How Did Edward Bond Influence British Theatre

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They wanted to adapt it into the British working class life. The playwrights who were highly influenced by this type of theatre in Britain are Joan Littlewood’s Theatre Workshop. John Arden and Edward Bond are the major political dramatists of the 60s and 70s. Their plays were influenced by the Brechtian epic theatre. They adopted it to their own models to fit into the contemporary social and political climate of the radical stage. They extended Brechtian epic model in such a way as it was totally designed according to the Marxist interpretations of the world. They belong to the “first wave” generation of playwrights. One of the important and earliest political playwrights was Edward Bond. Bond being an-Conservative, is one of the highly controversial…show more content…
Later it was acclaimed by many international productions and became successful amidst opposition. The play was open to all kinds of critical comments. It was branded as “an act of violence” and “poisonously objectionable”. (Itzin 76) The controversial scene which outraged many critics was the stoning to death of a baby. This particular scene is well known for Bond’s “agro-effects”. He tries to operate his plays through the “dialectic of violence”. Though he was tagged as a “violent” playwright, yet he defended against it by referring to the bomb attack of Germans at that time and its consequences. He strongly believed that he had just drafted the “caricature” but whereas the “truth is more terrible”. In one of his interviews with Simon Tussler to New Theatre Voices of the Seventies Bond clearly explains about the “violence” involved

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