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CHAPTER ONE: LIVING THROUGH DRAMA
discussed in detail in the next chapter; here I only point out some of the main
connections between his practice and LTD. Davis explains some of the links
between the work of Bond and Heathcote in the following guote:
What Heathcote and Bond share in common is that a play is not just telling a story
but the story is the means of exploring our humanity. Heathcote sees drama as
the foundation of human knowing and Bond sees no progress for humanity unless
we can dramatise ourselves. Imagination is key to both practitioners. [...] Both are
concerned most importantly with re-examining who we are. Central to Heathcote’s
approach is the notion of developing the self-spectator; Bond is concerned that the
audience are provoked into re-examining how they live and how they might live
life differently.”"”
Bond aims to create these possibilities for the audience to re-examine their
values through Drama Events (DE) - also referred to as Theatre Events in
many of his earlier writings — which are similar to the central moments of
LTD in many respects. One similarity is the nature of the crisis encountered,
the other one is the mode of being in fiction.
The Crisis Encountered in Living Through Drama and Drama Events
There is a clear emphasis on crisis in both Bond’s dramas and also LTD and in
both cases one of the functions of these extreme moments is to push participants
or the audience towards some kind of choice. Bond says that “a dramatist must
be an extremophile: drama creates extreme situations which impose choice.
Even if the choice is reduced to compliance, the nature of the compliance must
be chosen"? The case is similar for participants of Bolton’s Crucible drama
for example. Ihey have to react to an extreme situation, make choices in
the fiction that will alter or reinforce the direction the event is heading towards.
Bond says that "drama must be extreme so that it drives the contradictions
beyond the point where ideology can control them" "? which on the one hand
offers the new element of contradictions creating crises, but also presents
the guestion whether these contradictions need to be raised in the audience or
in the fictional situation, and of course the guestion is which of these relates to
the role of the participants in a classroom drama.
217 Davis: Edward Bond and Drama in Education, 170.
218 Edward Bond: Freedom and Drama, in Plays: 8, London, Methuen Drama, 2006, 213.
219 Tbid., 220.
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