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CHAPTER Two: WHAT Is A DRAMA EVENT
being placed in it — not, as in Brecht, outside it’: imagination seeking reason, with
the audience up to their necks in the stream, rather than the audience employing
reason and criticism from outside the event.*?
Making it possible for the audience to be ‘up to their necks in the stream’
demands very specific modes of presenting the play, I will be discussing
the devices and concepts he designed to help this further on. But it is useful to
share one of them as an example to highlight the differences between the two
theatre forms. Bond uses the term ‘enactment’ when he discusses the actor’s
task in performance.** Cooper compares enactment to simply ‘being’ in
the situation, he says that “it’s not a question of finding the inner motivations
of the character but playing the character on the site of the play, playing
the play”.*°* Comparing enactment with Brechtian gestus we find two major
differences. One is that rather than presenting the general social attitude Bond
defines the task of the actor as engaging in the situation and using herself
and the objects in it to open up the contradictions in that specific situation.
Presenting general attitudes, generalising in acting is not useful in a Bondian
approach.% The other major difference is that while Brecht commends
the actor to ‘keep a cool head’ and ‘invite criticism’ of the character played,
Bond says that only if the actors immerse themselves in the situation and
engage in discovering why the role is doing the specific actions on stage has
the audience the chance of understanding more.%* While Brecht argues for
the separation of emotion and reason to create understanding,” Bond claims
that it is impossible to really understand other people without engaging
emotionally as well.%58
Looking at Bond’s theory from the perspective of the audience we see
that the central aim for him is to engage them in situations that resonate
the problems of their era and situation. He aims to present moments within
the narrative developing on stage that demand that the spectator create her
own response to it, because that is how she will form her self. Bond aims
to offer space to the audience to question themselves and form their stance,
themselves through engaging with the fictional situations. These moments of
self-creation are the Drama Events that are at the centre of my research. I will
examine specific examples of DEs further on in this chapter.
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Davis: Imagining the Real, 31.
Edward Bond: Email to Xia Yanhua, Personal communication, 1 November, 2014.
354 Chris Cooper: The Performer in TIE, in Anthony Jackson - Chris Vine (eds.): Learning
Through Theatre: New Perspectives on Theatre in Education, 3° edn., London, Routledge,
2013, 136.
Ibid., 132.
356 Bond: Email to Ad4m Bethlenfalvy.
357 Brecht: Theatre for pleasure, 71.
Bond: Email to Adam Bethlenfalvy.
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