For Edward Bond (18th July 1934 – 3rd March 2024)
Forget James, Art’s true Bond, has been broken by death
At age 90. Born in Holloway, Edward filled his preached
And priestlike path underground, with a missionary zeal,
As if written in walls was resistance, both to the plays
And politics proffered in dark or in light of the favour
And the particular rights he had found. Which may
Have been Marxist at first, but became purely Edwardist
Later, as he served each sentence with the weight
Of the word and the plate, for in preparing each dish
He made each book and play-meal a muscle;
One to be worked well by actors and by each audience too,
Feeding fate that we in turn draw to us, whether to survive
Or stay smothered. Bond’s plays and polemics, his poem
Tracts turned fresh earth from under the ruins we’ve wrought;
He sought alternative futures and prised the past apart
Seeking secrets as memory squirts sweet rebirth.
A working class London lad who became internationalist
Playwright. And one fucking fashion as it strove to unstitch him
At the sleeve, by forgetting his work, and rewriting theatre’s
Founding seams and connections; from place of examination,
And reflection, we, tides turned within puddles,
Have lost the will or need to believe in the Theatre
As Shangri-la, Church, or even school for that matter,
And where the art of acting is teaching the soul
And empty space how to fill, with not just
The citizens of the world, but with what they want once
They’ve won it. Can man source or squander?
And who in end pays the bill? The sometime contamination
Of mirth challenges, as we all need entertaining. But beyond
That smear sits sensations that we need to ask to the dance
And describe. Bond held his hand out to Death as he dallied
With violence. From Saved’s baby stoning, to Olly’s Prison
And Dea with their howls of revenge, Bond decried
The formation of fear and how it in itself is a season,
For modern man breathes a climate for which
The written word provides scent. Bond’s bore an animal
Smell, from both Lion to lizard, as well as Medusa
And Dragon and minotaur, each bite meant that there was
Something fresh in the wound and that to heal we must seal it
By understanding causation, from personal attack,
To World War, whether from the North’s Narrow Road,
Or society’s passionately poisoned Black Masses,
Bond’s Sea was a spell-like storm stirring the blood
And bones of all bastards into a stew or soup, braised
But raw. Each play had a book of essays and poems beside it.
The man was more than just manifesto, but still gunned
For a world to come, should we strive to move into new
Modes, or myths, or metaphors that inspire and which
We would want to adopt while the modern and postmodern
Sting wrecks the hive, within which we work, while serving
Our own sour leaders. Bond saw revolution as obligatory acts
To rehearse. For this writer whose work may even surpass
Harold Pinter’s – if not in influence, then intention, robbed
From both the rich and poor’s purse to show that Capitalism’s
Full theft was a true form of violence and could be met
Only by actions that slid through blood and tears
And much worse: the dry cry in all throats that sounds
Each victim’s own anthem; Bond saw how transgressors
On each side of the fist seared all skin. He did not compromise,
And when England spurned he left England by way of pen,
Writing for Europe’s major stages, where, as with true Auteurs
He was lauded and where in the battle between commerce
And Art, the word wins. By working his way beyond breath
He made his Cambridgeshire home its own Kingdom
And thanks to Big Brum’s School productions Birmingham
Became Court, for this King of ideas sourced from past,
Present and future. Who directed some say, through abstraction
Or sells to sensibilities in Art’s market that in his later years
Were not bought. Dea his last major play played at an amateur
Theatre in Sutton. From the cosiness of Harry Seacombe’s name
Came Greek Drama which made for the modern age saw sense
Fought. For a play like that needs a stage with enough scope
For a nation. The kind of venues his classics were once shaped
To hold. Be it the RSC, or RNT in their heydays; woods from which
Frenzied forests of screeds like trees made sun cold.
Read Edward Bond’s Lear. Sink in The Sea. Meet The Woman.
Encounter The Activist’s Papers. And In the Company of Men
Stay appalled at what we have become. Each written page
Is a mirror. The tavern scene in Bond’s Bingo is one of the best
We have. Words enthrall. Because in all things of worth
We can, eyes closed hear the poet, who sings within silence,
And grants each sound legacy. An actor’s indulgence begins
When they make the scene all about them. And an actor’s
Grace begins forming when they recognize the play’s tenancy.
The Play is so much more than ‘the thing.’ A great play is a planet.
And a world writers fashion, when like God, free from time
They create new ways to be from what they see all around us.
In over sixty plays and ten textbooks, and a dozen hidden films
Bond defined what a writer can do, when the subconscious
Stays in its chamber. Edward Bond broke through borders
Built between rite and rhyme. He was open to all and answered
Any missive sent to him. I have one myself, where he offers
While grateful for my praise to share time. There are several
Collections of these profound discussions with others;
Marx’s communal ideal lent to letters, in which he outlines
A future in which the light of ideas shape the land. He did this
Across life, even as his homeland turned from him. And while
Some raised revivals, a ship fit to soar and sail stayed unmanned
His work is not beautiful. For it is the Beast’s breast he first favours,
But his was a beast who bore burdens with the ecstatic
Majesty of the hand. This Bond shall not break.
Embrace and face such scrawls, students.
Theatre as Church, Craft and Playground.
The soul still goes to school.
The lost stand.
David Erdos March 3rd 2024
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