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DIFFERENT THEORETICAL ANALYSIS OF DEs — SURVEY OF LITERATURE
it in the next section, but I believe that Nicholson’s analysis is not specific
enough here to get a real grasp of her understanding of DE. However, she also
describes the concept of ‘gap’ which refers to more specific moments in
the play. Nicholson claims that “Bond constructs a ‘gap’ between the story
and character which enables the audience to recognise the complexities and
paradoxes of the dramatic situation”.*** She sees the void being produced
by highlighting the gap between the social expectations of the audience
and the dramatic events portrayed on stage. She brings an example from
another Bond play where a head teacher is stabbed by a student even though
the Head had a “kindly demeanour”*® in the production of the play. While
she is using Bond’s concepts Nicholson seems to be portraying ‘theatre event’
as a recurring image and the gap as the concept described by me as DE at
the beginning of this chapter. Both examples referred to by Nicholson are
long scenes, and it is difficult to understand her interpretation of these terms
without knowing more about which specific parts she links to the terms and
without a more detailed analysis.
Peter Billingham states that Bond employs ‘theatre events’ to “expose
the contradictions between the demands of radical innocence and those of
ideology inscribed through repressive psychological and physical violence”.?”°
He refers to a moment from the play The Under Room, described shortly
in the beginning of this chapter, as a “classic example of theatre event”*!
where after stabbing and killing the illegal immigrant represented by
the dummy in a frantic moment Joan climbs the steps leading out of the cellar
“with a disturbingly quiet calm”.*”? The contradiction in this moment is
between the brutal action that is visible in the remains of the dummy on
the stage and the calmness of the killer walking away from the scene. Though
he discusses a number of plays in detail Billingham does not get into an in¬
depth analysis of what DE is, perhaps so because he is primarily looking at
the plays as text rather than performance. His example does not take us much
further than Nicholson’s, both of them see the contrast manifest itself between
the situation and the behaviour of one of the characters in the situation, who
conduct themselves differently than would be socially expected from them in
such a moment.
I propose that situations offered as examples by both Billingham and
Nicholson are structured in much more complexity; a more detailed
examination of moments within these scenes would shed light on how DEs can
be created. I return to both situations further on and present my analysis.
368 Ibid., 14.
36 Ibid.
30 Billingham: Edward Bond, 140.
371 Ibid.
372 Ibid.