Professional Documents
Culture Documents
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the structures and means of drama in terms of the logic of drama itself, and not
just in, for example, those of the latest technology or advertisers fad. I dont
know of any other drama group, for young people or adults, that does this as
consistently as Big Brum. To be blunt, most other groups do the opposite. Other
TiE groups that might have done it have been closed down. Big Brum is now
unique. But doing this is not the most important thing about Big Brum.
Drama exists in the political, technological, economic world. The world is
changing with unprecedented speed. The neo-liberal economy has created a
new society. The change is radical and fundamental. The economic
consequences are severe and obvious and no economist has found a permanent
solution. But the cultural consequences of the economic crisis are more severe
and there can be no quick solution to them. This is because the cultural
consequences are now being instilled into the minds of children and will go with
them into later life. The economy can recover only by selling and as the situation
is knife-edge everything must be made for a quick sale. It must appear valuable
but be cheap, appear durable but quickly wear out and need replacing, and
above all appear to be entertaining. In the last two decades theatre has
changed. I have spent my life in theatre but I have seen nothing like this. It has
become tawdry. It is fatigued by its own frenzy. It does not deal with our social,
political or private problems (which drama would never separate anyway)
because they are too new and complex. It has lost the means and skills to deal
with them. Instead, simply to survive, it serves the purposes of the market. But
the Athenians created drama to protect themselves from the market. Athens was
a great trading centre but it was new and forced to be innovative and the
astonishment it felt at its own splendour made it creative. It created drama, its
culture in general, to protect itself from the purposes of the market. Compared to
that our own frantic activity is hysterical and we sell ourselves cheap. The
structures of drama serve the creation of humanness. This was the imperative of
all Greek culture. It became the basis of the Western Culture that now
increasingly stretches out to become the world market. Perhaps drama will
recover its own purpose but that will take time. Children have no time, far less
time than adults, they cant wait because childhood passes so soon. Yet childhood
is the foundation of later society.
So there is a conflict. To recover the economy must turn society into a market
place. This debases the culture that is based on the economy. And civilization
developed by separating these two values. It separated the autonomy of culture
from the mechanism of evolution. Today children live under the market and are
constantly bullied and bellowed at by its salesman and admen . The market will
live in them as they grow. This is Big Brums real importance it protects and
fosters its young audiences humanness. Whatever you think of my evaluation of
Big Brum, you must admit it is unique and its survival a wonder. It will seem an
exaggeration to relate a little company, and the events in a few schoolrooms, to
the huge historical dilemma I have described and to see in it signs of hope and
recovery. Shoudnt I be more modest? No. Its not even that Big Brums influence
increases internationally though that is true. It is that the dynamics of culture
are unpredictable and we cannot control the connections that they will make. I
am not being immodest because no one can really say what is happening in the
minds of children today as they enter the reality of an age that will be without
precedent. But I can say that abandoning Big Brum would make a scar on these
children that would later become a wound. I do not think that drama teaches
but it does educate, and it is the profoundest of all educations. That is the issue.
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Edward
Bond