In this book, Jenny Spencer presents an in-depth examination of Bond's work.

This new study of one of Britain's greatest modern playwrights represents the first major, extended discussion of Edward Bond's work in over twenty years. The book combines rigorous and stimulating analysis and discussion of Bond's plays and ideas about drama and society. For the first time, there is also discussion of selected plays from his later, post-2000 period, including Innocence and Have I None, alongside explorations of widely studied plays such as Saved.

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.

Edward Bond's version of Lear's story embraces myth and reality, war and politics, to reveal the violence endemic in all unjust societies. He exposes corrupted innocence as the core of social morality, and this false morality as a source of the aggressive tension which must ultimately destroy that society. In a play in which blindness becomes a dramatic metaphor for insight, Bond warns that 'it is so easy to subordinate justice to power, but when this happens power takes on the dynamics and dialectics of aggression, and then nothing is really changed'.

Edward Bond's trilogy of plays - 'Red Black and Ignorant', 'The Tin Can People' and ' Great Peace' - portrays a brutal world struggling in the aftermath of nuclear holocaust. 'The War Plays' were first staged by the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1985: 'Red Black and Ignorant' and 'The Tin Can People' were performed in May 1985 and 'Great Peace' received its world premiere in July 1985.

'Edward Bond: Bondian Drama and Young Audience' focuses on one of the most influential playwrights of Britain, Edward Bond, and his plays for young audiences. The chapters examine the theatrical and pedagogical prospects of the plays on young people which have been mostly staged since 1990s, throughout the globe. The issues covered in this book involve interdisciplinary studies such as theatre, pedagogy, ethics, children, culture, politics, among others. These topics have crucial importance for the production of plays for young audiences. Apart from this, the book focuses on Bondian Drama and its relation with the dramatic child, involving most of his plays for young audiences. The authors in this volume examine theatrical and pedagogical backgrounds of the plays, discussing critical issues, by questioning the specialities of Bondian drama and present future implications of this for young audiences. This volume presents substantial and elaborate information on crucial issues, and enable detailed discussions from various perspectives on theatre.

An important, urgent book of essays from Britain's most challenging dramatist: "...a great playwright - many, particularly in continental Europe, would say the greatest living English playwright." (The Independent) This collection of passionate and polemical essays deals with drama from its origin in the human mind to its use in history and the present. It explains the hidden working of drama behind the state, religion, family, crime and war. It is a revolutionary understanding of the human world with drama at its centre. A ruthless critique of the theatre's present state and its trivialisation as entertainment by the media, it reveals and sees a radical new theatre for the future. Edward Bond is internationally recognised as a major playwright and a leading theoretician of drama. He is the most performed British dramatist abroad. This is his latest and most important account of the meaning and practice of theatre as we start a new millennium.