Oldal 113 [113]
OCR
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 reevaluated 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. + 112 +
