The Hidden Plot

Notes on Theatre and the State

By: Edward Bond

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Paperback | 1 August 2006 | Edition Number 1

At a Glance

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208 Pages

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21.59 x 13.97 x 1.91

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An important, urgent book of essays from Britain's most challenging dramatist: "…a great playwright - many, particularly in continental Europe, would say the greatest living English playwright." (The Independent)

This collection of passionate and polemical essays deals with drama from its origin in the human mind to its use in history and the present. It explains the hidden working of drama behind the state, religion, family, crime and war. It is a revolutionary understanding of the human world with drama at its centre. A ruthless critique of the theatre's present state and its trivialisation as entertainment by the media, it reveals and sees a radical new theatre for the future. Edward Bond is internationally recognised as a major playwright and a leading theoretician of drama. He is the most performed British dramatist abroad. This is his latest and most important account of the meaning and practice of theatre as we start a new millennium.

Industry Reviews

The title is perhaps explanation enough: Bond, the playwright responsible for Saved and Lear, has put together a collection of essays on various aspects of the theatre and the precarious position that it currently occupies. His views are uncompromising - at the beginning of the volume he makes his contempt for Britain's National Theatre evident and then proceeds to debate a wide variety of topics in the most discursive fashion. To use the word eclectic would be a euphemism: impenetrable is nearer the mark. There are a few nuggests of value but these get buried amidst the general torrent of passionate outcry that fuels this book. Bond clearly feels that there is much wrong with contemporary theatre, but such an odd and jumbled collection, comprising poetry, letters, musings on Brecht et al only confuses rather than clarifies, thus surely obscuring its reflective purpose. Less is more runs the maxim, and it could have been coined for this book: with greater cohesion and an attempt at more accessibility, something of real value could emerge. (Kirkus UK)

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Letter to Tom Erhardt	p. 1
A Writer's Story	p. 2
Our Story	p. 3
Language	p. 6
Modern Drama	p. 10
Drama	p. 20
Le Theatre de la Cite	p. 26
Letter on Translation	p. 27
Pearl White: Notes on the TE of the Text	p. 37
The Site	p. 47
Letter on Design	p. 51
I Wrote a Poem	p. 55
Notes on Theatre-in-Education	p. 56
Oranges	p. 59
Rough Notes on Justice	p. 60
Rough Notes on Intolerance	p. 69
Notebook, 31 January 1996	p. 76
The Eschatology of Bread: Christ and the Bearded Lady (Notebook, 3 August 1995)	p. 83
Social Madness	p. 87
William Shakespeare's Last Notebook	p. 98
The Labyrinth	p. 103
The Faustian Trap	p. 106
The Reason for Theatre	p. 113
Lear War	p. 162
Notes on Coffee for Le Theatre National de la Colline	p. 165
Letter on Brecht	p. 171
The Seventh of January Sixteen Hundred and Ten	p. 175
People Saturated with the Universe (Notes on The Crime of the Twenty-first Century for Le Theatre de la Colline)	p. 188
Table of Contents provided by Blackwell. All Rights Reserved.

The Hidden Plot

Notes on Theatre and the State

At a Glance

Paperback

Industry Reviews

Shipping

How to return your order

Defective items

You Can Find This Book In

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