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DIFFERENT THEORETICAL ANALYSIS OF DEs — SURVEY OF LITERATURE
from Richard who has freed himself and is escaping from the room. Dan
goes to the window and looks out, while Richard sneaks back and steals some
of the clothes. After he leaves Dan says “For the kid" as he looks out of
the window.
Amoiropoulos investigates Liz’s monologue in the second scene in detail
and analyses moments of it as DEs. He refers to the part when the story of
the blinded child is remembered by Liz and she then takes the scissors to
blind the sleeping Dan. Amoiropoulos claims that “finding and using the
Extreme of the situation is one of the pivotal ways to create a Drama Event”.
He recounts that in the rehearsal the director told the actress that “she has
to enact a mother who is working out in her mind how to put her son’s eyes
out”.*!° He quotes Chris Cooper explaining that the actress needs to take her
time in deciding which eye to stab first with the scissor in her hand right
above Dan’s face. Though the stabbing itself never happens the extremity of
the situation is emphasized by the specificity and the unbearable nature of
the choice the mother is about to make.
Another important aspect of this action is that it is linked to a recurring
theme of the play. Amoiropoulos states that in this event
the motif of blinding is brought to another level. It started in the first panel as
a description that gradually became more graphic. In the second panel it became
extremely graphic, making us see the eyes going down the toilet flushed with
tears, and now the event is expected to be made fully present in front of our eyes.
This is again a confirmation that the Extreme in Bond’s work builds carefully to
a climax.*"
The motif is taken further in the third panel which also underlines
Amoiropoulos’ claim that Bond creates dramaturgical structures that build
on a series of DEs. The notion of revisiting motifs or themes can also be
linked to the concept of Centre referred to by Davis as well earlier. You can
find the centre according to Bond “when you have reduced the dramatic
problem to its essential confrontation”. Bond explains that the basic theme
of the play that appears also in a central speech is repeated in increasingly
searching ways by different characters and “at each occasion a character will
» 413
take the speech and then push it as far as he can in exploration of the theme”.
In the moment investigated above Liz’s character is also pushing the theme
408 Ibid.
40° Amoiropoulos: Balancing Gaps, 290.
#10 Tbid., 289.
411 Tbid., 290.
42 Edward Bond: Edward Bond’s Letters 3., lan Stuart (ed.), Amsterdam, Harwood Academic
Publishers, 1996, 166.
#13 Tbid., 161.
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