wife, the Czarina Alexandra Fyodorovna of Hesse, the last of Russias monarchs. ... Franklin James Schaffner (May 30, 1920 - July 2, 1989) was an American film director. ...

The 1970s and early 1980s

The subdued Edwardian-set comedy The Sea (1973) brought to an end what Bond then realised was a sequence of plays, beginning with The Pope's Wedding, in which he had asked pertinent questions about our society, its history, its class antagonisms and violence. He then produced two pieces exploring the place of the artist in society: Bingo (1973) which shows the retired Shakespeare as both exploitative landlord and suicide; and The Fool (1975) showing the 19th century poet John Clare driven insane by his patronising and violent class enemies. In 1976 Bingo won the Obie award as Best Off-Broadway play. The Sea is a play written by the English dramatist Edward Bond in 1973. ... Alternative meaning: Nineteenth Century (periodical) (18th century — 19th century — 20th century — more centuries) As a means of recording the passage of time, the 19th century was that century which lasted from 1801-1900 in the sense of the Gregorian calendar. ... John Clare (July 13, 1793 – May 20, 1864) was an English poet, in his time commonly known as the Northamptonshire Peasant Poet, the son of a farm labourer, born at Helpston near Peterborough. ... Inmates at Bedlam Asylum, as portrayed by William Hogarth Insanity, or madness, is a semi-permanent, severe mental disorder typically stemming from a form of mental illness. ... The Obie Awards, short for Off-Broadway Theater Awards, are annual awards bestowed by the newspaper The Village Voice on theater artists performing in New York City. ...

Bond followed his sequence of "question plays" with what he called two "answer plays" — The Woman (1978), a massive meditation on the myth of the Trojan War; and The Bundle (1978), a new version of Narrow Road. By this time, Bond was also directing. He himself staged the premier of The Woman in the National Theatre's huge Olivier auditorium, opening up the stage like no director before him and creating an impressive, strikingly intelligent spectacle. // The word mythology (Greek: μυθολογία, from μυθος mythos, a story or legend, and λογος logos, an account or speech) literally means the (oral) retelling of myths – stories that a particular culture believes to be true and that use supernatural events or characters to explain the nature of the universe and humanity. ... The fall of Troy by Johann Georg Trautmann (1713–1769) From the collections of the granddukes of Baden, Karlsruhe See also Trojan War (film). ...

Also from this period are: the short play Stone (1976), written for the gay rights theatre company Gay Sweatshop; and A-A-America (1976), a double-bill concerning racist violence in the USA. The gay rights movement is a collection of loosely aligned civil rights groups, human rights groups, support groups and political activists seeking acceptance, tolerance and equality for non-heterosexual, (homosexual, bisexual), and transgender people - despite the fact that it is typically referred to as the gay rights movement, members also... 1. ...

In 1976 he collaborated with the German composer Hans Werner Henze on the Opera We Come to the River, first produced at the Royal Opera House Covent Garden. In 1982 the pair collaborated on another opera, The English Cat. Hans Werner Henze (born July 1, 1926 in Gütersloh, Westphalia, Germany) is a composer well known for his left-wing political beliefs. ... The Floral Hall of the Royal Opera House The Royal Opera House is a performing arts venue in London. ... Covent Garden is a district in central London and within the easterly bounds of the City of Westminster. ...

His next plays were a return to contemporary subjects: The Worlds (1979) about industrial unrest and terrorism; Summer (1981), an Ibsen-like memory play; and Derek (1982), on class exploitation. Restoration (1981) is another study of Ruling Class culpability, this time set in the late 17th century. Henrik Johan Ibsen (March 20, 1828–May 23, 1906) was an extremely influential Norwegian playwright who was largely responsible for the rise of the modern realistic drama. ... (16th century - 17th century - 18th century - more centuries) As a means of recording the passage of time, the 17th century was that century which lasted from 1601-1700. ...

Prophet without honour

Up until this point, Bond's plays were produced by the major institutions of the British theatre: the National, the Royal Shakespeare Company and the Royal Court. These relationships came to a dramatic end in the mid-1980s, with the National's refusal to let him direct the premier of Human Cannon (1984), a Spanish Civil War epic; his dissatisfaction over the Royal Court's revivals of Saved and The Pope's Wedding in 1984; and the disastrous premier of the trilogy The War Plays, dealing with nuclear apocalypse, by the RSC in 1985. This meant for example that a major work, Jackets (1989), is still virtually unknown in the UK. Royal Shakespeare Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon The Royal Shakespeare Company is a British theatre company, one of the most influential in the country. ...

From the mid-seventies, Bond's audience in mainland Europe has grown and it was to here that he turned. He has a fecund relationship with the Théâtre National de la Colline in Paris; they produced a major version of The War Plays in 1995 as well as productions (some premieres) of In the Company of Men (1992), an intense exploration of the big business world; Coffee (1996), set partly in the Imagination and partly at the Nazi execution site Babi Yar; and The Crime of the 21st Century (2000), a bleak parable set in a The Matrix-like future. City flag City coat of arms Motto: Fluctuat nec mergitur Tossed by the waves, she does not founder Coordinates : , Time Zone : CET (GMT +1) Administration Subdivisions 20 arrondissements Département Paris (75) Région ÃŽle-de-France Mayor Bertrand Delanoë (PS) City (commune) Characteristics Land Area 86. ... Imagination is, in general, the power or process of producing mental images and ideas. ... This article or section does not cite its references or sources. ... The massacre at Babi Yar Babi Yar (Russian:Бабий яр, Ukrainian:Бабин яр, Babyn Yar) is a ravine in Kiev, Ukraine, which was the site of massacres of Jews, Gypsies, and other civilians by the Nazis, with assistance from local collaborators, during World War II. // Before the massacre The Germans reached Kiev on September... The Matrix is a science-fiction/action film first released in the USA on March 31, 1999, written and directed by Larry and Andy Wachowski. ...

Bond's most recent contributions to British theatre have been for the Birmingham-based theatre-in-education company Big Brum. These have included At the Inland Sea (1995), in which a youth confronts the legacy of the holocaust; Eleven Vests (1997), on scholastic and military authoritarianism; and Have I None (2000), another futuristic parable. Also in 2000, The Children was performed at a Community college in Cambridge. The city from above Centenary Square. ... Bold text:This article applies to political ideologies. ... Map of the Cambridgeshire area (1904) The city of Cambridge is an old English university town and the administrative centre of the county of Cambridgeshire. ...

In the past two decades, he has written the television plays Olly's Prison (BBC, 1993), which has also been produced on stage by Berliner Ensemble and American Repertory Theatre, and Tuesday (BBC Schools, 1993); as well as the radio plays Chair (BBC Radio 4, 2000) and Existence (2002). The BBC have broadcast productions of "The Sea" and "Bingo". The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC, sometimes also known as the Beeb or Auntie) is the largest broadcasting corporation in the world, founded in 1922. ... The Berliner Ensemble was a German theatre company established by playwright, Bertolt Brecht and his wife, Helene Weigel in January 1949. ... The American Repertory Theatre (or A.R.T.) is housed in the Loeb Drama Center at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. ... The Sea may refer to: The Sea, a Booker Prize winning novel by John Banville. ...

Publications

Since the early 1970s, Bond has been conspicuous as the first dramatist since George Bernard Shaw to produce long, serious prose prefaces to his plays. George Bernard Shaw (George) Bernard Shaw[1] (July 26, 1856 – November 2, 1950) was an Irish-British playwright and winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1925 and the Academy Award in 1938 for Pygmalion. ...

These contain the author's meditations on capitalism, violence, technology, post-modernism and imagination. Seven volumes of his Collected Plays, including the prefaces, are available from the UK publisher Methuen. For other uses, see Capitalism (disambiguation). ... Violence refers to acts of aggression and abuse which causes or intends to cause criminal injury or harm to persons, and (to a lesser extent) animals and property. ... It has been suggested that Co-production of society and technology be merged into this article or section. ... Postmodernism (sometimes abbreviated pomo) is a term applied to a wide-ranging set of developments in critical theory, philosophy, architecture, art, literature, and culture, which are generally characterized as either emerging from, in reaction to, or superseding, modernism. ... Methuen & Co Limited is a firm of British publishers, which began publishing in London in 1892. ...

In 1999 he published The Hidden Plot, a collection of writings on theatre and the meaning of drama. He has published two volumes from his notebooks and four volumes of letters. His Collected Poems was published in 1987.

Current reputation

Bond remains a colossal figure in contemporary drama. He is hugely respected and popular in mainland Europe; but has been largely ignored or neglected by producing venues in his homeland. An exception has been the recent major revival of Lear at the Crucible Theatre Sheffield featuring Ian McDiarmid. The Crucible Theatre, located in the city centre of Sheffield, England is known for being a producing theatre, meaning shows are designed and rehearsed in-house. ... For other uses, see Sheffield (disambiguation). ... Ian McDiarmid as Senator Palpatine in The Phantom Menace. ...

Bond is an Honorary Associate of the National Secular Society. The National Secular Society is an organisation of the United Kingdom which promotes secularism. ...

External links

• Methuen Author's Site
• Edward Bond and the Morality of Violence
• Bond on Bond
• Théâtre National de la Colline Bond Archive (French)
• imdb