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CHAPTER Two: WHAT Is A DRAMA EVENT
human responses to extreme situations that need to be socially analysed and
explained”.** Spencer finds four forms of manifestation of DEs that “explicitly
promote audience analysis of a situation that presents itself onstage as
unacceptable (violent), paradoxical (estranged), unbelievable (exaggerated,
understated, or absurd) or ironic”.* She seems to suggest a rational
understanding produced by the audiences’ analysis of these situations,
allows them to “relieve a scene’s nightmarish qualities” and sees the DE as
a “constant pull on the movement toward abstraction”.* Spencer’s analysis
of DE’s appears to be a useful step, though it seems as if she is claiming that
Bond used his drama to achieve a rational understanding similar in nature to
that of Brecht’s theatre.
Michael Mangan sees the aim of DEs in engaging the audience as “co¬
producers” of meaning and argues that the exploration of the theory of DEs
led Bond to write plays “increasingly fragmented in their plots, and less and
less concerned with continuous or consistent narrative flow”.*°* Mangan
does not engage further in the concept or propose examples of its practical
implementation, which makes it difficult to understand what he is referring
to. As will be visible from my examples one of the main features of DEs are
that they remain in the story, and do not halt its flow.
The first production of the The Children,’® a play written by Bond for
two adult actors and a group of young people, was researched by Helen
Nicholson, who found that “the extreme situations in which the young people
are placed in The Children leads them to ask fundamental questions about
who they are and what they would like to become”.*® In her description
“Theatre Event’ and ‘central image’ seem to be combined, she argues that
in “The Children, the Theatre Event is captured in the powerful physical
image of the puppet. Throughout the play, the puppet appears at transitional
moments for Joe, where his values are tested and his identity redefined”.?°”
Nicholson is referring to the first scene of the play where Joe, the central
character ofthe drama takes his puppet to a remote site and while explaining
the surrounding world to it stones it. Later the group of friends escaping
from home carry an unconscious man with them on their journey, this image
is analysed by Nicholson as the reappearance of the image of the puppet.
I will provide a detailed analysis of this play and potential DE moments in
361 Spencer: Dramatic strategies, 257.
362 Tbid., 227.
363 Ibid., 9.
364 Mangan: Edward Bond, 69.
365 Edward Bond: The Children & Have I None, London, Methuen, 2000.
3°6 Helen Nicholson: Acting, Creativity and Social Justice: Edward Bond’s The Children,
Research in Drama Education: The Journal of Applied Theatre and Performance, 8, 2003/1,
17.
367 Ibid., 16.
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