De Gruyter's 'Journal of Contemporary Drama in English': new review of 'Edward Bond: Bondian Drama and Young Audience'

Congratulations to Ugur Ada, the author of the book 'Edward Bond: Bondian Drama and Young Audience' for receiving a review from Prof. Dr. Graham Saunders appearing in De Gruyter's 'Journal of Contemporary Drama in English', 2025, Volume 13, Issue 2:

For Chen, Bond's ideas share certain similarities with the work of the Russian psychologist Lev Vygotsky (5). One Bondian concept, "The Invisible Object," is the main subject of Chen's chapter. This term is understood as a product of ideology and hence how we understand reality through enactment and the intervention of the actor. Potentially, this allows the invisible object to be "freed fron1 its ideologized use and reinvested with a new significance" (4). In the three chosen plays this concerns an intruding foreigner, an invisible spectre, and an untold story (18).

Bond's preoccupation with the creation of humanness also informs Ada's conclu­ding chapter, which returns to this central tenet, achieved largely through the indi­vidual being able to feel at home in the world. Ada sees the domestic home as a site where these processes are frequently demonstrated in Bondian drama. He uses the play Tune (2011) as a case study, identifying its two sites. Part of the journey for its two young protagonists -the home and the street outside - leads to the realisation that the further they travel from home, the further societal laws break down.

Another cluster of chapters chooses to examine the types of children who ap­pear in Bond's plays. For example, Susana Nicolás Román's chapter, ''Transcending Vulnerability and Resilience: Bondian Female Youth in the Big Brum Plays," looks at examples from the television play Tuesday (1993) as well as from Chair (2006) and The Hungry Bowl in terms of how they demonstrate not only forros of active resil­ience (157), but how vulnerability itself can be interpreted "as a potential for change" (159). While frequently shown to be survivors, as Cüneyt ózata's "Bond's Psychological Drama: Neurosis in The Children" elucidates, many of the young peo­ple in these plays exhibit the selfish or violent patterns of behaviour learnt from the adults who surround them, from which "the seeds of neurosis are planted" (35). [...]

[Extract from book review in the 'Edward Bond: Bondian Drama and Young Audience',  2025, Issue 13(2). Reviewer: Prof. Dr. Graham Saunders, https://doi.org/10.1515/jcde-2025-2034]

The book is available to order here: Edward Bond: Bondian Drama and Young Audience

'Edward Bond: Bondian Drama and Young Audience' focuses on one of the most influential playwrights of Britain, Edward Bond, and his plays for young audiences. The chapters examine the theatrical and pedagogical prospects of the plays on young people which have been mostly staged since 1990s, throughout the globe.
The issues covered in this book involve interdisciplinary studies such as theatre, pedagogy, ethics, children, culture, politics, among others. These topics have crucial importance for the production of plays for young audiences. Apart from this, the book focuses on Bondian Drama and its relation with the dramatic child, involving most of his plays for young audiences. The authors in this volume examine theatrical and pedagogical backgrounds of the plays, discussing critical issues, by questioning the specialities of Bondian drama and present future implications of this for young audiences. This volume presents substantial and elaborate information on crucial issues, and enable detailed discussions from various perspectives on theatre.  

Title Edward Bond: Bondian Drama and Young Audience [Hardback]
Edition 1st
ISBN 978-1-64889-700-9
Published in August 2023