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CHAPTER Two: WHAT Is A DRAMA EVENT
the adults”. A quote from Medea after the title of the published play also
refers to the subject of how children can become the victims of the personal
and political conflict of adults. The play itself examines this primarily from
the attitude of the children and explores how young people can deal with
the stance of adults they face. The Man’s words and actions express two
extremes of the adult’s behaviour towards children. Killing the children is one
end of the spectrum, while the other end is also there as this is the reaction to
the death of his much loved son, which is also referred to in the text.
The question of how children should deal with the world of adults is
revisited in different situations throughout the play. It starts with Joe and
the puppet in the first scene, where Joe reproduces many adult responses
towards the puppet, but the playfulness in the cruel game turns extremely
serious at one point.“”? Here it seems more like he needs to kill a part of
himself to be able to face the world run by adults. Joe’s mother’s request is also
an extreme expression of the adult’s attitude towards children, and it places
Joe in front of an impossible dilemma. The other situations in the play also
seem to suggest that there is not a lot of space for kids to navigate, they see
their own possibilities as extremes: they either face police interrogation, and
probably get blamed for the fire, or run away with Joe. They choose the second
option, but they still cannot escape from adults. While everyone else vanishes
they carry their destiny through the emptiness on a stretcher.
The subject of the adult world’s attitude towards children is an extremely
rich territory and the play offers various dimensions of it to be engaged in.
While the central subject is clear from a close reading of the play, it is an
important part of the rehearsal process to define the aspect of the Centre that
is the most interesting for the artistic team. I discuss this example further in
the next section and also return to the story in a drama lesson in my research.
However, it is useful to see how this Centre appears not only in the story and
actions, but also in the imagery and objects used in the play.
The notion of helplessness embodied in the puppet at the beginning and
that of violence that can be linked to the brick are re-examined and re¬
evaluated through the Man’s actions. The puppet and the brick operate in
different ways in the drama, but both demonstrate important structural
characteristics of Bond’s dramaturgy. While it is mostly the helpless position,
the silence of the puppet that re-emerges in different forms through the play,
the brick reappears as an actual object through the play, but its meaning and
value is changed again and again through its use. The puppet’s helplessness
from the first scene is carried on in Joe’s situation as he faces the impossible
request of his mum. The actual puppet is brought back in the third scene,
482 David Tuaillon: Edward Bond: The Playwright Speaks, London, Bloomsbury, 2015, 27.
#33 Joe suddenly stops and says »Has to be!« and runs back to hit the puppet again with a brick.
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