The Sea

AuthorEdward Bond

Edward Bond (b 1934)

Edward Bond, playwright, theatre director, poet, theorist and screenwriter, is the author of over fifty plays and was instrumental in the abolition of UK theatre censorship. Bond has always been highly controversial because of the violence shown in some of his plays and the radicalism of his statements about modern theatre and society. Evacuated as a child during WWII on returning he was exposed to the worst of the blitz and this early exposure to the violence and terror of war probably shaped themes in his work. His experience of the evacuation gave him awareness for strangeness in social life which will remain typical of his writing.

Edward Bond was born in Holloway, North London in 1934 and educated in state schools until the age of 14. During the Second World War he was evacuated to East Anglia to stay with his grandparents. He later served the obligatory 2 years National Service.

He was working in a factory when he became a member of the Writers' Group at the Royal Court Theatre. His first plays, 'The Pope's Wedding' (1962) and 'Saved' (1965), were staged at the Royal Court Theatre. His emergence as a writer coincided with what is known as the New Wave of British Theatre, which arguably was catalysed by John Osborne's 'Look Back in Anger' in 1956, and Bond is often mentioned in the same breath as Osborne, Arnold Wesker and Harold Pinter, and his success, like that of his peers, owes a lot to the dedication to nurturing new talent by the English Stage Company at the Royal Court. Bond's other plays include 'Narrow Road to the Deep North', 'The Bundle', 'Early Morning', 'Lear', 'Bingo', 'The Fool', 'The Woman' and 'Restoration'.

Bond - initially at least - had not been the darling of the critics, and was ignored by the masses. Censorship closed several of his plays ('Saved', 'Early Morning') after a couple of performances; they were judged to be too violent, shocking and immoral. Though highly controversial, Bond has always had supporters in high places; such as director William Gaskill of the English Stage Company who has always been committed to his plays. The critics and the public reversed their position on Bond after a revival of 'Early Morning' less than a year after its original production in 1968.

Bond is now considered to be one of the major living English playwrights. Despite this, the 'difficult' reputation which dogs both the man and his plays means he is rarely performed today. Bond is still writing and still politically engaged. Often he provides the introduction to his own published plays, and these polemical pieces clearly show the author's political and social standpoint, though they rarely provide a direct insight into his writing. The plays, we must assume he believes, speak for themselves.

Violence has always been a tool for Edward Bond through which he criticises society, but it has never been an end in itself. In his preface to Lear he writes, "The question of the play is why is it that violence is licensed by society, but only on a political level. When the same thing happens on an individual level, then it's absolutely disgraceful."