British playwright Edward Bond’s ‘Saved’ in Thessaloniki
Thessaloniki will be visited tomorrow by one of Britain’s most important playwrights of the 1960s and ’70s. Edward Bond – hailed by The Independent as the most radical playwright to emerge from the 1960s… the most powerful dramatist writing today – will be present at the Lazariston Monastery theater for the premier of his play Saved, a production by the State Theater of Northern Greece, directed by Petros Zivanos. Bond, born in 1934 in Holloway, North London, into a working-class family, came into contact with violence from an early age. He survived the blitz, served with the Allied forces in Vienna and began writing about the experiences of his generation. His first play, The Pope’s Wedding, was written in 1962 and staged at London’s Royal Court Theater. Saved, written in 1965, is his second play and though still in his fledgling phase, Bond provoked the ire of the English censorship board to the extent that the police were sent to close down its premier performance at the Royal Court Theater. The play deals with the disillusionment of Britain’s – and the entire Western world’s – youth in the edgy times of the Cold War. The characters, shocking in the raw emotion they display, represent a generation born and raised in violence and which is desperately searching for its role in a rapidly changing society. The State Theater of Northern Greece’s production of Saved was translated by Christina Babou-Pangoureli. The sets are designed by Lila Karacosta, costumes by Christos Broufas and music by Costas Vomvolos. It stars Simos Kakalas, Maria Hadziioannidou, Foulis Boudouroglou, Iphigenia Deliyiannidou and Stergios Tzaferis. Enchanting world
