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Edward Bond interview

Interview between Michael Billington and Edward Bond. 

Bond has been an influential playwright for many writers. I’ve not seen much of his work (as he is nor performed in the UK that much – more in Paris it seems) but read quite a bit and I think he is quite important.

“…There is a division in the Greeks,” says Bond, “between the social problem and the self problem that we have to resolve. You can’t have Orestes and Oedipus in the same play. You can’t have Antigone and Medea in the same play. One also has to recognise that, although the Greeks created the first western democracy, it was a democracy founded on slavery. But while acknowledging the power of the Greek dramatists, what we have to do is find a way of integrating the individual dilemma with the social problem. Even Shakespeare, for all his greatness, can’t always do that. You argue that Hamlet’s private dilemma is related to his political status as a usurped heir to the throne. But Shakespeare can only solve that by treating Hamlet as a sacrificial victim and bringing on Fortinbras. Today there are divisions in our own society, which is based on a kind of consumer totalitarianism. But we have to resolve them through the logic of imagination. In the end, that’s why I write.”

What is sad is that Bond’s attempts to deal with the big issues of our time go largely unseen in Britain. Paris has become his working home, where the Theatre National de la Colline is staging a five-play cycle addressing what Bond calls “the search for human freedom”…

January 3, 2008 | Filed Under  

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One Response to “Edward Bond interview”

  1. Jon Pashley on January 10th, 2008

    Hello Ben,

    I’ve been enjoying your blog for quite a while now. Thanks very much for posting a link to the interview: I would have missed it otherwise.

    I don’t know if you’ve seen it but I thought you might be interested in Max Stafford Clark’s response to this article was in the Guardian yesterday.

    Best wishes,

    Jon

    Could I respond to Edward Bond’s latest attempt to rewrite history (‘If you’re going to despair, stop writing’; He was one of Britain’s most shocking, uncompromising playwrights. Then he fell out of favour, January 3)? Of course I never returned the script of Restoration to him with notes in the margin. To do so to one of the Royal Court’s iconic writers would indeed have been handing a hostage to fortune. To my certain recollection I have never responded to any writer thus. The only thing that is “uncanny” is how Edward’s recollection of events always ends with him in a position of impregnable moral rectitude.

    My recollection is that the disagreements I had with Edward over Restoration were mainly economic. The play was predicted to be and indeed was the most expensive production thus far in the Royal Court’s history. But any attempt to moderate expenditure was regarded as wooden-headed and philistine. His own proposed solution was to raise the budgeted box office income from 40% to 70%. In the event, Restoration played to 37% of box-office capacity.

    But in fact my rupture with Edward came a few years later, after the Royal Court had revived The Pope’s Wedding and Saved. I recall that during the interval of the first preview of Danny Boyle’s fine production of Saved, I observed Edward and Danny in conversation about the production. Afterwards Danny seemed stunned and disconsolate. I concluded shortly after this that collaboration was impossible for Edward. This was reinforced by a production of the War Plays which Edward undertook himself at the Barbican and which reduced a talented cast into a stumbling and incoherent shambles of walking wounded.

    Edward Bond is simply the most difficult person I have worked with in 40 years. I believe this may go some way to explaining why his work is so infrequently seen in this country.
    Max Stafford Clark
    Out of Joint theatre company

  • About me

    I'm a playwright and investment analyst. I have a broad range of interests: food, gardening, innovation & intellectual property, sustainability, architecture & design, writing and the arts. I sit on the board of Talawa Theatre Company and advise a CIS investment trust on socially responsible investments.

  • Recent Work

    Recent plays include, for theatre: Nakamitsu, Yellow Gentlemen, Lost in Peru, Lemon Love. For radio: Places in Between (R4), Patent Breaking Life Saving (WS).

  • Nakamitsu

  • Yellow Gentlemen