Modern and Postmodern Theatres

Abstract

The work of Edward Bond has featured regularly both in NTQ and the earlier Theatre Quarterly, from the interview and casebook published in TQ5 (1972) following the production of his version of Lear to Ian Stuart's study in NTQ39 (1994) of the concept of ‘Theatre Events’, as developed during Bond's workshops with Royal Shakespeare Company actors in 1992. A few months before his RSC production of his new play In the Company of Men last autumn, Edward Bond talked with Ulrich Köppen, a doctoral candidate at the University of Mainz, about the relevance of Theatre Events to the debate over modernism and postmodernism, in which Bond has also actively participated – not only through his dramatic works but in prefatory statements and published letters – and the ways in which such ideas illuminate and underpin his plays.