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DIFFERENT THEORETICAL ANALYSIS OF DEs — SURVEY OF LITERATURE
The difference in the aims of the work of Brecht and Bond can be connected
clearly to different practices in the field of drama in education. The example
of Heathcote’s moment of creating self-spectatorship form The Dreamer
can be aligned with Brecht’s aim of separating reason and emotion, while
metaxis allows emotion, imagination and rational thinking to work together
within the fictional situation. This difference is visible even more sharply in
the reflective conventions offered by Neelands and Goode*® as many of them
rely solely on articulating the learning from the drama in various forms.
The difference in relation to reaching a moral can also be linked to the field of
drama in education. The aim of creating a personal understanding, or a shift
or reinforcement of values, or questions to test in real life, the impact Bond
aims for, is more in line with what I want to achieve in my LTD lessons.
I have been looking at the theory that lies behind Edward Bond’s theatre.
I have discussed his thinking about reality and how it is perceived and created
by humans, I have presented his concept of self and radical innocence, and
I have outlined the role of the spectator in his thinking and how this differs
from Brecht’s, the dramatist who Bond has been most often linked to by
critics. Bond has also developed a series of dramatic devices, concepts that
help the production of his dramas; I discuss these in detail further on. First,
I look at the focus point of these concepts: the Drama Event.
DIFFERENT THEORETICAL ANALYSIS OF DES — SURVEY OF LITERATURE
In this section I survey the literature on DEs. I do not comment in detail
on these descriptions as I will be presenting my own analysis of DEs in
the next section of this chapter. Bond uses the term “Theatre Event’ first in
his Commentary on the War Plays published in 1991, it is later referred to as
‘Drama Event’. Both terms have been used in the literature I investigated so
I will be referring to them in this section as synonyms.
Interestingly, the impact that Bond aims for in his DEs was recognised
in his work earlier than the term Theatre Event was coined. John Worthen
writes in 1975 that Bond is trying to create an “experience of change and
understanding” through the “shock of recognition” rather than a shock of
horror in his plays. He states that Bond wants his audience to recognise that
“we are society”.°© Suggesting that society is present in the individual, one of
the foundations of DE.
The first to use the concept of DE in her study of Bond’s work is Jenny
S. Spencer who defines it as “startling moments in a play based on credible
359 Neelands—Goode: Structuring Drama Work.
36° John Worthen: Endings and Beginnings: Edward Bond and the Shock of Recognition,
Educational Theatre Journal, 27, 1975/4, 479.
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