Edward Bond, January 2001

Edward Bond (born 18 July 1934) is an English playwright, theatre director, poet, theorist and screenwriter. He is the author of some fifty plays, among them Saved (1965), the production of which was instrumental in the abolition of theatre censorship in the UK. Bond is broadly considered one among the major living dramatists but he has always been and remains highly controversial because of the violence shown in his plays, the radicalism of his statements about modern theatre and society, and his theories on drama.

Early life[link]

Edward Bond was born on 18 July 1934 into a lower working class family in Holloway, North London. As a child during World War II he was evacuated to the countryside but was present during the bombings on London in 1940 and 1944. This early exposure to the violence and terror of war probably shaped themes in his work, while his experience of the evacuation gave him an awareness of social alienation which would characterise his writing.^[1][2]

His first contact with theatre was music-hall, where his sister used to be sawn in two in a conjuror's sideshow.^[3] At fourteen, with his class he saw a performance of Shakespeare's Macbeth by Donald Wolfit which was revelatory. He later explained that this performance was the first time he had been presented with traumatic experiences comparable to his own in a way he could apprehend and give meaning to.^[1]

At fifteen, he left school with only a very basic education, something from which he derived a deep sense of social exclusion^[2] that contributed significantly to his political orientation.^[4] Bond then educated himself, driven by an impressive eagerness for knowledge.^[5] After various jobs in factories and offices, he did his national service in the British Army occupation forces in Vienna between 1953 and 1955. During his time in the army he discovered the naked violence hidden behind normal social behaviour, and decided to start writing.^[6]

Back in London, he educated himself in theatre while working, saw everything he could on stage and exercised his skill by writing drama sketches.^[7] He was especially impressed by the performances of the Berliner Ensemble in the summer of 1956. In June 1958, after submitting two plays to the Royal Court Theatre (The Fiery Tree and Klaxon in Atreus' Place, which Bond keeps unpublished) he was invited to join its newly formed writers' group.^[8][9]

Mid-1960s to mid-1970s: first plays and association with the Royal Court[link]

After three years studying with writers his age but already well-known (like John Arden, Arnold Wesker, and Ann Jellicoe), Bond had his real first play, The Pope's Wedding staged as a Sunday night 'performance without décor' at the Royal Court Theatre in 1962.^[10] This is a falsely naturalistic drama (the title refers to "an impossible ceremony")^[11] set in contemporary Essex which shows, through a set of tragic circumstances, the death of rural society brought about by modern post-war urban living standards.

Bond's next play, Saved (1965) became one of the best known cause célèbres in 20th century British theatre history. Saved delves into the lives of a selection of South London working class youths suppressed - as Bond would see it - by a brutal economic system and unable to give their lives meaning, who drift eventually into barbarous mutual violence. Among them, one character, Len, persistently (and successfully) tries to maintain links between people violently tearing each other to pieces.^[12] The play shows the social causes of violence and opposes them with individual freedom. This would remain the major theme throughout Bond's work.

The play was directed by William Gaskill, then artistic director of the Royal Court. The Theatres Act 1843 was still in force and required scripts to be submitted for approval by the Lord Chamberlain's Office. Saved included a scene featuring the stoning to death of a baby in its pram. The Lord Chamberlain sought to censor it, but Bond refused to alter a word, claiming that removing this pivotal scene would alter the meaning of the play.^[13] He was firmly backed by Gaskill and the Royal Court although threatened with serious trouble. Formation of a theatre club normally allowed plays that had been banned for their language or subject matter to be performed under 'club' conditions - such as that at the Comedy Theatre, however the English Stage Society were prosecuted. An active campaign sought to overturn the prosecution, with a passionate defence presented by Laurence Olivier, then Artistic Director of the National Theatre. The court found the English Stage Society guilty and they were given a conditional discharge.^[14][15][16]

Bond and the Royal Court continued to defy the censor, and in 1967 produced a new play, the surreal Early Morning. This portrays a lesbian relationship between Queen Victoria and Florence Nightingale, the royal Princes as Siamese twins, Disraeli and Prince Albert plotting a coup and the whole dramatis personae damned to a cannibalistic Heaven after falling off Beachy Head. The Royal Court produced the play despite the imposition of a total ban and within a year the law was finally repealed.^[17] In 1969, when the Royal Court was finally able to perform Bond's work legally, it put on and toured the three plays in Europe, winning the Belgrade International Theatre Festival prize.^[18] The experience of prosecution and mutual support sealed a link between Bond and the Royal Court where all his plays (except external commissions) would be premiered until 1976, most directed by Gaskill.

While Bond's work remained banned for performance in Britain, Saved became the greatest international success of its time with more than thirty different productions around the world between 1966 and 1969, often by notorious directors such as Peter Stein in Germany or Claude Régy in France.^[19] At that time, the play was controversial everywhere but is now considered as a 20th century classic.

After a few commissioned works (the British Empire satire Narrow Road to the Deep North (1968) for the Coventry People and City Festival, two agit-prop plays for festival performances, Black Mass (1970) to commemorate the Sharpeville Massacre and Passion (1971) for the CND Easter Festival), Bond composed his new major work, Lear, based on Shakespeare's King Lear. The play follows the decay of an aging tyrannical king. Betrayed by his two cynical daughters; hounded as a political risk following military defeat; pursued by the ghost of a man whose life he has destroyed and whose death he has caused; imprisoned and tortured until enucleated; after a life of violence he finally finds wisdom and peace in a radical opposition to power. The end of the play shows him as a forced labourer in a camp setting an example for future rebellion by sabotaging the wall he once built, which subsequent regimes keep perpetuating.^[20]

In 1974 Bond translated Spring Awakening (1891) by the German playwright Frank Wedekind, about the suppression of adolescent sexuality. The play had always been censored or presented with major cuts since its writing, and Bond's was the first translation to restore Wedekind's original text, including its most controversial scenes.

The subdued Edwardian-set comedy The Sea (1973) shows a seaside community on England's East Coast a few years before World War I, dominated by a dictatorial lady and overwhelmed by the drowning of one of its young citizens. Nurtured by his experience as a child evacuee to the seaside, the play is (rightly) subtitled "a comedy" and was intended as optimistic after the gloomy mood of his previous plays.^[21][22] This is encapsulated by the successful escape of a young and promising couple from this narrow and oppressive society. This play would be the last plays of Bond's directed by Gaskill.

Bond then produced two pieces exploring the place of the artist in society. Bingo (1974) portrayed the retired Shakespeare as an exploitative landlord, an impotent yet compassionate witness of social violence, who eventually commits suicide, repeatedly asking himself "Was anything done?". The Fool (1975) reinterprets the life of the rural 19th century poet John Clare. It involves Clare in the Littleport Riots of 1816, and then makes his own poetry the depository of the spirit of this rural rebellion against the growth of modern industrial capitalism. The failure of this historical class war eventually drives him to a madhouse. In 1976 Bingo won the Obie award as Best Off-Broadway play and The Fool was voted best play of the year by Plays and Players.

From the 1970s to the mid-1980s: broaden scope of practice and political experiments[link]

Bond remained a successful playwright in England all through the 1970s, expanding his range of writing and his collaborations. His plays were requested by institutional and community theatres, for premieres and revivals, and he was commissioned to write plays both by renowned institutions and fringe activist companies. For example, in 1976 he wrote, on one hand Stone and A-A-America (pronounced as a sneeze), two agit-prop-style plays, respectively for Gay Sweatshop and the Almost-Free Theatre and, on the other, an adaptation of Webster's The White Devil for Michael Lindsay-Hogg to re-open the Old Vic and a libretto for the German composer Hans Werner Henze to open at the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden: We Come to the River. (In 1982 the pair collaborated again, less successfully on another opera, The English Cat).

However, Bond's working relationship with the Royal Court progressively slackened, and by the mid 1970s he had found a new partner in the Royal Shakespeare Company. Beginning with Bingo in 1976, the RSC revived and toured his plays regularly until the early 1990s, and Bond, though often disagreeing with the aesthetic choices of its productions ^[23] or protesting at not being consulted sufficiently, recognized the genuine support the company gave to his work.^[24] In 1977 the RSC commissioned a new play for the opening of their new London theatre, the Warehouse, which would be The Bundle. Set in an imaginary medieval Japan and based on an anecdote from the classical Japanese poet Bashō,^[25] the play shows an eventually successful revolution whose leader nevertheless constantly faces the human cost of political change and experiences as futile an ideology of compassion, being (in Bond's view) politically counterproductive and supportive of reactionary violence.

Bond assigned the same political concern to his next play, The Woman, set in a fantasy Trojan War and based on Euripides' Trojan Women. Comparable to Lear, it shows the fight of the decayed Trojan queen, Hecuba, against the Athenian empire, succeeding only when she abandons the aristocracy and the interests of the state to physically meet the proletariat and join the people's cause.

In 1977, Bond accepted an Honorary Doctorate by Yale University (though thirty years before he was not allowed to sit for his eleven-plus examination) and he began to take up students workshops in Newcastle, Durham and Birmingham, for which he wrote several plays. The most accomplished among them was The Worlds, written for the Newcastle University Theatre Society, based on the recent events in the UK, both the Northern Ireland conflict and the social crisis of the winter of Discontent.

His early 1980s plays were directly influenced by the coming to power of the Conservative Party led by Margaret Thatcher and the profound social changes they were bringing about. Restoration, as a half-musical parody of Restoration comedies, deals with working class support for the Tories by showing a servant accepting his conviction and eventual execution for a murder committed by his cynical and silly master. Summer deals with the moral ambiguities of capitalism through the conflict of two women in socialist Yugoslavia. One is the daughter of former landlords, whose compassionate nature doesn’t prevent them being exploiters and collaborationists during the German occupation. The other, the daughter of servants, rejects the values of the former, who she once saved from a firing squad. Derek, written for a youth festival, alludes directly to the Falklands war and shows an idiotic aristocrat stealing the brain of a gifted worker and sending him to die in a war in a country that "sounds like the name of a disease".

Controversial directing attempts and quarrels with the institutions[link]

During the late 1970s, Bond felt he needed practical contact with the stage to experiment with his ideas on drama and improve his writing.^[26] He therefore began directing his own plays and progressively he made this a condition of their first production. After staging Lear in German at the Burgtheater, in Vienna in 1973, Bond directed his last four plays in London between 1978 and 1982: The Worlds and Restoration at the Royal Court and The Woman and Summer at the National Theatre.^[27] These latter two introduced the South African actress Yvonne Bryceland, whom Bond admired, considering her the ideal female interpreter.^[28]

The Woman was the first contemporary play performed in the recently opened Olivier auditorium and, though poorly reviewed, the production was acclaimed as an aesthetic success, especially for its innovative use of the huge open stage.^[26][29][30] However, Bond's working relationships as a director with both the National Theatre and the Royal Court were highly conflicted. The theatres and their actors accused him of being authoritarian and abstract in his direction^[23] and unrealistic in his production requirements, and Bond complained undiplomatically about their lack of artistic engagement^[31][32] and had crude rows both with some reluctant actors and theatre managers.^[33][34] He felt that British theatre had no understanding of his intention to revitalise modern drama and could no longer fulfil his artistic demands.

With his notoriously uncompromising attitude, Bond gained the reputation of a "difficult author", which contributed to keeping him away from the major English stages. During the mid-1980s, Peter Hall at the National Theatre repeatedly refused to allow him to direct his new play Human Cannon, written for Yvonne Bryceland and the wide stage of the Olivier.^[35] In 1985, he attempted to direct his War Plays at the RSC, accepting very bad working conditions, but left the rehearsals before the premiere after disastrous sessions, and then violently criticized the production and the theatre.^[36][37] He then decided not to allow his plays to be premiered in London by institutional theatres without proper working conditions. He only agreed to return to the RSC in 1996 when he directed In the Company of Men, but considered this production a failure. He nevertheless regularly accepted revivals and sometimes got involved in these productions, although remaining generally unsatisfied,^[38] and he directed workshops for RSC actors with Cicely Berry.^[39] Except for two plays written for the BBC in the early 1990s (Olly's Prison and Tuesday), Bond continued writing plays in the knowledge that they would not be staged in Britain except by amateur companies.

These conflicts are still highly controversial, and Bond and those with whom he has clashed continue to settle scores in letters, books and interviews.^[40][41][42]

The turning point of the 1980s[link]

Nevertheless, in the mid-1980s, Bond's work had a new beginning with the trilogy of The War Plays. Motivated by the threats of the last years of the Cold War and the political activism it provoked in Britain and Europe, Bond had planned to write about nuclear war since the early 1980s. He found a means to do so after testing a storyline with Sicilian students in Palermo. To point to the barbarity of a society which planned to kill the enemy's children to protect their own (that being how he saw the logic of nuclear deterrence), he suggested an improvisation in which a soldier was ordered to kill a child of his community to curb mass starvation. According to Bond, each student who improvised as the soldier refused to kill a foreign child and paradoxically returned home to kill their own sibling instead.^[43] He saw in this a deeply rooted force in the individual preserving an innate sense of justice that he theorized as 'Radical Innocence'.^[44] Subsequently he built on this concept a comprehensive theory of drama in its anthropological and social role that he intended to go beyond Brecht's theories on political drama.^[45] This discovery also gave him the key to write on nuclear war, not to just to condemn the atrocity of war in a general way but, from a political perspective, questioning public acceptance of it and collaboration with it by ordinary citizens.

Between 1984 and 1985 he wrote three plays to meet various requests, which he united as The War Plays. The first, Red Black and Ignorant (written for a Festival dedicated to George Orwell), is a short agit-prop play in which a child, aborted and burnt to death in the nuclear global bombings, comes from the future to accuse the society of the audience of his murder. The second, The Tin Can People (written for a young activists' company), denounces capitalist society's ideology of death. It shows a community of survivors living on an infinite supply of canned food running berserk when they feel threatened by a stranger and destroying all they have as in a reduced nuclear war. The third, Great Peace (written for the RSC) re-enacts the Palermo improvisation in a city barely surviving in the aftermath of nuclear bombardment. It focuses on a soldier who kills his baby sister and his mother who tries to kill her neighbour's child to save her own. The play then follows her twenty years later, in the sterile global wilderness that nuclear war has made of the world, where she rebuilds her humanity bit by bit by meeting other survivors.

These desperate efforts to stay human or be human anew in an inhuman situation would be the purpose of most of the characters in Bond's subsequent plays, the scope of which will be to explore the limits and possibilities of humanity. His next play, Jackets, again uses the Palermo improvisation and sets up a confrontation between two young men manipulated by military conspiracies, first in medieval Japan, then in contemporary urban riots. In the Company of Men shows a desperate fight by the adoptive son of an armaments factory manager to be who he is in a cynical, intrigue-ridden neo-liberal business world that Bond considers the mirror of our post-modern times. In Olly's Prison, a man who has killed his daughter and forgotten his crime tries to find meaning in his life. In Tuesday, a young deserter tries to tell the truth about the war but is destroyed by society. More innovative in structure, Coffee exposes the cultural roots of violence. It contrasts an initial, imaginary section resembling a gloomy fairy tale, in which a mother kills her child because she can no longer feed her, with a second, realistic part reproducing the historical Babi Yar massacre, where the same characters are among the victims. As in the Palermo improvisation, a soldier realises he cannot shoot the victims any more, and eventually decides instead to shoot his officer and escape with the girl.

Recent years[link]

From 1997 to 2008, Bond's plays explored in depth a gloomy vision of a future society (in 2077) where the potential menaces of social breakdown and bio-political control have become real and structural. The first in this cycle, The Crime of the 21st Century, shows a few outcasts who have fled the over-controlled cities to hide in a no-man's-land where they try in vain to rebuild their humanity by creating a semblance of community. Have I None, Chair and The Under Room show the monotonous life of the cities, where social relationships and memory have been abolished, consumption and possession standardized, and where people are harassed by the resistance of their imagination and panicked by strangers. Born and Innocence follow the actions of militarized policemen, the 'Wapos', who perpetrate atrocities on reluctant civilians during mass deportations, but some of whom try to find a human dimension to their lives and desperately attempt to escape the alienated and criminal conditions they are trapped in.

Though isolated from the institutional British theatres, Bond found two new partners in the mid-90s who would keep alive his impulse for writing. One was the Birmingham-based theatre-in-education company Big Brum, of which he remains an associate artist. From 1995 to 2009 he wrote seven very different plays dedicated to young audiences for this company: At the Inland Sea (1995), in which a youth confronts the legacy of the holocaust; Eleven Vests (1997), on scholastic and military authoritarianism; Have I None (2000), The Balancing Act (2003), The Under Room (2005) Tune (2007) and A Window (2009). Big Brum appears to be the only professional company in England for more than two decades that Bond is openly writing for and allowing to premiere his plays. This collaboration has brought Bond's theories on drama to broader attention in England, where they are now relayed by the National Association for Teaching of Drama. In 1999, he wrote The Children to be played by pupils at Manor Community College in Cambridge.^[46] This other contribution to drama intended for young audiences has been performed ever since in many schools and theatres in England and abroad and counts as one of Bond's international successes.

Bond's other partnership of recent years has been with French director Alain Françon who premiered In the Company of Men^[47] in 1992 and produced an acclaimed version of The War Plays at the Festival d'Avignon in 1994,^[48] re-introducing Bond's work to France where his plays and theory have since become highly influential. Françon continued to promote Bond's work when he was head of the Théâtre national de la Colline in Paris from 1997 to 2010 and, with strong support and involvement from Bond, staged Coffee,^[49] The Crime of the 21st Century,^[50] Have I None, Born^[51] and Chair. To Françon and his actors Bond dedicated People and Innocence, which, with Have I None, Coffee and The Crime of the 21st Century, he calls The Colline Pentad and considers his major project of the past decade.

During the early years of the 21st century, there has been renewed worldwide interest in Bond's work and ideas on drama. In France, he has held several conferences with participants drawn from a wide audience^[52] and has directed many workshops in Paris and elsewhere. He has been invited to take part in conferences and workshops all over Europe and America. In the United States, Robert Woodruff and the American Repertory Theatre produced Olly's Prison in 2005; Woodruff also directed Saved (2001) and Chair (2008) at Theatre for a New Audience in New York. In Germany, interest in his plays has remained high since the seventies.^[53] In Britain his plays are now regularly revived in community theatre and in 2008, he had his first West End production in a career of almost fifty years with Jonathan Kent's revival of The Sea at the Theatre Royal Haymarket, with David Haig and Eileen Atkins. Among recent productions are revivals of Lear at the Crucible Theatre Sheffield featuring Ian McDiarmid and Restoration with added songs, toured in 2006 by the Oxford Stage Company. During the autumn of 2010 The Cock Tavern Theatre in London produced six of his plays simultaneously (one chosen from each decade), including a new one, provisionally entitled There Will Be More, commissioned for this occasion and performed although unfinished. Notably, Bond himself directed a revival of The Fool^[54] and took over the direction of There Will Be More.

The Lyric Hammersmith presented the first London production of Bond's Saved for 27 years in autumn 2011 in a production by the venue's Artistic Director Sean Holmes. 2012 will see two new plays performed by Big Brum Theatre in Education Company; The Broken Bowl and The Edge.

Publications[link]

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.

These contain the author's meditations on capitalism, violence, technology, post-modernism and imagination and develop a comprehensive theory on the use and means of drama. Eight volumes of his Collected Plays, including the prefaces, are available from the UK publisher Methuen.

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.

Contribution to the cinema[link]

In the late 1960s/early 1970s Bond also made some 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 Blowup (1966, dir. Michelangelo Antonioni) and Nicholas and Alexandra (1971, dir. Franklin J. Schaffner). Except for Antonioni's Blowup, his contribution to which is contested, Bond himself considered these works strictly as potboilers and often became frustrated when further involved in cinema projects.

List of works[link]

Plays (dates of writing, followed by director, place and date of world première, if any)

• The Pope's Wedding (1961–62) Keith Johnstone, Royal Court Theatre, London, December 9, 1962
• Saved (1964) William Gaskill, English Stage Society, Royal Court Theatre, London, November 3, 1965
• Early Morning (1965–67) William Gaskill, English Stage Society, Royal Court Theatre London, March 31, 1968
• Narrow Road to the Deep North (1968) Jane Howell, Belgrade Theatre, Coventry, June 24, 1968
• Black Mass (1970) David Jones, Lyceum Theatre, London, March 22, 1970
• Passion "a Play for CND" (1971) Bill Bryden, au CND Festival of Life on Easter, Alexandra Park Racecourse, April 11, 1971
• Lear (1969–71) William Gaskill, Royal Court Theatre London, September 29, 1971
• The Sea "a comedy" (1971–72) William Gaskill, Royal Court Theatre London, May 22, 1973
• Bingo "scenes of money and death" (1973) Jane Howell & John Dove, Northcott Theatre, November Exeter, 14 1973
• The Fool "scenes of bread and love" (1974) Peter Gill, Royal Court Theatre London, November 18, 1975
• A-A-America !: Grandma Faust "a burlesque" and The Swing "a documentary" (1976)Jack Emery, Inter-Action's Ambiance Lunch-Hour Theatre Club, Almost Free Theatre, London. Grandma Faust: October 25; The Swing: November 22, 1976
• Stone "a short Play" (1976) Gerald Chapman, Gay Sweatshop, Institute of Contemporary Arts, London, June 8, 1976
• The Woman "scenes of war and freedom" (1974–77) Edward Bond, National Theatre (Olivier Stage), London, August 10, 1978
• The Bundle or New Narrow Road To The Deep North (1977) Howard Davies, Royal Shakespeare Company, The Warehouse Theatre, London, January 13, 1978
• The Worlds (1979) Edward Bond, Newcastle University Theatre Society, Newcastle Playhouse, March 8, 1979
• Restoration "a pastorale" (1979–1980) Edward Bond, Royal Court Theatre, London, July 22, 1981
• Summer "a European play" (1980–81) Edward Bond, National Theatre (Cottlesloe Stage), London, January 27, 1982
• Derek (1982) Nick Hamm, Royal Shakespeare Company, The Other Place, Stratford On Avon, October 18, 1982
• Human Cannon (1979–1983) Dan Baron Cohen, Quantum Theatre, Manchester, February 2, 1986
• The War Plays:Red Black and Ignorant (1983–84) Nick Hamm (as The Unknown Citizen), Royal Shakespeare Company, pour le festival "Thoughtcrimes", Barbican Pit, London, January 19, 1984; The Tin Can People (1984) Nick Philippou, Bread and Circus Theatre, Midlands Art Centre, Birmingham, May 4, 1984; Great Peace (1984–85) Nick Hamm, Royal Shakespeare Company, Barbican Pit, London, July 17, 1985; premiered as a trilogy: Nick Hamm, Royal Shakespeare Company, Barbican Pit, London, July 25, 1985
• Jackets or The Secret Hand (1986) Keith Sturgess, Department of Theatre Studies, University of Lancaster, Nuffield studio, Lancaster, January 24, 1989
• In the Company of Men (1987–88) Alain Françon (as La Compagnie des hommes), Théâtre de la Ville, Paris, September 29, 1992
• September (1989) Greg Doran, Canterbury Cathedral, Canterbury, September 16, 1989
• Olly's prison (1990) (stage version) Jorge Lavelli (as Maison d'arrêt), Festival d'Avignon, July 15, 1993
• Tuesday (stage version) Claudia Stavisky (as Mardi), Théâtre de la Colline, Paris, November 23, 1995
• Coffee "a tragedy" (1993–94) Dan Baron Cohen, The Rational Theatre Company, Chapter Art Centre, Cardiff, November 27, 1996
• At the Inland Sea (1995) Geoff Gillham, Big Brum Theatre in Education Company, Broadway School, Aston, Birmingham, October 16, 1995
• Eleven Vests (1995–97) Geoff Gillham, Big Brum Theatre in Education Company, Birmingham, October 7, 1997
• The Crime of the twenty-first Century (1996–98) Leander Haussman (as Das Verbrechen des 21. Jahrhunderts), Schauspielhaus, Bochum, May 28, 1999
• The Children (1999) Claudette Bryanston, Classwork Theatre, Manor Community College, Cambridge, February 11, 2000
• Have I None (2000) Chris Cooper, Big Brum Theatre-in-Education Company, Birmingham, November 2, 2000
• Existence (2002) (stage version) Christian Benedetti, Studio Théâtre, Alfortville, October 28, 2002
• Born (2002–03) Alain Françon (as Naître), Festival d'Avignon, July 10, 2006
• The Balancing Act (2003) Chris Cooper, Big Brum Theatre in Education Company, Birmingham, October 2003
• The Short Electra (2003-4) John Doona, Young People Drama Festival, March 13, 2004
• People (2005),
• The Under Room (2005) Chris Cooper, Big Brum Theatre in Education Company, 9 October 2005
• Chair, stage version ( 2005) Alain Françon (as Chaise) Festival d'Avignon, July 18, 2006
• Arcade (2006) John Doona, Chester, September 21, 2006
• Tune (2006) Chris Cooper, Big Brum Theatre-in-Education Company, 2007
• Innocence (2008), unperformed
• A Window (2009) Chris Cooper, Big Brum Theatre in Education Company, November 2009
• There Will Be More (2010) Adam Spreadbury-Maher, Good Night Out Presents, The Cock Tavern Theatre, October 26, 2010
• The Edge (2011) Commissioned by Big Brum Theatre in Education Company for performance in autumn 2012
• The Broken Bowl (2012) Chris Cooper, Big Brum Theatre in Education Company, April 2012

Television plays

• Olly's Prison, (1990) shot in December 1991, (Roy Battersby) broadcasted: BBC2, May 1993
• Tuesday (1992)Shot in March 1993, (Sharon Miller and Edward Bond), broadcasted: BBC Schools Television, June 1993

Radio plays

• Chair (2000), broadcast: BBC Radio 4, April 8, 2000 (Turan Ali, Director/Producer)
• Existence (2002), broadcast: BBC Radio 4, May 2002 (Turan Ali, Director/Producer)

Unavailable early plays

• The Tragedy, for television, 1950s
• "He jumped but the bridge was burning", 1950s
• The Asses of Kish, 1956-7
• Too Late Now, for television, ca 1957
• The Broken Shepherdess, for radio, ca 1958
• Sylo's New Ruins, for television, ca 1958
• The Performance for television, ca 1958
• The Best Laid Schemes, for television, ca 1958
• A Woman Weeping, ca 1957
• The Roller Coaster, ca 1958
• Klaxon in Aetreus’ Place, 1958
• The Fiery Tree, 1958
• I Don’t Want to Be Nice, 1959
• The Golden Age, 1959
• The Outing, 1959–60
• Kissing The Beast, for radio, 1960
• The Palace of Varieties in the Sand, 1975–76

Libretti for Operas by Hans Werner Henze

• We Come to the river "Actions for Music in Two Parts and Eleven Scenes", 1972 74, in The Fool, Londres, Eyre Methuen, 1976
• The Cat "a story for music", 1979, in Restoration, London, Methuen, 1982, from Honoré de Balzac's Peines d'amour d'une chatte anglaise, music by H.W. Henze; recorded as: The English Cat, "Ein Geschichte für Sänger und Instrumentalisten von Edward Bond", Parnassus Orchestra London, dir.: Markus Stenz-Peter Doll, Mayence, Wergo, 2 CD, WER 62042, 1989

Libretti for Ballets

• Text for a Ballet: for Dancers, Chorus and Orchestra (1977), partially published as From an Unfinished Ballet, in Theatre Poems and Songs, London, Methuen, 1980
• Orpheus "a story in six scenes" (1977 78), music by Hans Werner Henze, for William Forsythe
• Burns "a piece for dancers and musicians" (1985), for Midland Ballet Company

Adaptations from other authors

• Thomas Middleton: A Chaste Maid in Cheapside (1965)
• Anton Chekhov : Three Sisters (1966), with Richard Cottrell, for William Gaskill
• Bertolt Brecht: Heads (Round Heads and Pick Heads) (ca 1970), with Keith Hack, inédit,
• John Webster: The White Devil (1976), "Acting Edition" for Michael Lindsay-Hogg
• Frank Wedekind: Spring Awakening (1974), with Elisabeth Bond-Pablé, for Bill Bryden
• Frank Wedekind: Lulu (1992), with Elisabeth Bond-Pablé, for Nick Philippou

Screenplays

• Blowup, from Julio Cortázar, dir: Michelangelo Antonioni, 1967
• Michael Koolhas, from H. von Kleist, dir: Volker Schlöndorff, 1968
• The Nun of Monza (dialogues), dir: Eriprando Visconti, 1969
• Laughter in the Dark, from V. Nabokov, dir: Tony Richardson, 1969
• The Walkabout, from J. Vance Marshall, dir: Nicholas Roeg, 1971
• Nicholas and Alexandra, dir: Franklin D. Schaffner, 1971
• Days of Fury (AKA One Russian Summer), with U. Pirro et A. Calenda, dir: Antonio Calenda, 1973
• The Master Builder, from H. Ibsen, commande de KCETTV, unperformed, 1974 75
• Moby Dick, from H.Melville, 1991, unperformed
• Ithaca, from Homer, 1998–99, unperformed

Selected bibliography[link]

Plays[link]

"uniformed edition", 8 volumes by Methuen, London

• vol. 1 (1977): Author's note: On Violence; Saved, Early morning; Pope's Wedding
• vol. 2 (1978): Introduction; Preface to Lear; Lear; The Sea; Narrow Road to The Deep North, Black Mass; Passion
• vol. 3 (1987): Four Pieces; Introduction to Bingo, Bingo; Introduction to The Fool; The Fool; Clare Poems; The Woman; Poems, Stories and Essays for The Woman; Author's note; Stone
• vol. 4 (1992): The Worlds; The Activists Papers; Restoration; Restoration Poems and Stories; Summer; Summer Poems
• vol. 5 (1996): Human Cannon, The Bundle; In the Company of Men; Jackets
• vol. 6 (1998): Choruses from After the Assassinations; War Plays; Commentary on the War Plays
• vol. 7 (2003): The Cap; The Crime of the Twenty-first Century; Olly's Prison; Notes on Imagination; Coffee; The Swing; Derek; Fables and Stories
• vol. 8 (2006): Born, People, Chair, Existence, The Under Room

other plays, by Methuen, London

• At the Inland Sea (1997)
• Eleven Vests with Tuesday (1997)
• The Children with Have I None (2001)
• Lear, Student Edition, with Commentary and Notes by Patricia Hern (1983)
• Saved, Student Edition, with Commentary and Notes by David Davis (2008)
• Olly's Prison, stage and TV version (1993)

Selected theoretical writings[link]

• The Activists Papers (1980) in Plays 4, London, Methuen, 1992
• A Note on Dramatic Method (1977), in: The Bundle, London, Methuen, 1978
• Commentary on The War Plays (1991) in Plays 6, London, Methuen, 1998
• The Dramatic Child, (1992), in Tuesday, London, Methuen, 1992
• Drama Devices, ( 2004), in David Davis (ed.): Edward Bond and the Dramatic Child, Edward Bond's Plays for Young People, London, Trentham Books, 2005
• The Hidden Plot Notes on Theatre and the State, London, Methuen, 2000
• Introduction, for The Fool, in Plays 3, London, Methuen, 1987
• Notes on Post-modernism (1989) in: Plays 5, London, Methuen, 1996
• Notes on Imagination, in: Coffee, London, Methuen, 1995
• "Something of Myself" (2004), in David Davis (ed.): Edward Bond and the Dramatic Child, Edward Bond's Plays for Young People, London, Trentham Books, 2005

Letters, selected and edited by Ian Stuart:

• I, Harwood Academic Publishers, 1994
• II, Luxembourg, Harwood Academic Publishers, 1995
• III, Amsterdam, Harwood Academic Publishers, 1996
• 4, Amsterdam, Harwood Academic Publishers, 1998
• 5, London, Routledge, 2001

Selections from Edward Bond's Notebooks, edited by Ian Stuart, London, Methuen,

• vol.1: 1959–1980, 2000
• vol.2: 1980–1995, 2000

• Malcom Hay & Philip Roberts: Bond a companion to the plays, London, Eyre Methuen, 1978

Notes and citations[link]

External links[link]

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Edward Bond

• www.edwardbond.org Playwright's own website
• Methuen Author's Site
• Big Brum Theatre In Education
• A collection of videos from the Théâtre de la Colline including Bond holding a speech in 2001 (French and English) and clips from plays in performance (French)
• A special issue of La Colline's Revue Electronique on Bond with pictures from performances, documents and analysis
• An Edward Bond discussion group
• Bond interviewed by the Birmingham Post, October 2009
• Edward Bond at the Internet Movie Database
• Edward Bond biography and credits at the British Film Institute's Screenonline
• A short speech on video about the purpose of drama

The Edge
Background information
Birth name	David Howell Evans
Born	(1961-08-08) 8 August 1961 (age 50) Barking, Essex, England, United Kingdom
Origin	County Dublin, Ireland
Genres	Rock, post-punk, alternative rock
Occupations	Musician, songwriter, activist
Instruments	Guitar, vocals, keyboards, piano, bass guitar
Years active	1976–present
Labels	Island, Mercury
Associated acts	U2, Passengers
Website	www.u2.com
Notable instruments
Gibson Explorer Fender Stratocaster Gibson Les Paul Fender Telecaster Gretsch Country Gentleman Gretsch White Falcon Rickenbacker 330/12

David Howell Evans (born 8 August 1961), more widely known by his stage name The Edge (or just Edge),^[1] is a musician best known as the guitarist, backing vocalist, and keyboardist of the Irish rock band U2. A member of the group since its inception, he has recorded 12 studio albums with the band and has released one solo record. As a guitarist, The Edge has crafted a minimalistic and textural style of playing. His use of a rhythmic delay effect yields a distinctive ambient, chiming sound that has become a signature of U2's music.

The Edge was born in England to a Welsh family, but was raised in Ireland after moving there as an infant. In 1976, at Mount Temple Comprehensive School, he formed U2 with his fellow students and his older brother Dik. Inspired by the ethos of punk rock and its basic arrangements, the group began to write its own material. They eventually became one of the most popular acts in popular music, with successful albums such as 1987's The Joshua Tree and 1991's Achtung Baby. Over the years, The Edge has experimented with various guitar effects and introduced influences from several genres of music into his own style, including American roots music, industrial music, and alternative rock. With U2, The Edge has also played keyboards, co-produced their 1993 record Zooropa, and occasionally contributed lyrics. The Edge met his second and current wife, Morleigh Steinberg, through her collaborations with the band.

As a member of U2 and as an individual, The Edge has campaigned for human rights and philanthropic causes. He co-founded Music Rising, a charity to support musicians affected by Hurricane Katrina. He has collaborated with U2 bandmate Bono on several projects, including songs for Roy Orbison and Tina Turner, and the soundtracks to the musical Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark and the Royal Shakespeare Company's London stage adaptation of A Clockwork Orange. In 2011, Rolling Stone magazine placed him at number 38 on its list of "The 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time".

Personal life[link]

The Edge at a U2 concert in Anaheim (2005)

David Howell Evans was born at the Barking Maternity Hospital,^[2] Essex, England to Welsh parents Garvin and Gwenda Evans.^[1] When he was one, his family moved to County Dublin, Ireland where he attended St Andrew's National School. He received piano and guitar lessons and often performed with his brother Dik Evans before they both answered an advertisement posted by Larry Mullen, Jr. at their school, Mount Temple Comprehensive School, seeking musicians to form a band.^[3] The band accepted both of them. This band went through several incarnations before emerging as U2 in March 1978 (Dik Evans left the band just before the name change).^[3] U2 began performing in various venues in Ireland and eventually began developing a following. Their debut album, Boy, was released in 1980.

In 1981, leading up to the October tour, Evans came very close to leaving U2 for religious reasons, but he decided to stay.^[3] During this period, he became involved with a group called Shalom Tigers, in which bandmates Bono and Larry Mullen Jr. were also involved.^[4] Shortly after deciding to remain with the band, he wrote a piece of music that later became "Sunday Bloody Sunday".^[3] The Edge married his high school girlfriend Aislinn O'Sullivan on 12 July 1983.^[5] The couple had three daughters together: Hollie in 1984, Arran in 1985 and Blue Angel in 1989.^[4] The couple separated in 1990, but were unable to get officially divorced because of Irish laws regarding marriage annulment; divorce was legalised in 1995 and the couple were legally divorced in 1996.^[4]

In 1993, The Edge began dating Morleigh Steinberg, a professional dancer and choreographer employed by the band as a belly dancer during the Zoo TV Tour. They had a daughter, Sian (born 1997), and a son, Levi (born 25 October 1999),^[4] before marrying on 22 June 2002.^[4] He appeared in the 2009 music documentary film It Might Get Loud.^[6] The Edge has been criticized for his efforts to build five luxury mansions on a 156 acre plot of land in Malibu, California.^[7] The California Coastal Commission voted 8-4 against the plans, with the project described by the commission's executive director, Peter Douglas, as "In 38 years...one of the three worst projects that I've seen in terms of environmental devastation...It's a contradiction in terms – you can't be serious about being an environmentalist and pick this location."^[7] The Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy agreed to remain neutral on the issue following a $1 million donation from The Edge and a commitment from The Edge to designate 100 acres of the land as open space for public footpaths.^[7]

Music style[link]

Guitar playing[link]

As a guitar player, The Edge has a sound typified by a low-key playing style, a chiming, shimmering sound (thanks in part to the sound of VOX AC-30s) that he achieves with extensive use of delay effects and reverb. The feedback delay is often set to a dotted eighth note (3/16 of a measure), and the feedback gain is adjusted until a note played repeats two or three times.^{[citation needed]}

On 1987's The Joshua Tree, The Edge often contributes just a few simple lead lines given depth and richness by an ever-present delay. For example, the introduction to "Where the Streets Have No Name" is simply a repeated six-note arpeggio, broadened by a modulated delay effect. The Edge has said that he views musical notes as "expensive", in that he prefers to play as few notes as possible. He said in 1982 of his style,

"I like a nice ringing sound on guitar, and most of my chords I find two strings and make them ring the same note, so it's almost like a 12-string sound. So for E I might play a B, E, E and B and make it ring. It works very well with the Gibson Explorer. It's funny because the bass end of the Explorer was so awful that I used to stay away from the low strings, and a lot of the chords I played were very trebly, on the first four, or even three strings. I discovered that through using this one area of the fretboard I was developing a very stylized way of doing something that someone else would play in a normal way."^[9]

Many different influences have shaped The Edge's guitar technique.^{[citation needed]} His first guitar was an old acoustic guitar that his mother bought him at a local flea market for only a few pounds; he was nine at the time. He and his brother Dik Evans both experimented with this instrument.^[9] He said in 1982 of this early experimentation, "I suppose the first link in the chain was a visit to the local jumble sale where I purchased a guitar for a pound. That was my first instrument. It was an acoustic guitar and me and my elder brother Dik both played it, plonking away, all very rudimentary stuff, open chords and all that."^[9] The Edge has stated that many of his guitar parts are based around guitar effects. This is especially true from the Achtung Baby era onwards, although much of the band's 1980s material made heavy use of echos.

Vocals[link]

The Edge in June 2005

The Edge also supplies the backing vocals for U2. U2's 1983 live album and video release, Under a Blood Red Sky and Live at Red Rocks: Under a Blood Red Sky are good reference points for his singing (as are the live DVDs from the Elevation Tour, U2 Go Home: Live from Slane Castle and Elevation 2001: Live from Boston). For example, he sings the chorus to "Sunday Bloody Sunday" (Bono harmonizes on the final 'Sunday'). U2 used this tradeoff technique later in "Bullet the Blue Sky" as well. His backing vocals are sometimes in the form of a repeated cry; examples of songs that use this approach include "Beautiful Day", "New Year's Day" and "Stay (Faraway, So Close!)". Another technique he uses in his backing vocals is the falsetto, in songs such as "Stuck in a Moment You Can't Get Out Of", "Sometimes You Can't Make It on Your Own", "A Man and a Woman", "The Wanderer", live versions of "The Fly", and "Window in the Skies".

The Edge sings the lead vocal on "Van Diemen's Land" and "Numb", the first half of the song "Seconds", dual vocals with Bono in "Discotheque", and the bridge in the song "Miracle Drug".^[4] He also sings the occasional lead vocal in live renditions of other songs (such as "Sunday Bloody Sunday" during the PopMart Tour and "Party Girl" during the Rotterdam Zoo TV show when it was Bono's birthday).^[10] He also plays a solo acoustic version of the song "Love is Blindness" that is featured in the documentary film From the Sky Down.

Other instruments[link]

He has played piano and keyboards on many of the band's songs, including "I Fall Down", "October", "So Cruel", "New Year's Day", "Running to Stand Still", "Miss Sarajevo", "The Hands that Built America", and "Original of the Species" and others. He plays the organ on "Please". In live versions of "New Year's Day", "The Unforgettable Fire", "Your Blue Room", and "Moment of Surrender", he plays both the piano and guitar parts alternately. In most live versions of "Original of the Species," piano is the only instrument played during the song. Although The Edge is the band's lead guitarist, he occasionally plays bass guitar, including the live performances of the song "40" where The Edge and bassist Adam Clayton switch instruments.

Solo recordings[link]

In addition to his regular role within U2, The Edge has also recorded with such artists as Johnny Cash, B. B. King, Tina Turner, Ronnie Wood, Jay-Z, and Rihanna. The Edge connected with Brian Eno and Lanois collaborator Michael Brook (the creator of the infinite guitar, which he regularly uses), working with him on the score to the film Captive (1986). From this soundtrack the song "Heroine", the vocal of which was sung by a young Sinéad O'Connor was released as a single.

He also created the theme song for season one and two of The Batman. He and fellow U2 member, Bono, wrote the lyrics to the theme of the 1995 James Bond film GoldenEye. The Edge, along with bandmate Bono, recently composed a musical adaptation of Spider-Man. On May 25, 2011, a single titled Rise Above 1: Reeve Carney Featuring Bono and The Edge was released digitally.^[11] The music video was released on July 28, 2011.^[12]

Musical equipment[link]

Edge's 1964 Vox AC30 on stage in Foxborough for the U2 360° Tour.

The Edge plays electric guitar, acoustic guitar, keyboards, piano, bass guitar (on "40" and "Race Against Time") and lap steel guitar. Compared to many lead guitarists, The Edge is known for using many more guitars during a show. According to his guitar tech Dallas Schoo, a typical lead guitarist uses four or five different guitars in one night, whereas The Edge takes 45 on the road, and uses 17 to 19 in one 2.5-hour concert. He is estimated to have more than 200 guitars in the studio.^{[citation needed]}

Philanthropy[link]

In 2005, The Edge along with Bob Ezrin and Henry Juszkiewicz co-founded Music Rising, a charity that helped provide replacement instruments for those that were lost in Hurricane Katrina. The instruments were originally only replaced for professional musicians but they soon realized the community churches and schools needed instruments as well. The charity's slogan is "Rebuilding the Gulf Region note by note" and has so far helped over a hundred musicians who were affected by Hurricane Katrina. The Edge also serves on the board of the Angiogenesis Foundation, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization dedicated to improving global health by advancing angiogenesis-based medicine, diets, and lifestyle.^[13]

See also[link]

• Timeline of U2
• List of people on stamps of Ireland

References[link]

Footnotes

Bibliography

External links[link]

This article's use of external links may not follow Wikipedia's policies or guidelines. Please improve this article by removing excessive or inappropriate external links, and converting useful links where appropriate into footnote references. (October 2011)

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: The Edge

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: The Edge

• U2.com, official U2 site
• Music Rising
• The Edge at the Internet Movie Database
• The Edge – Album Credits
• A Study of The Edge's Guitar Delay
• The Edge: 'It's all about the vision'
• Food Bank For New York City public service announcement
• Comment on the mathematical analysis of The Edge's guitar sound