One of Britain's greatest living contemporary dramatists, Edward Bond is widely studied by schools and colleges. The collection includes a commentary by the author. The Bundle - "A complex and marvellously written play" (The Times); Jackets - "An astonishingly powerful piece of political, polemic poetry" (Guardian); Human Cannon charts the struggle against Fascism in Spain through the stories of the village community of Estarobon; In the Company of Men, a vivid and coruscating attack on the values encapsulated by boardroom power games, was described by the RSC as "a vast meditation on the twenty-first century."Edward Bond "is one of the two or three major playwrights - and arguably the only one - to emerge since the fifties" (Observer)
Bond Plays: 10 brings together recent work by the writer of the classic stage plays Saved, Lear, The Pope's Wedding and Early Morning. The volume comprises four previously unpublished plays, one previously published play and a comprehensive introduction by the author. Dea, a heroine, has committed a terrible act and has been exiled. When she meets someone from her past, she is forcefully confronted by the broken society that drove her to commit her crimes. In this play, Edward Bond takes from the Greek and Jacobean drama the fundamental classical problems of the family and war to vividly picture our collapsing society. Dea received its premiere at Sutton Theatre in 2016. The Testament of this Day is Edward Bond's third original radio drama. A young man embarks on two journeys, though he is in control of only one. He soon discovers there is no going back, from either. The play is an arresting drama about the world today and was first produced by BBC Radio 4 in 2016. The Price of One is set in among city ruins in a war zone. An occupying soldier carries a baby he has rescued from the rubble and dust. He meets a woman carrying a baby of her own. What ensues is a struggle between two enemies demanding justice in the midst of war. A modern tragedy, this play is an exploration of eternity and madness and the supermarket culture. It received its premiere in 2016. The Angry Roads considers how young people today grow up in a world that their parents never knew. In a flat a teenage boy is sorting through play things from his childhood; he is sorting through his past in search of the truth about an accident that destroyed his family. The Angry Roads was commissioned by Big Brum Theatre Company and premiered in 2015. The Hungry Bowl is a portrait of a a ghost town. Outside a harsh wind rattles the windows. Inside, people go hungry and start boarding up their homes. When a young girl insists on feeding her imaginary friend, a bitter struggle for a future ensues for the power of the imagination to transform lives. The play is a moving and audacious modern fable that explores the impact of hard times on family life, commissioned by Big Brum and premiered in 2012. The volume features an introduction by the author that looks at theatre and culture in a post-Brexit referendum, post-truth and post-Trump era.
The latest collection of plays by one of Europe's most important playwrights. THE CRIME OF THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY: The past has been abolished and geography - even the sky - is changed. A woman lives in a vast desert of white rubble. A tiny group of people comes seeking a hiding place - and is exposed to the deepest questions of human existence. OLLY'S PRISON: an ordinary city flat. Evening. A man tries to talk to his daughter. She will not answer. Slowly their world turns to tragedy and a search begins that lasts for years. COFFEE: A young man alone in a room. A stranger enters. Together they journey into a dark forest...When the men return to the daylight world, they are involved in a trivial incident. It is hardly more than a gesture - yet it is something that once happened and in its triviality captures the history of our century and confronts us with the deepest questions about ourselves. "A great playwright - many, particularly in continental Europe, would say the greatest living English playwright." Independent "A play by one of Britain's greatest playwrights is an event." TES
Edward Bond Plays:9 brings together recent work by the writer of the classic stage plays Saved, Lear, The Pope's Wedding, and Early Morning. The volume comprises five new plays and a comprehensive introduction by the author exploring theories of writing and theatre. Innocence is the final play in The Paris Pentad, a dramatic epic stretching from the 1940s to the end of the twenty-first century. The conflicts at the heart of civilisation have erupted into violence, and the characters in Innocence must seek refuge in each other to escape the cruelty of war. Window, Tune, Balancing Act and The Edge are plays commissioned by The Big Brum Theatre. With themes of drug use, violence, suicide, and mother-son relations, the plays focus on problems directly aimed at modern youth culture. Ideally suited to students, performers and particularly university showcases, they are short, interesting and powerful pieces. This edition also includes some of Bond's previously unpublished Theatre Poems.
Edward Bond Plays:8 brings together recent work by the writer of the classic stage plays Saved, Lear, The Pope's Wedding, and Early Morning. The volume comprises five new plays and two prose essays: Two Cups: introductory essay Born: the third play in the Colline Tetralogy (the first two of which appear in Edward Bond Plays:7); premiering at the Avignon Festival in July 2006. People: the fourth play in the Colline Tetralogy Chair: first broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in April 2000. Existence: first broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in April 2002. The Under Room: first staged by Big Brum in October 2005; 'an intricate puzzle that is compelling in both its intellectual and emotional intensity'5 stars (Guardian) Freedom and Drama: an extended disquisition on the relationship of drama to the self and society in which Bond argues that drama alone can create human meaning.
Author Matt Sherman, on of the world's top Bond experts, draws from a lifetime of James Bond knowledge and intimate friendships with many of the Bond cast and crew. Enjoy his playful patter about Bond's games, insider stories and games between the games. Let's play!
Our future depends on the state of our imaginations. Drama becomes more important as the world changes. Plays young people write, act in and watch are the blueprints of the world they will have to live in. Edward Bond has chosen in recent years to focus much of his work on plays for young people, arguing that drama helps children "to know themselves and their world and their relation to it". This book discusses some of his important plays for young people and offers case studies of various productions of them. Contributors examine how the plays have been used by teachers and theatre companies with young people and they explore the demands of acting and staging Bond. Contributors include Tony Coult, Chris Cooper, Katie Katafiasz, John Doona, Tony Grady and Bill Roper. One chapter is taken from the notes of Geoff Gillham, and one is written by Edward Bond. The book will be of interest to those who work in drama with young people, whether in theatre, community work or in schools.
RNA plays a central, and until recently, somewhat underestimated role in the genetics underlying all forms of life on earth. This versatile molecule not only plays a crucial part in the synthesis of proteins from a DNA template, but is also intrinsically involved in the regulation of gene expression, and can even act as a catalyst in the form of a ribozyme. This latter property has led to the hypothesis that RNA - rather than DNA - could have played an essential part in the origin of life itself. This landmark text provides a systematic overview of the exciting and rapidly moving field of RNA biology. Key pioneering experiments, which provided the underlying evidence for what we now know, are described throughout, while the relevance of the subject to human disease is highlighted via frequent boxes. For the second edition of Molecular Biology of RNA, more introductory material has been incorporated at the beginning of the text, to aid students studying the subject for the first time. Throughout the text, new material has been included - particularly in relation to RNA binding domains, non-coding RNAs, and the connection between RNA biology and epigenetics. Finally, a new closing chapter discusses how exciting new technologies are being used to explore current topical areas of research.
'I am nothing. Nobody. One day I could forget what I have done. Then I am nothing with no past. My knife is to tell me who I am. It is my passport to myself.' The Chair Plays are three one-act plays that Edward Bond has combined into one continuous drama on the state of society towards the end of the present century. Faced with ecological disaster and economic chaos, governments have become authoritarian and repressive. Domestic family life struggles to survive in a world of fleeing refugees, mass suicides, ruined and deserted suburbs, and soldiers patrolling the streets. Authority decrees even the exact placing of furniture in rooms. There is a knock at the door - but it is not the secret police. It is something even more disturbing. In this broken world sheer human goodness and vision asserts itself in stubborn and radiant ways. A master dramatist creates a range of extraordinary characters, vivid situations and radical theatrical devices to stage the central problem of modern life.
