Bond, Edward Bond.

I think around last Friday the class was officially introduced to the concept of web reviews. It's all just been a bit overwhelming, what with poring over the IB syllabus for what has seemed like days. Still, though, it's oddly intriguing and encouraging to hear about all these sort of out-of-the-box tasks we will be doing later on. Despite the caution and apprehension with which I approach the entire program, I'm definitely excited. Digression, digression, anyways now back to the topic of web reviews. To metaphorically kill two birds with one stone, my teacher assigned a practice web review in conjunction with exploring some new areas of theater. As we were prompted to glance over a general timeline of theater history, I was drawn to the label Edward Bond.

Now that I've actually done the research on Bond, I don't even remember what intrigued me in the first place. Born in 1934, Bond was an English dramatist whose early work was considered quite controversial (even by the standards of today). He often presented to audiences an honest image of the innate savagery and conditions of mankind, usually representative of lower-class British life. So grim a picture did he paint for audiences that for a time his work was completely banned. To illustrate the extremity of Bond's work it was noted in a website that during his play, Saved, bored children brutally stoned a baby to death. Now I'm all for the mavericks out there who have something differnent to say than what society has regurgitated, but I'm not exactly sure if I respond to Bond's style of theater. With an obviously darker concept in mind, Bond obviously strove to bring to the public's attention the truth. In specifically that sense, I respond to Bond's work.

While researching Bond I was able to somewhat forge a connection between him and what's happening today. Through newspapers and word of mouth, news of the musical Spring Awakening spread among some of my more fervent theater friends. Now this musical just so happened to be a translation that Bond complteted in 1974. Though Bond did not personally devise the piece by himself, word has it that the context of the play is just right up his alley. Perhaps now I'll be able to experience Bond's work, inadvertently in a way, because a production of it will be running sometime in May nearby.

To end this lengthy blog, I only feel as though it would only be right to conclude with some of Bond's own words..."Art is the close scrutiny of reality and therefore I put on the stage only those things that I know happen in our society."