SHIFTS OF DISTANCE IN FIVE PLAYS BY EDWARD BOND By Q PENELOPE LEE CONNELL BA., The University of British Columbia, 1968 M.A., The University of British Columbia, 1970 A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY in THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES (Department of Theatre) We accept this dissertation as conforming to the required standard THE UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA December, 1988 © Penelope Lee Connell, 1988 In presenting this thesis in partial fulfilment of the requirements for an advanced degree at the University of British Columbia, I agree that the Library shall make it freely available for reference and study. I further agree that permission for extensive copying of this thesis for scholarly purposes may be granted by the head of my department or by his or her representatives. It is understood that copying or publication of this thesis for financial gain shall not be allowed without my written permission. Department of The University of British Columbia Vancouver, Canada DE-6 (2/88) ii Abstract Shifts of Distance in Five Plays by Edward Bond Notorious for their "aggro" effects, Bond's plays have shocked and mystified critics and audiences throughout his career. Bond's politics contributes to the sensationalism of his work, in that his insistence on moral education seems at odds with conventional moral codes. But study of his plays suggests that style shifts, fragmentation of dramatic structure and an unusual attitude to character create real difficulties for the spectator. How to accept the "reality" of the action, how to "read" ambiguous action - such considerations force continual shifts in distance between audience and play. I explore how Bond works for these shifts, to what extent he succeeds in achieving them, and what his success means for his theatre and politics. The concept of distance is itself problematical. Chaim describes it as having three aspects: it is willed by the spectator; being fiction, it permits an emotional response; and it allows for a suspension of judgement by the standards of reality. Bond aims to "dramatize analysis" rather than plot or character. Insofar as he explores the relationship between stage and audience, Bond's work contributes to that of other modem artists and theoreticians, including Brecht and Sartre. Bond refines epic form, believing that social and political change do not grow from individual action but can best be understood when processes - of revolution, of awareness - are arrested and evaluated. Standard notions of character are not useful to him. He employs a variety of distancing devices (such as ekphrasis, direct address of the audience, songs and extreme violence) to evoke emotional responses, suspends or truncates the action, bringing the audience's intellect to bear on what it feels. Increasingly, the distancing effects create a "frame" inhabited principally by politically aware characters who analyse the action. iii In later plays, the theatre itself becomes a paradigm for the restrictiveness of social conventions, with Bond showing that the perceived need to follow (dramatic) conventions destroys human integrity, even life. The continual violation of theatrical conventions disrupts stage-audience distance, but asserts the theatre's power to effect social change, revitalizing the theatre itself. r TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract Table of Contents Acknowledgement Chapter I: Introduction Chapter II: Early Morning (1967) Chapter EI: Lear (1971) Chapter IV: The Bundle (1978) Chapter V: Restoration (1981) Chapter VI: The War Plays Trilogy: Great Peace (1985) Chapter VII: Conclusion Works Cited Works Consulted V ACKNOWLEDGEMENT I would like to thank my doctoral committee members, Dr. Klaus Strassmann, Dr. Errol Durbach, and Dr. Peter Loeffler, for their direction and guidance. I would also like to thank my father, John R. Connell, and the many colleagues and friends who have supported me in this endeavour, especially Clare Crosthwait, Steve Gallagher, William G. Gibson, S. Reid Gilbert, Charles Forbes, Brienna Hankin, Dorothy Jantzen, Colin Ridgewell, and William Schermbrucker. I am especially grateful to Sue Laver, for the care and attention she has paid to typing this manuscript, and to Paul Mier for his encouragement and support. vi "There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion." Francis Bacon Chapter I: Introduction 1 In form, content and technique, the plays of Edward Bond have shocked and mystified audiences and critics. While a strong body of work on his content has now been developed, it is still difficult to find a thorough analysis devoted to how he achieves his effects. Lear was the first of his plays which I read, several years ago. Even in the reading, I found myself very disturbed by it. Violent emotional shocks prevented me from making clear connections with Shakespeare's powerful drama, at just the moments when Bond referred to King Lear most directly. I felt that moments of tragedy were not deepened but contradicted by distasteful but highly comic dialogue and action. A sense of arbitrariness and accident in the plot finally stopped me from trying to decide what was "happening" in the play; I was left at the mercy of unexpected emotional shifts and with the impression that although nothing in my experience might have prepared me for this play, somehow it was important to me and very intriguing. When I took a second look at Lear, I was able to identify at least a few potential causes of my reactions. In Act I, Scene Three, for instance, I was unable to tell whether one character was meant to be overhearing the asides of another. Also, the realism of some scenes relative to others seemed problematical. Parts of the play seemed allegorical, others like farce. The dimensionality of the characters seemed inconsistent. For me, the notion of the play as a discrete whole was violated; there seemed to be no constant - of plot, of character - in it, and its coherence broke down increasingly as the play went on. In its place, 2 however, I sensed an electric heightening of dramatic tension and a highly charged awareness of the theatrical. I saw the play as an artifact, a construction of elements. At the same time, the clustering and presentation of vivid images was apparent, even in the reading. They made a strong emotional appeal, particularly in arousing the sensation of deja vu, but they seemed to divert me from the rest of the Water Sel I considered the possibility that they contained Bond's "meaning." Certainly they appeared to bear directly upon theme, particularly upon the statement made by Lear's having to suffer among his own people the cruelty he had himself imposed upon them as king. The tension among what seemed various styles, images and theme made me wonder how the play could be performed, but also lent it immediacy and seemed, paradoxically, to establish a new kind of internal cohesiveness. My curiosity about Bond's aims and methods led me to read other plays, The Sea. Saved and Restoration among them. Again, they seemed to consist of abutted fragments at various levels of illusion among which the audience must move. While they strengthened my first impressions of Bond's work, they did not elucidate his technique, but rather provided me with more examples of an awkward treatment of a wide variety of theatrical elements; indeed, the awkwardness itself seemed the only consistent factor. Therefore I had a growing conviction that Bond carefully crafts his plays, that the seeming strangeness is neither accidental nor the result of poor workmanship, but that there is something particular which he wishes to achieve. I was also struck by the astonishing stylistic variety of his work, and by the compelling quality of his language. Between 1964 and 1971, he wrote six major plays in different styles. It seems possible to assume that the range of approaches relates to his casting about for an effective means of communicating what he wants to say. I guessed that identification of a pattern of elements which make me respond to his work as I do might provide a key to that communication. 3 I next turned to Bond's own statements about his work. Here I was rather surprised to find that the questions about technique which seemed so obviously troubling to me were not directly addressed. Bond himself is a voluminous speaker and writer concerning his own dramaturgy. But his interest is so grounded in his political reasons for writing that it is difficult to find an interview, foreword or introduction to his work which he does not bend towards discussion of the artist's political and social responsibility to the public. The clearest and most germane of his discussions is contained in the Preface to The Bundle (1978), which he calls "A Note on Dramatic Method." In it, he speaks of how human consciousness is influenced by social institutions and about the necessity for self- consciousness to create a moral universe; the same sort of discussion precedes Lear and The Fool. It also concerns the role of theatre in creating self-consciousness. Bond gives his view that the artist is responsible both to make a record of society and to analyse that record, and claims "dramatization of the analysis" to be the task he has set himself. Briefly, he explains "dramatization of the analysis" vis-a-vis Brecht's similar method. For instance, in discussing the ordering of scenes, he writes, Practicality can only be shown by the ordering of scenes, not by incidents in scenes. The epic's structure must have meaning - it is not a collection of scenes showing that meaning is logically possible. The epic must have a unity [which] ... comes from the analysis, [and] which demonstrates, embodies cause and effect in a coherent way.