The Legacy of Edward Bond

Join us to celebrate the legacy of iconic and controversial British playwright, Edward Bond, who passed away last year. The Segal Center will present a reading of Bond’s un-produced final play, The Shoe Thief, presented in collaboration with Irondale Ensemble Project.

The reading will be followed by a discussion with experts on Bond and his work, including Professor Art Borreca, moderated by Frank Hentschker. Reception to follow.

Edward Bond was a working-class English playwright born in 1934 who left state education at age 15 to work in factories and offices. Among his formative experiences was being sent away as a child from his London home to avoid German bombing, only to return to a London being destroyed by Hitler's V1 and V2 missiles. His drama has been performed on every continent, starting in 1963 in London and continuing to the present day. Working for and with young people, both as citizens and artists, has always been a special site of activity for Bond. All his work, whether plays, poetry, or theoretical writing about drama, addresses the most urgent questions about the social and political crises faced by the human species.

Bond on the set of The Swing in 1976. Photo Credit: Chris Davies.

Irondale Ensemble Project exists at the intersection of art, education, community engagement and social justice. We develop long-term artistic collaborations to create theatre that expands the boundaries of the art form and helps audiences and artists make sense of today’s world.

March 28- Apr 27 the company will be performing Tennessee Williams' final play The Notebook of Trigorin, a free adaptation of The Seagull  at The Space at Irondale in Brooklyn. www.irondale.org

Production photo of Bond's The Bundle, produced by Irondale in 1996.

Art Borreca is Associate Professor of Theatre Arts at the University of Iowa, where he serves as Co-Head of the Iowa Playwrights Workshop (MFA Programs in Playwriting and Dramaturgy) and Artistic Director of the Iowa New Play Festival. During Art’s tenure, alumni of the Iowa Playwrights Workshop have included David Adjmi, Kirsten Greenidge, Samuel D. Hunter, Tony Meneses, Jen Silverman, Andrew Saito, Basil Kreimendahl, Bonnie Metzgar, Eric Holmes, and Marisela Treviño Orta, among others. Art has worked as a dramaturg with Athol Fugard, Wole Soyinka, Theodora Skipitares, Naomi Wallace, Lisa Schlesinger, David Gothard, and others in such venues as the Yale Repertory Theatre, New York Theatre Workshop, LaMama ETC, Oxford Stage Company, and Theatre Project Tokyo.  His writing has appeared in TDR and Modern Drama, and in the collections Dramaturgy in American Theatre, Approaching the Millennium: Essays on Angels in America, and Embodied Dialogues: The Theatre of Naomi Wallace. He was a Consulting Editor on The Norton Anthology of Drama.