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Edward Bond

Thomas Edward Bond (18 July 1934 – 3 March 2024) was an English playwright, theatre director, poet, dramatic theorist and screenwriter. He was the author of some 50 plays, among them Saved (1965), the production of which was instrumental in the abolition of theatre censorship in the UK. His other well-received works include Narrow Road to the Deep North (1968), Lear (1971), The Sea (1973), The Fool (1975), Restoration (1981), and the War trilogy (1985). Bond was broadly considered among the major living dramatists but he has always been and remains highly controversial because of the violence shown in his plays, the radicalism of his statements about modern theatre and society, and his theories on drama.

Early life
Thomas Edward Bond was born on 18 July 1934 into a lower-working-class family in Holloway, North London. As a child during World War II he was evacuated to the countryside, but witnessed the bombings on London in 1940 and 1944. This early exposure to the violence and terror of war probably shaped themes in his work, while his experience of the evacuation gave him an awareness of social alienation which would characterise his writing.

His first contact with theatre was music-hall, where his sister used to be sawn in two in a conjuror's sideshow. At fourteen, with his class he saw a performance of Shakespeare's Macbeth by Donald Wolfit which was revelatory. He later explained that this performance was the first time he had been presented with traumatic experiences comparable to his own in a way he could apprehend and give meaning to.

At fifteen, he left school with only a very basic education, something from which he derived a deep sense of social exclusion that contributed significantly to his political orientation. Bond then educated himself, driven by an impressive eagerness for knowledge. After various jobs in factories and offices, he did his national service in the British Army occupation forces in Vienna between 1953 and 1955. During his time in the army he discovered the naked violence hidden behind normal social behaviour, and decided to start writing.

Back in London, he educated himself in theatre while working, saw everything he could on stage and exercised his skill by writing drama sketches. He was especially impressed by the performances of the Berliner Ensemble in the summer of 1956. In June 1958, after submitting two plays to the Royal Court Theatre (The Fiery Tree and Klaxon in Atreus' Place, which Bond kept unpublished in perpetuity) he was invited to join its newly formed writers' group.

1960s – mid-1970s: first plays, Royal Court association
After three years studying with writers his age but already well-known (like John Arden, Arnold Wesker, and Ann Jellicoe), Bond had his first real play, The Pope's Wedding, staged as a Sunday night "performance without décor" at the Royal Court Theatre in 1962. This is a falsely naturalistic drama (the title refers to "an impossible ceremony") set in contemporary Essex which shows, through a set of tragic circumstances, the death of rural society brought about by modern post-war urban living standards. Michael Mangan writes in Edward Bond that The Pope's Wedding received "mixed but predominantly friendly reviews". Bernard Levin of Daily Mail lauded it as an "astonishing tour de force", but it was criticized in The Observer as "too elliptical". Jenny S. Spencer wrote in Dramatic Strategies in the Plays of Edward Bond that the play was praised as an "auspicious beginning for a new playwright". In 1980, academic Frances Rademacher listed it among Bond's major plays. In 2014, Michael Billington praised The Pope's Wedding as a "masterly" early play.

Bond considered his plays written for France's Théâtre National and the theatre-in-education company Big Brum to be his most important works. However, Benedict Nightingale of The New York Times wrote in 2001 that most critics consider Bond's best works to have been written between 1965 and 1978. A 2011 editorial in The Guardian claimed that "his later plays have often been glibly dismissed as Marxist parables". Graham Saunders argued that in Britain he was "most associated with work produced in the period from Saved to The Sea" and that later works are seen as minor, while in France he was equally well known for newer works. In 2005, Lyn Gardiner wrote that his body of work in the previous 20 years "stands alongside his classic plays". In 2007, Peter Billingham listed the later works Restoration, The War Trilogy, Coffee, and Born among the major plays. Billington argued that "even if in his later years Bond seems to start from a position of dogmatic certainty, he retains his ability to create durable images."

Bond's play Saved (1965) became one of the best known cause célèbres in 20th-century British theatre history. Saved delves into the lives of a selection of South London working-class youths suppressed – as Bond would see it – by a brutal economic system and unable to give their lives meaning, who drift eventually into barbarous mutual violence. Among them, one character, Len, persistently (and successfully) tries to maintain links between people violently tearing each other to pieces. The play shows the social causes of violence and opposes them with individual freedom. This would remain the major theme throughout Bond's work.

The play was directed by William Gaskill, then artistic director of the Royal Court. The Theatres Act 1843 was still in force and required scripts to be submitted for approval by the Lord Chamberlain's Office. Saved included a scene featuring the stoning to death of a baby in its pram. The Lord Chamberlain sought to censor it, but Bond refused to alter a word, claiming that removing this pivotal scene would alter the meaning of the play. He was firmly backed by Gaskill and the Royal Court although threatened with serious trouble. Formation of a theatre club normally allowed plays that had been banned for their language or subject matter to be performed under "club" conditions – such as that at the Comedy Theatre, however the English Stage Society were prosecuted. An active campaign sought to overturn the prosecution, with a passionate defence presented by Laurence Olivier, then artistic director of the National Theatre. The court found the English Stage Society guilty and they were given a conditional discharge.

Bond and the Royal Court continued to defy the censor, and in 1967 produced a new play, the surreal Early Morning. This portrays a lesbian relationship between Queen Victoria and Florence Nightingale, the royal Princes as Siamese twins, Disraeli and Prince Albert plotting a coup and the whole dramatis personae damned to a cannibalistic Heaven after falling off Beachy Head. The Royal Court produced the play despite the imposition of a total ban and within a year the law was finally repealed. In 1969, when the Royal Court was finally able to perform Bond's work legally, it put on and toured the three plays in Europe, winning the Belgrade International Theatre Festival prize. The experience of prosecution and mutual support sealed a link between Bond and the Royal Court where all his plays (except external commissions) would be premiered until 1976, most directed by Gaskill.

While Bond's work remained banned for performance in Britain, Saved became the greatest international success of its time with more than thirty different productions around the world between 1966 and 1969, often by notorious directors such as Peter Stein in Germany or Claude Régy in France. At that time, the play was controversial everywhere but is now considered as a 20th-century classic. Early Morning was initially panned but garnered praise from a number of writers in later years.

Bond then wrote a few commissioned works. The British Empire satire Narrow Road to the Deep North (1968), which received generally positive reviews, was for the Coventry People and City Festival. He wrote two agit-prop plays for festival performances, Black Mass (1970) to commemorate the Sharpeville massacre and Passion (1971) for the CND Easter Festival. A one-act play, the full text of Passion was printed in The New York Times the year it was first performed. Spencer described Black Mass and Passion as works with "power and humor". Bond composed Lear, based on Shakespeare's King Lear. The play follows the decay of an ageing tyrannical king. Betrayed by his two cynical daughters; hounded as a political risk following military defeat; pursued by the ghost of a man whose life he has destroyed and whose death he has caused; imprisoned and tortured until enucleated; after a life of violence he finally finds wisdom and peace in a radical opposition to power. The end of the play shows him as a forced labourer in a camp setting an example for future rebellion by sabotaging the wall he once built, which subsequent regimes keep perpetuating. David L. Hirst wrote that Lear divided both critics and audiences while Ronald Bryden reported that the play garnered acclaim from critics. Patrice Chéreau's 1975 production of the play "established Bond as a major contemporary figure in France".

In 1972, Charles Marowitz praised Bond as "one of the foremost writers of his generation, although you'd never think so if you lived in England, a country which treats him with a disdain that would be inconceivable on the Continent. [...] On the Continent, where there is a long tradition of political theater, these works are instinctively understood."

The subdued Edwardian-set comedy The Sea (1973) shows a seaside community on England's East Coast a few years before World War I, dominated by a dictatorial woman and overwhelmed by the drowning of one of its young citizens. Nurtured by his experience as a child evacuee to the seaside, the play is subtitled "a comedy" and was intended as optimistic after the gloomy mood of his previous plays. This is encapsulated by the successful escape of a young and promising couple from this narrow and oppressive society. This play would be the last of Bond's plays that was directed by Gaskill.

In 1974 Bond translated Spring Awakening (1891) by the German playwright Frank Wedekind, about the suppression of adolescent sexuality. The play had always been censored or presented with major cuts since its writing, and Bond's was the first translation to restore Wedekind's original text, including its most controversial scenes.

Bond then produced two pieces exploring the place of the artist in society. Bingo (1974) portrayed the retired Shakespeare as an exploitative landlord, an impotent yet compassionate witness of social violence, who eventually commits suicide, repeatedly asking himself "Was anything done?". The Fool (1975) reinterprets the life of the rural 19th century poet John Clare. It involves Clare in the Littleport Riots of 1816, and then makes his own poetry the depository of the spirit of this rural rebellion against the growth of modern industrial capitalism. The failure of this historical class war eventually drives him to a madhouse. In 1976 Bingo won the Obie award as Best Off-Broadway play and The Fool was voted best play of the year by Plays and Players.

1970s – mid-1980s: broader scope, political experiments
Bond remained a successful playwright in England all through the 1970s, expanding his range of writing and his collaborations. His plays were requested by institutional and community theatres, for premieres and revivals, and he was commissioned to write plays both by renowned institutions and fringe activist companies. For example, in 1976 he wrote, on one hand Stone and A-A-America (pronounced as a sneeze), two agit-prop-style plays, respectively for Gay Sweatshop and the Almost Free Theatre and, on the other, an adaptation of Webster's The White Devil for Michael Lindsay-Hogg to re-open the Old Vic and a libretto for the German composer Hans Werner Henze to open at the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden: We Come to the River. (In 1982 the pair collaborated again, less successfully on another opera, The English Cat.) Ann Marie Demling wrote that in A-A-America! "Bond borrows cleverly and skillfully from the caricature and dialect of the American tall-tale and folk legend." She found Stone "problematic in structure because Bond couches the theme in the framework of pseudo-Biblical allegory. [...] The play deals with many complex issues difficult to express in the rather clear-cut nature of allegory."

However, Bond's working relationship with the Royal Court progressively slackened, and by the mid-1970s he had found a new partner in the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC). Beginning with Bingo in 1976, the RSC revived and toured his plays regularly until the early 1990s, and Bond, though often disagreeing with the aesthetic choices of its productions or protesting at not being consulted sufficiently, recognized the genuine support the company gave to his work. In 1977 the RSC commissioned a new play for the opening of their new London theatre, the Warehouse, which would be The Bundle. Set in an imaginary medieval Japan and based on an anecdote from the classical Japanese poet Bashō, the play shows an eventually successful revolution whose leader nevertheless constantly faces the human cost of political change and experiences as futile an ideology of compassion, being (in Bond's view) politically counterproductive and supportive of reactionary violence. Richard Eder criticized The Bundle as "a thin political parable made up from ingredients that we have been served before. It is a warmedover Brecht fast. [...] The language has been stripped, but for emptiness rather than leanness." In 1996, D. J. R. Bruckner panned an Irondale Ensemble Project performance as "utterly frustrating". While praising the choreography and direction, Bruckner said that "one finds it impossible to say what it was all about" and described the philosophizing of the last hour as "portentous". However, in a 1998 review of the fifth collection of Bond plays, Richard Boon called The Bundle "a genuine and shamefully-neglected masterpiece, worth the cost of purchase by itself".

Bond assigned the same political concern to his next play, The Woman, set in a fantasy Trojan War and based on Euripides' Trojan Women. Comparable to Lear, it shows the fight of the decayed Trojan queen, Hecuba, against the Athenian empire, succeeding only when she abandons the aristocracy and the interests of the state to physically meet the proletariat and join the people's cause.

In 1977, Bond accepted an honorary doctorate in letters from Yale University (although, thirty years previously, he had not been allowed to sit for his eleven-plus examination) and he began to take up students workshops in Newcastle, Durham and Birmingham, for which he wrote several plays. The most accomplished among them was The Worlds, written for the Newcastle University Theatre Society, based on the recent events in the UK, both the Northern Ireland conflict and the social crisis of the winter of Discontent. Reception was mixed. Demling, noting that audience reactions to the most controversial scene in Saved partially resulted from its break in style from previous episodes' domestic realism, listed The Worlds as an example of a work in which Bond "integrates the grotesque more successfully into the plot."

His early 1980s plays were directly influenced by the coming to power of the Conservative Party led by Margaret Thatcher and the profound social changes they were bringing about. Restoration, as a half-musical parody of Restoration comedies, deals with working-class support for the Tories by showing a servant accepting his conviction and eventual execution for a murder committed by his cynical and silly master. Restoration has sometimes been viewed as one of the best of Bond's later plays. Summer deals with the moral ambiguities of capitalism through the conflict of two women in socialist Yugoslavia. One is the daughter of former landlords, whose compassionate nature does not prevent them from being exploiters and collaborationists during the German occupation. The other, the daughter of servants, rejects the values of the former, whom she once saved from a firing squad. Derek, written for a youth festival, alludes directly to the Falklands War and shows an idiotic aristocrat stealing the brain of a gifted worker and sending him to die in a war in a country that "sounds like the name of a disease".

Controversial directing attempts, quarrels with institutions
During the late 1970s, Bond felt he needed practical contact with the stage to experiment with his ideas on drama and improve his writing. He therefore began directing his own plays and progressively he made this a condition of their first production. After staging Lear in German at the Burgtheater, in Vienna in 1973, Bond directed his last four plays in London between 1978 and 1982: The Worlds and Restoration at the Royal Court and The Woman and Summer at the National Theatre. These latter two introduced the South African actress Yvonne Bryceland, whom Bond admired, considering her the ideal female interpreter. In 2002, Christopher Innes criticized Summer, as well as Human Cannon and Jackets II, as examples of a problem in Bond's later plays of protagonists who are either virtuous or evil, lacking complexity. Innes dubbed Restoration the "only play to rise above this simplification in the recent phase of Bond's career". Frank Rich of The New York Times also panned Summer in 1983 as "pallid and inept", and "torpid [...] As characters, Xenia and Marthe do not have the depth that might relieve some of the tedium. Mr. Bond's deterministic view of society reduces them to symbols".

The Woman was the first contemporary play performed in the recently opened Olivier auditorium and the production was acclaimed as an aesthetic success, especially for its innovative use of the huge open stage. David L. Hirst wrote that in the play Bond "skilfully reworks The Trojan Women so as to cast the image of that society into the present and inform contemporary political opinion." Adam Thorpe called the play "magnificent" in 2006. However, Bond's working relationships as a director with both the National Theatre and the Royal Court were highly conflicted. The theatres and their actors accused him of being authoritarian and abstract in his direction and unrealistic in his production requirements, and Bond complained undiplomatically about their lack of artistic engagement   and had crude rows both with some reluctant actors and theatre managers. He felt that British theatre had no understanding of his intention to revitalise modern drama and could no longer fulfil his artistic demands.

With his notoriously uncompromising attitude, Bond gained the reputation of a "difficult author", which contributed to keeping him away from the major English stages. During the mid-1980s, Peter Hall at the National Theatre repeatedly refused to allow him to direct his new play Human Cannon, written for Yvonne Bryceland and the wide stage of the Olivier. Richard Boon described Human Cannon as "very good".

In 1985, he attempted to direct his War Plays at the RSC, accepting very bad working conditions, but left the rehearsals before the premiere after disastrous sessions, and then violently criticized the production and the theatre. Max Stafford-Clark has written that with the Barbican production of The War Plays, Bond "reduced a talented cast into a stumbling and incoherent shambles of walking wounded. Edward Bond is simply the most difficult person I have worked with in 40 years." He then decided not to allow his plays to be premiered in London by institutional theatres without proper working conditions. He only agreed to return to the RSC in 1996 when he directed In the Company of Men, but considered this production a failure. He nevertheless regularly accepted revivals and sometimes got involved in these productions, although remaining generally unsatisfied, and he directed workshops for RSC actors with Cicely Berry. Except for two plays written for the BBC in the early 1990s (Olly's Prison and Tuesday), Bond continued writing plays in the knowledge that they would not be staged in Britain except by amateur companies.

These conflicts are still highly controversial, and Bond and those with whom he had clashed continued to settle scores in letters, books and interviews.

1980s turning point
Nevertheless, in the mid-1980s, Bond's work had a new beginning with the trilogy of The War Plays. Motivated by the threats of the last years of the Cold War and the political activism it provoked in Britain and Europe, Bond had planned to write about nuclear war since the early 1980s. He found a means to do so after testing a storyline with Sicilian students in Palermo. To point to the barbarity of a society which planned to kill the enemy's children to protect their own (that being how he saw the logic of nuclear deterrence), he suggested an improvisation in which a soldier was ordered to kill a child of his community to curb mass starvation. According to Bond, each student who improvised as the soldier refused to kill a foreign child and paradoxically returned home to kill their own sibling instead. He saw in this a deeply rooted force in the individual preserving an innate sense of justice that he theorized as 'Radical Innocence'. Subsequently, he built on this concept a comprehensive theory of drama in its anthropological and social role that he intended to go beyond Brecht's theories on political drama. This discovery also gave him the key to write on nuclear war, not just to condemn the atrocity of war in a general way but, from a political perspective, questioning public acceptance of it and collaboration with it by ordinary citizens.

Between 1984 and 1985 he wrote three plays to meet various requests, which he united as The War Plays. The first, Red Black and Ignorant (written for a Festival dedicated to George Orwell), is a short agitprop play in which a child, aborted and burnt to death in the nuclear global bombings, comes from the future to accuse the society of the audience of his murder. The second, The Tin Can People (written for a young activists' company), denounces capitalist society's ideology of death. It shows a community of survivors living on an infinite supply of canned food running berserk when they feel threatened by a stranger and destroying all they have as in a reduced nuclear war. The third, Great Peace (written for the RSC) re-enacts the Palermo improvisation in a city barely surviving in the aftermath of nuclear bombardment. It focuses on a soldier who kills his baby sister and his mother who tries to kill her neighbour's child to save her own. The play then follows her twenty years later, in the sterile global wilderness that nuclear war has made of the world, where she rebuilds her humanity bit by bit by meeting other survivors.

Mangan commented that the 1995 Odéon-Théâtre de l'Europe performance of The War Plays was quite successful, and that in France the work "was described as the most important play written since the Second World War." In 1996, however, Janelle G. Reinelt described the reception as "chilly".

These desperate efforts to stay human or be human anew in an inhuman situation would be the purpose of most of the characters in Bond's subsequent plays, the scope of which will be to explore the limits and possibilities of humanity. His next play, Jackets, again uses the Palermo improvisation and sets up a confrontation between two young men manipulated by military conspiracies, first in medieval Japan, then in contemporary urban riots. Sometimes the portion in medieval Japan and the portion in Britain are referred to as Jackets I and II, respectively. The Guardian's theatre reviewer Robin Thornber praised Jackets as "an astonishingly powerful piece of political, polemical poetry". In 1993, Christine Shade listed The War Plays and Jackets as Bond's "best-known works". In 1998, Richard Boon dubbed Jackets a "very good" play (as he did with Human Cannon). However, Maxie Szalwinska wrote in The Guardian, after watching a performance at Theatre503, that "the awareness that this is minor stuff slowly but surely leaks in. [...] his weakness for point-making gets in the way of his characters."

In the Company of Men shows a desperate fight by the adoptive son of an armaments factory manager to be who he is in a cynical, intrigue-ridden neo-liberal business world that Bond considers the mirror of our post-modern times. While In the Company of Men was a critical and commercial success in France, Jenny Kowalski noted that the RSC production received almost overwhelmingly negative reviews, explaining that it "was the language of the long speeches, both in its detail and in its sheer quantity, that proved to be the stumbling block for most critics." Kowalski praised "Bond's fine sense of style and rhythm" and argued that "one of the points made by the play is that we are moving towards a future where the huge multinationals will control all production indiscriminately"; however, the critic said that "the contrasting moods of the text were missed in performance: the black farce of Oldfield's demise, for instance, did not seem to be appreciated as such". Anthony Jenkins dismissed the play as "a rambling, self indulgent account of post-modern society".

Paul Taylor of The Independent called the play "interminable" and wrote, "Bond does not seem to have acquired the ability to distinguish between the genuine moments of surreal comedy in the script and the parts where it is straight-facedly unaware of its side-splitting potential. [...] It's an indictment of something (the English institutions that now turn down Bond's scripts or the scripts themselves for being – for all one knows – so turndownable) that a dramatist of his penetration should have lost contact with an English audience's psychology to this degree."

In Olly's Prison, a man who has killed his daughter and forgotten his crime tries to find meaning in his life. Olly's Prison divided critics. In Tuesday, a young deserter tries to tell the truth about the war but is destroyed by society. More innovative in structure, Coffee exposes the cultural roots of violence. It contrasts an initial, imaginary section resembling a gloomy fairy tale, in which a mother kills her child because she can no longer feed her, with a second, realistic part reproducing the historical Babi Yar massacre, where the same characters are among the victims. As in the Palermo improvisation, a soldier realises he cannot shoot the victims any more, and eventually decides instead to shoot his officer and escape with the girl. Saunders listed Coffee as one of the later works for which Bond is well known in France. The Independent Carl Miller dubbed it "dense, theatrically sophisticated writing", and a powerful play. Adrian Turpin reported being "defeated by large chunks of [the scene that] dominates the play's first half". Turpin said that Bond's humanism at times "breaks through his rhetoric, shedding a ray of light on the text's opacity", but deemed the play impenetrable. Benedict Nightingale said that most Bond plays from The Worlds onward "tended to combine vivid observation with a preachy radicalism that could take disconcertingly hardline forms" but praised Coffee (and The Crime of the 21st Century) as much livelier works.

Later years
From 1997 to 2008, Bond's plays explored in depth a gloomy vision of a future society (in 2077) where the potential menaces of social breakdown and bio-political control have become real and structural. The first in this cycle, The Crime of the 21st Century, shows a few outcasts who have fled the over-controlled cities to hide in a no-man's-land where they try in vain to rebuild their humanity by creating a semblance of community. Gerry Colgan wrote in The Irish Times that The Crime of the 21st Century "ends on an odd note of anti-climactic ritual. It is clear that the author intends his play to be deeply meaningful, and to explore issues such as justice, freedom and interpersonal dependency. Little of this comes across as the characters address each other in artificial dialogue and the plot becomes steadily more improbable [...] a leaden, pretentious play."

Have I None, Chair and The Under Room show the monotonous life of the cities, where social relationships and memory have been abolished, consumption and possession standardized, and where people are harassed by the resistance of their imagination and panicked by strangers. Born and Innocence follow the actions of militarized policemen, the 'Wapos', who perpetrate atrocities on reluctant civilians during mass deportations, but some of whom try to find a human dimension to their lives and desperately attempt to escape the alienated and criminal conditions they are trapped in.

Though isolated from the institutional British theatres, Bond found two new partners in the mid-90s who would keep alive his impulse for writing. One was the Birmingham-based theatre-in-education company Big Brum, of which he remained an associate artist. From 1995 to 2009 he wrote seven very different plays dedicated to young audiences for this company: At the Inland Sea (1995), in which a youth confronts the legacy of the holocaust; Eleven Vests (1997), on scholastic and military authoritarianism; Have I None (2000), The Balancing Act (2003), The Under Room (2005) Tune (2007) and A Window (2009). Big Brum appeared to be the only professional company in England for more than two decades that Bond openly wrote for and allowed to premiere his plays. This collaboration has brought Bond's theories on drama to broader attention in England, where they are now relayed by the National Association for Teaching of Drama. In 1999, he wrote The Children to be played by pupils at Manor Community College in Cambridge. This other contribution to drama intended for young audiences has been performed ever since in many schools and theatres in England and abroad and counts as one of Bond's international successes.

Sarah Ratliff said that Bond is trying to argue in Eleven Vests that "we are responsible for our actions. [...] The characters could be developed more; it is very hard to empathize with the Student because the audience doesn't really know him. We know his actions, and they are deplorable, but we don't really understand him. Perhaps this was the playwright's intent. We still hope that the Student will change, will become better, but when he doesn't, we then have to look inward to ourselves and begin the questioning process. Edward Bond does a good job of pushing us toward this point." Conversely, it was claimed in a text released on the Savitribai Phule Pune University website that "Bond wants to bring out how school and family – the very institutions which are supposed to benevolently nurture childhood – start corrosively exercising repressive ownership and control of the child-self and yet the society is so ideologically blinded towards such occurrences that we talk endlessly about adolescent crimes and the problem of the irresponsible youth."

Bond's other partnership during his final years was with French director Alain Françon who premiered In the Company of Men in 1992 and produced an acclaimed version of The War Plays at the Festival d'Avignon in 1994, re-introducing Bond's work to France where his plays and theory have since become highly influential. Françon continued to promote Bond's work when he was head of the Théâtre national de la Colline in Paris from 1997 to 2010 and, with strong support and involvement from Bond, staged Coffee, The Crime of the 21st Century, Have I None, Born and Chair. To Françon and his actors Bond dedicated People and Innocence, which, with Have I None, Coffee and The Crime of the 21st Century, he called The Colline Pentad and considered his major project of that decade.

Chair was praised in Exeunt, Variety, TheaterMania, and The Guardian, but criticized in Financial Times and The New York Times. Of A Window, Lyn Gardner wrote, "This is a knotty and uncomfortable play of austere poetry and vision, written by a playwright who is like a latter-day Tiresias: sometimes gnomic, but seldom wrong". Gardner described the play as having "understated power". In 2002, Arthur Smith said of Existence, "It was all so powerful and demanding that at the end of it I fell into a disturbed sleep for an hour and a half." In 2005, David Davis lauded Born as "perhaps his greatest play to date".

During the early years of the 21st century, there was renewed worldwide interest in Bond's work and ideas on drama. In France, he held several conferences with participants drawn from a wide audience, directed many workshops in Paris and elsewhere, and was the most performed playwright after Molière (according to Lynne Walker in 2005). He was invited to take part in conferences and workshops all over Europe and America. In the United States, Robert Woodruff and the American Repertory Theatre produced Olly's Prison in 2005; Woodruff also directed Saved (2001) and Chair (2008) at Theatre for a New Audience in New York City. In Germany, interest in his plays has remained high since the 1970s. In Britain his plays are now regularly revived in community theatre and in 2008, he enjoyed his first West End production in a career of almost fifty years with Jonathan Kent's revival of The Sea at the Theatre Royal Haymarket, with David Haig and Eileen Atkins. Among recent productions of his work have been revivals of Lear at the Crucible Theatre Sheffield featuring Ian McDiarmid and Restoration with added songs, toured in early 2006 by the Oxford Stage Company.

During the autumn of 2010 The Cock Tavern Theatre in London produced six of his plays simultaneously (one chosen from each decade), including a new one, provisionally entitled There Will Be More, commissioned for this occasion and performed although unfinished. Notably, Bond himself directed a revival of The Fool and took over the direction of There Will Be More. The Guardian Lyn Gardner wrote, "There is some hard, unflinching writing here, but uncertain performances and an awkward, often unintentionally comic production make this seem perilously close to a parody of an Edward Bond play." Conversely, Mark Taylor of The Independent wrote that "as its plot takes the path of least resistance between one primal convulsion after another, this starkly eloquent, theatrically knowing play stretches credulity to snapping point. [...] It's no wonder that the tone of Adam Spreadbury-Maher's unsparing, production teeters uncertainly at times between seriousness and melodramatic spoof." Also, Ian Shuttleworth of Financial Times panned the first 20 minutes of the latter play as "a parody of the work of Edward Bond" and the rest of the play as "more of the same [...] this is apparently part of a much longer work (be afraid, be very afraid) examining the inadequacy of modern drama. But it does not examine this; nor does it act as a moral conscience, indict our complacency or anything of that ilk."

The Lyric Hammersmith presented the first London production of Bond's Saved for 27 years in autumn 2011 in a production by the venue's Artistic Director Sean Holmes. 2012 saw two new plays performed by Big Brum Theatre in Education Company; The Broken Bowl and The Edge. Both of these plays were filmed and made available online. In 2014 Big Brum Theatre in Education Company presented its tenth new Bond play, The Angry Roads. His 2016 play Dea was panned in The Stage  and The Times, with Dominic Maxwell of the latter publication referring to it as "awful". Conversely, Tom Bolton of Londonist argued, "Dea is not just a shock-fest — the play is a deep, poetic, complex investigation of the condition of 21st century society."

In 2013 he accepted an honorary doctorate in letters from Newman University, Birmingham. He was an honorary associate of the National Secular Society.

Personal life and death
Bond was married to Elisabeth Pablé from 1971 until her death in 2017. They lived in Great Wilbraham, Cambridgeshire.

Bond died in London on 3 March 2024, at the age of 89.

Publications
Since the early 1970s, Bond has been conspicuous as the first dramatist since George Bernard Shaw to produce long, serious prose prefaces to his plays.

These contain the author's meditations on capitalism, violence, technology, post-modernism and imagination and develop a comprehensive theory on the use and means of drama. Nine volumes of his Collected Plays, including the prefaces, are available from the UK publisher Methuen.

In 1999 he published The Hidden Plot, a collection of writings on theatre and the meaning of drama. He has published two volumes from his notebooks and four volumes of letters. His Collected Poems was published in 1987.

Contribution to cinema
In the late 1960s/early 1970s Bond also made some contributions to the cinema. He wrote the English dialogue for Blowup (1966, directed by Michelangelo Antonioni), for which he received a joint Oscar nomination for Best Original Screenplay. He also wrote an adaptation of Nabokov's Laughter in the Dark (1968, dir. Tony Richardson) and the screenplay for the aboriginal drama Walkabout (1971, dir. Nicolas Roeg); as well as contributing additional dialogue to Nicholas and Alexandra (1971, dir. Franklin J. Schaffner). Except for Antonioni's Blowup, Bond himself considered these works strictly as potboilers and often became frustrated when further involved in cinema projects.

List of works
Plays

(Dates of writing, followed by director, place and date of world première, if any) Television plays
 * The Pope's Wedding (1961–62) Keith Johnstone, Royal Court Theatre, London, 9 December 1962
 * Saved (1964) William Gaskill, English Stage Society, Royal Court Theatre, London, 3 November 1965
 * Early Morning (1965–1967) William Gaskill, English Stage Society, Royal Court Theatre London, 31 March 1968
 * Narrow Road to the Deep North (1968) Jane Howell, Belgrade Theatre, Coventry, 24 June 1968
 * Black Mass (1970) David Jones, Lyceum Theatre, London, 22 March 1970
 * Passion "a Play for CND" (1971) Bill Bryden, au CND Festival of Life on Easter, Alexandra Park Racecourse, 11 April 1971
 * Lear (1969–1971) William Gaskill, Royal Court Theatre London, 29 September 1971
 * The Sea "a comedy" (1971–72) William Gaskill, Royal Court Theatre London, 22 May 1973
 * Bingo "scenes of money and death" (1973) Jane Howell & John Dove, Northcott Theatre, November Exeter, 14 1973
 * The Fool "scenes of bread and love" (1974) Peter Gill, Royal Court Theatre London, 18 November 1975
 * A-A-America !: Grandma Faust "a burlesque" and The Swing "a documentary" (1976) Jack Emery, Inter-Action's Ambiance Lunch-Hour Theatre Club, Almost Free Theatre, London. Grandma Faust: 25 October; The Swing: 22 November 1976
 * Stone "a short Play" (1976) Gerald Chapman, Gay Sweatshop, Institute of Contemporary Arts, London, 8 June 1976
 * The Woman "scenes of war and freedom" (1974–1977) Edward Bond, National Theatre (Olivier Stage), London, 10 August 1978
 * The Bundle or New Narrow Road to the Deep North (1977) Howard Davies, Royal Shakespeare Company, The Warehouse Theatre, London, 13 January 1978
 * The Worlds (1979) Edward Bond, Newcastle University Theatre Society, Newcastle Playhouse, 8 March 1979
 * Restoration "a pastorale" (1979–80) Edward Bond, Royal Court Theatre, London, 22 July 1981
 * Summer "a European play" (1980–81) Edward Bond, National Theatre (Cottlesloe Stage), London, 27 January 1982
 * Derek (1982) Nick Hamm, Royal Shakespeare Company, The Other Place, Stratford On Avon, 18 October 1982
 * Human Cannon (1979–1983) Dan Baron Cohen, Quantum Theatre Company, Manchester, 2 February 1986
 * The War Plays: Red Black and Ignorant (1983–84) Nick Hamm (as The Unknown Citizen), Royal Shakespeare Company, pour le festival "Thoughtcrimes", Barbican Pit, London, 19 January 1984; The Tin Can People (1984) Nick Philippou, Bread and Circus Theatre, Midlands Art Centre, Birmingham, 4 May 1984; Great Peace (1984–85) Nick Hamm, Royal Shakespeare Company, Barbican Pit, London, 17 July 1985; premiered as a trilogy: Nick Hamm, Royal Shakespeare Company, Barbican Pit, London, 25 July 1985
 * Jackets or The Secret Hand (1986) Keith Sturgess, Department of Theatre Studies, University of Lancaster, Nuffield studio, Lancaster, 24 January 1989
 * In the Company of Men (1987–88) Alain Françon (as La Compagnie des hommes), Théâtre de la Ville, Paris, 29 September 1992
 * September (1989) Greg Doran, Canterbury Cathedral, Canterbury, 16 September 1989
 * Olly's Prison (1990) (stage version) Jorge Lavelli (as Maison d'arrêt), Festival d'Avignon, 15 July 1993
 * Tuesday (stage version) Claudia Stavisky (as Mardi), Théâtre de la Colline, Paris, 23 November 1995
 * Coffee "a tragedy" (1993–94) Dan Baron Cohen, The Rational Theatre Company, Chapter Art Centre, Cardiff, 27 November 1996
 * At the Inland Sea (1995) Geoff Gillham, Big Brum Theatre in Education Company, Broadway School, Aston, Birmingham, 16 October 1995
 * Eleven Vests (1995–1997) Geoff Gillham, Big Brum Theatre in Education Company, Birmingham, 7 October 1997
 * The Crime of the twenty-first Century (1996–1998) Leander Haussman (as Das Verbrechen des 21. Jahrhunderts), Schauspielhaus, Bochum, 28 May 1999
 * The Children (1999) Claudette Bryanston, Classwork Theatre, Manor Community College, Cambridge, 11 February 2000
 * Have I None (2000) Chris Cooper, Big Brum Theatre-in-Education Company, Birmingham, 2 November 2000
 * Existence (2002) (stage version) Christian Benedetti, Studio Théâtre, Alfortville, 28 October 2002
 * Born (2002–03) Alain Françon (as Naître), Festival d'Avignon, 10 July 2006
 * The Balancing Act (2003) Chris Cooper, Big Brum Theatre in Education Company, Birmingham, October 2003
 * The Short Electra (2003–04) John Doona, Young People Drama Festival, 13 March 2004
 * People (2005), Alain Françon (as "Les Gens") Théâtre Gérard Philipe, Paris, 13 January 2014
 * The Under Room (2005) Chris Cooper, Big Brum Theatre in Education Company, 9 October 2005
 * Chair, stage version (2005) Alain Françon (as Chaise) Festival d'Avignon, 18 July 2006
 * Arcade (2006) John Doona, Chester, 21 September 2006
 * Tune (2006) Chris Cooper, Big Brum Theatre in Education Company, 2007
 * Innocence (2008), unperformed
 * A Window (2009) Chris Cooper, Big Brum Theatre in Education Company, 12 October 2009
 * There Will Be More (2010) (early version of the first part of Dea) Adam Spreadbury-Maher, Good Night Out Presents, The Cock Tavern Theatre, 26 October 2010
 * The Edge (2011) Chris Cooper, Big Brum Theatre in Education Company, 15 October 2012
 * The Broken Bowl (2012) Chris Cooper, Big Brum Theatre in Education Company, 24 April 2012
 * The Angry Roads (2014) Chris Cooper, Big Brum Theatre in Education Company, 6 October 2014
 * The Price of One (2016) Chris Cooper, Unifaun Theatre Productions & Teatru Manoel, Manoel Theatre, Valletta (Malta), 8 April 2016
 * Dea (2016) Edward Bond, Secombe Theatre (Sutton Theatres), Sutton, 26 May 2016
 * Olly's Prison (1990), shot in December 1991 (Roy Battersby), broadcast: BBC2, May 1993
 * Tuesday (1992), shot in March 1993 (Sharon Miller and Edward Bond), broadcast: BBC Schools Television, June 1993

Radio plays
 * Chair (2000), broadcast: BBC Radio 4, 8 April 2000 (Turan Ali, Director/Producer)
 * Existence (2002), broadcast: BBC Radio 4, May 2002 (Turan Ali, Director/Producer)

Unavailable early plays
 * The Tragedy, for television, 1950s
 * "He jumped but the bridge was burning", 1950s
 * The Asses of Kish, 1956–57
 * Too Late Now, for television, c. 1957
 * The Broken Shepherdess, for radio, c. 1958
 * Sylo's New Ruins, for television, c. 1958
 * The Performance for television, c. 1958
 * The Best Laid Schemes, for television, c. 1958
 * A Woman Weeping, c. 1957
 * The Roller Coaster, c. 1958
 * Klaxon in Aetreus' Place, 1958
 * The Fiery Tree, 1958
 * I Don't Want to Be Nice, 1959
 * The Golden Age, 1959
 * The Outing, 1959–60
 * Kissing The Beast, for radio, 1960
 * The Palace of Varieties in the Sand, 1975–76

Libretti for operas by Hans Werner Henze
 * We Come to the river "Actions for Music in Two Parts and Eleven Scenes", 1972/74, in The Fool, Londres, Eyre Methuen, 1976
 * The Cat "a story for music", 1979, in Restoration, London, Methuen, 1982, from Honoré de Balzac's Peines d'amour d'une chatte anglaise, music by H.W. Henze; recorded as: The English Cat, "Ein Geschichte für Sänger und Instrumentalisten von Edward Bond", Parnassus Orchestra London, dir.: Markus Stenz-Peter Doll, Mayence, Wergo, 2 CD, WER 62042, 1989

Libretti for ballets
 * Text for a Ballet: for Dancers, Chorus and Orchestra (1977), partially published as From an Unfinished Ballet, in Theatre Poems and Songs, London, Methuen, 1980
 * Orpheus "a story in six scenes" (1977/78), music by Hans Werner Henze, for William Forsythe
 * Burns "a piece for dancers and musicians" (1985), for Midland Ballet Company

Adaptations from other authors
 * Thomas Middleton: A Chaste Maid in Cheapside (1965)
 * Anton Chekhov: Three Sisters (1966), with Richard Cottrell, for William Gaskill
 * Bertolt Brecht: Heads (Round Heads and Pick Heads) (c. 1970), with Keith Hack, inédit,
 * John Webster: The White Devil (1976), "Acting Edition" for Michael Lindsay-Hogg
 * Frank Wedekind: Spring Awakening (1974), with Elisabeth Bond-Pablé, for Bill Bryden
 * Frank Wedekind: Lulu (1992), with Elisabeth Bond-Pablé, for Cambridge Theatre Company

Screenplays
 * Blowup, from Julio Cortázar, dir: Michelangelo Antonioni, 1967
 * Michael Kolhaas – der Rebell, from H. von Kleist, dir: Volker Schlöndorff, 1968
 * The Nun of Monza (English language version dialogue), dir: Eriprando Visconti, 1969
 * Laughter in the Dark, from V. Nabokov, dir: Tony Richardson, 1969
 * Walkabout, from J. Vance Marshall, dir: Nicolas Roeg, 1971
 * Nicholas and Alexandra (additional dialogue), dir: Franklin J. Schaffner, 1971
 * Days of Fury (AKA One Russian Summer), with U. Pirro et A. Calenda, dir: Antonio Calenda, 1973
 * The Master Builder, from H. Ibsen, commande de KCETTV, unperformed, 1974 75
 * Moby Dick, from H.Melville, 1991, unperformed
 * Ithaca, from Homer, 1998–99, unperformed

Editions
Plays ("uniformed edition"; nine volumes by Methuen, London)
 * Plays: 1 (1977): Author's note: On Violence; Saved, Early morning; Pope's Wedding
 * Plays: 2 (1978): Introduction; Preface to Lear; Lear; The Sea; Narrow Road to The Deep North, Black Mass; Passion
 * Plays: 3 (1987): Four Pieces; Introduction to Bingo, Bingo; Introduction to The Fool; The Fool; Clare Poems; The Woman; Poems, Stories and Essays for The Woman; Author's note; Stone
 * Plays: 4 (1992): The Worlds; The Activists Papers; Restoration; Restoration Poems and Stories; Summer; Summer Poems
 * Plays: 5 (1996): Human Cannon, The Bundle; In the Company of Men; Jackets
 * Plays: 6 (1998): Choruses from After the Assassinations; War Plays; Commentary on the War Plays
 * Plays: 7 (2003): The Cap; The Crime of the Twenty-first Century; Olly's Prison; Notes on Imagination; Coffee; The Swing; Derek; Fables and Stories
 * Plays: 8 (2006): Born, People, Chair, Existence, The Under Room
 * Plays: 9 (2011): Innocence, Window, Tune, Balancing Act, The Edge
 * Plays: 10 (2018): Dea, The Testament of this Day, The Price of One, The Angry Roads, The Hungry Bowl

Other plays (by Methuen, London)
 * Lear, Student Edition, with Commentary and Notes by Patricia Hern (1983)
 * Olly's Prison, stage and TV version (1993)
 * At the Inland Sea (1997)
 * Eleven Vests with Tuesday (1997)
 * The Children with Have I None (2001)
 * Saved, Student Edition, with Commentary and Notes by David Davis (2008)
 * The Chair Plays: Have I None, The Under Room and Chair (2012)
 * Dea (2016)

Selected theoretical writings

 * A Note on Dramatic Method (1977), in: The Bundle, London, Methuen, 1978
 * The Activists Papers (1980) in Plays 4, London, Methuen, 1992
 * Introduction, for The Fool, in Plays 3, London, Methuen, 1987
 * The Dramatic Child (1992), in Tuesday, London, Methuen, 1992
 * Notes on Imagination, in: Coffee, London, Methuen, 1995
 * Notes on Post-modernism (1989) in: Plays 5, London, Methuen, 1996
 * The Hidden Plot Notes on Theatre and the State, London, Methuen, 2000
 * Drama Devices (2004), in David Davis (ed.): Edward Bond and the Dramatic Child, Edward Bond's Plays for Young People, London, Trentham Books, 2005
 * "Something of Myself" (2004), in David Davis (ed.): Edward Bond and the Dramatic Child, Edward Bond's Plays for Young People, London, Trentham Books, 2005
 * "Something of Myself" (2004), in David Davis (ed.): Edward Bond and the Dramatic Child, Edward Bond's Plays for Young People, London, Trentham Books, 2005

Letters, selected and edited by Ian Stuart:
 * I, Harwood Academic Publishers, 1994
 * II, Luxembourg, Harwood Academic Publishers, 1995
 * III, Amsterdam, Harwood Academic Publishers, 1996
 * 4, Amsterdam, Harwood Academic Publishers, 1998
 * 5, London, Routledge, 2001

Selections from Edward Bond's Notebooks, edited by Ian Stuart, London, Methuen,
 * vol. 1: 1959–1980, 2000
 * vol. 2: 1980–1995, 2000

title: Edward Bond


text:
Talk:First Vision

New side-by-side comparison section
I'm wondering about the side-by-side comparison section added in this edit. At first glance it seemed interesting, but when I look at the rest of the article it seems a but unwieldy and redundant. Earlier in the article we have several subsections with fairly detailed descriptions of each account. And if that's not enough, further down there's a large table explicitly noting the differences between accounts. I feel the more digested version is more accessible to readers than side-by-sides of the complete texts but the side-by-side could be interesting to some. Would it make sense to create a daughter article like Comparison of First Vision accounts? pinging User:Epachamo and User:John Foxe ~Awilley (talk) 04:56, 28 February 2020 (UTC)
 * Hmm. I can see advantages to both. John Foxe (talk) 15:40, 28 February 2020 (UTC)
 * Full disclosure, it was me who added the side-by-side comparison. I put it at the end so as not to take away from the simplicity of the 'digested version.'  A casual reader can get the general overview, and the reader who finds the complete texts interesting can get what they want as well.  If there is a new daughter article, I think it should include ALL of the 'redundant sections', and just keep in this article a summary of the salient points.  I am willing to create the new daughter article if it is agreed that this should be the case. It could also include comparisons of secondary accounts as well, which would definitely be unwieldy in this article, but be interesting to some. Unless you object Awilley or John Foxe, I will start to make the change. Epachamo (talk) 15:39, 29 February 2020 (UTC)
 * That's fine with me. (I pinged you because you had added the new section). As for what happens with this article if/when the daughter is created, I think the new section should go entirely and the other ones might merit some prudent trimming and a main article template at the top of the section. ~Awilley (talk) 18:16, 1 March 2020 (UTC)
 * Ok, I'll give it another week of waiting, and if I haven't heard anything by then, I will begin a draft article and invite both of you for editing. My intent would be to include the new section entirely, add content from the other sections.  Once it is live and accepted, then prune this current article down to a single section. Epachamo (talk) 15:17, 6 March 2020 (UTC)

I have created Draft:Comparison of First Vision accounts and invite you both, and anyone else to collaborate as you have time. So far I just copied all content from the article that dealt in comparing the first vision accounts. Epachamo (talk) 00:30, 19 March 2020 (UTC)

I looked at your draft. That's a good amount of work. Personally, I don't think a daughter article is the way to go. I don't see a comparison of the accounts as being a separate topic from the vision itself. I think the comparison, at a moderate level of detail, is really a core part of understanding the vision and that severing it from the main article reduces understanding. It's probable that the majority of the people who go to the main article will not see the little link mentioning the comparison article but would see the huge comparison chart if it stayed in the main article. For writers there would now be the burden of always wondering whether something should go in the main article, the comparison article, or both. The issue is not very clear cut, like it was for the cunning folk article. (Good work on that, by the way.)

I just don't see the sense in having the different accounts presented in three different ways - in paragraph form, in a horizontal chart, and in a vertical chart. I think paragraph form and one chart is about right. If the chart had the accounts in the columns it could have increasingly detailed / trivial information in the lower rows of the chart. This might be a way to present the right level of detail for the amount of reading different people are putting in. Just a thought. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Davemc0 (talk • contribs) 04:27, 13 April 2020 (UTC)

 * I think in the comparison article in its current form is VERY incomplete. It could show ALL the accounts and even second hand recollections, which would make the daughter article more necessary than it is now.  I will tell you that I myself came to this article trying to find a side by side comparison and did not find one.  I then searched the internet and could not find one, which is why I added it.  I completely agree that it is not interesting to every reader, but there is a subset of readers like myself who will find it extremely interesting.  The current article is getting rather large and it will get larger over the next month, as several discussions are incomplete. Epachamo (talk) 21:21, 14 April 2020 (UTC)

Removal and movement of the section on Magic in the context section
Over the last couple of weeks I've read dozens of articles and books the last month on the First Vision and only one D. Michael Quinn has anything to say that connects Smith's folk magic background with the first vision. It is the only source quoted in this article, and I argue that the meaning and intent of what Quinn writes in not reflected appropriately here in this article. The vast majority of scholars feel that the First Vision was a result of the religious environment, not folk magic environment. To be clear, Quinn does NOT claim that folk magic was an influence in Smith receiving his vision as is strongly implied in this article. Quinn was and still is a believer that the First Vision actually occurred, and his book is written through that lens. Here is what Quinn says in full:

"In light of the efforts of ordained clergy to suppress folk magic, Joseph Sr.'s 1820 thophany ("first vision") is important. By the early 1820s the Smith family had already participated in a wide range of magic practices, and Smith's first vision occurred whithin the context of his family's treasure-quest. His first emphasis was God's forgiveness, yet some of Smith narratives state that God told him the clergymen of any organized church were wrong.  At this time the revivals of western New York's so-called 'Burned-over District' were bringing thousands out of private folk religion and into organized churches, whose clergy opposed folk magic.  Nonetheless, Smith's vision of the divine gave him every reason to ignore the clergy's insturctions, including denunciations of the occult."

In other words, according to Quinn, the role that magic played into how Smith and other's responded to it. He continues in another section:

"'It was not because of its content that Palmyra residents ridiculed Joseph Smith's first vision, but because of the claim that God appeard to a local treasure-seer.'"

It should be noted that Quinn's book came out at the same time as the Salamander letter, and was in part a response to it. The only other section that I could find in his book connecting magic to Smith's vision is painful when viewed from this side of history:

"'After Joseph Smith's 1820 face-to-face vision of God, his cultural heritage predisposed him to expect a visitation from ' Salamanders, the inflamed guests of the region of fire.' The salamander symbolized divinity.'"

I plan on paring down and moving the information on magic into the "Interpretations and Responses" unless an additional source can be found. Epachamo (talk) 01:02, 30 March 2020 (UTC)

 * In reading old comments, and searching around Wikipedia, I was amazed to find out that there was NO article about Magic and the Latter Day Saint Movement, which made me feel less good about removing the extensive commentary in this article. I decided to make the article, and it is titled: Cunning Folk Traditions and the Latter Day Saint Movement.  I invite all to contribute.Epachamo (talk) 02:07, 31 March 2020 (UTC)
 * If you believe, as I do, that Smith didn't create the First Vision story until after he had founded the church, then it makes sense that folk magic had little influence on its telling. Smith had already set his sights far beyond the grubby treasure hunting of his youth. John Foxe (talk) 13:08, 1 April 2020 (UTC)

Update: I did find a historian (Jan Shipps) who found that Smith's cunning folk traditions was important to religious background in the context of the first vision and added its mention back in. Epachamo (talk) 22:19, 4 May 2020 (UTC)
 * Thanks for checking. Good call. John Foxe (talk) 01:26, 5 May 2020 (UTC)

Undue weight of recent edits
I'm fine with mentioning that Tanner and Brodie criticisms that the first vision accounts are similar to other contemporary stories published around the same time. I do think that it is undue weight, though, to include multiple blockquotes from the sources when compared to how other criticisms and responses are presented. A brief summary of the criticisms, imo, is sufficient. How are the summary statements insufficient? --FyzixFighter (talk) 01:01, 13 February 2021 (UTC)

 * The brief summaries are insufficient because they omit some very useful information that relates to the central question of the validity of the first vision. For instance, nowhere else is it mentioned that Joseph Smith's mother apparently knew nothing of Joseph Smith's vision as late as 1832. Nor is there any mention of it in the newspaper accounts of the time. There is hardly anything else that could be more relevant to the question of the reality or non-reality of the First Vision. All we have is Joseph's claims that he told it to others at an early date and "suffered much persecution" immediately. But even this claim was not made before 1832. So it is very pertinent what Fawn Brodie summarized, and also pertinent to show what the contemporaneous records said, rather than just dismissing them with generalizations. For that reason I will reinstate these important comments regarding what really happened. Actually in the Brodie quote, the statements about lack of any refence by his mother in 1832, and the lack of any reference from the people of Palmyra before 1838 should be emphasized, not deleted as you are doing. Those items are at the heart of the whole discussion, and should not be swept under the rug. (User:Chronic2) — Preceding undated comment added 02:25, 13 February 2021 (UTC)

 * So, we're not going to follow WP:BRD. Fair enough, it's not required, but it helps to understand what ground rules you are working with. Anytime says that they are including text because it's important for the reader to know, it is usually intended to "right great wrongs", and therefore fails WP:UNDUE and often WP:NPOV. Additionally, quoting the Tanners is fine for stating that their is criticism, but they are a self-published source and as valuable and relevant to an historical analysis as Jeff Lindsay is for historical analysis of the Book of Mormon. That's why I argue that a summary of their criticism in this section is sufficient. And that's the other point - this section is about criticisms, not dating of the First Vision. Most of Brodie's criticisms fit into the previous sentence of critics like Palmer and others. I'm going to again simplify done to meet WP:UNDUE and join together the new text with the existing text without the POV and peacock language. --FyzixFighter (talk) 17:24, 13 February 2021 (UTC)

 * Professor Daniel C. Peterson of Brigham Young University wrote the following about the work done by Jerald and Sandra Tanner in shedding light on early Mormon history: “As far as LDS history goes, there’s no one out there who has the documents mastered as they do. ” His comment was part of an article entitled “Tanners Are Wellspring of Documents” in the May 16, 1998 issue of the Mormon newspaper Deseret News. Elbert Peck, editor of the periodical Sunstone, said “The Tanners have caused a lot of Mormon historians to do better homework.” Because of his familiarity with early Mormon writings, Jerald Tanner was the first to cast doubts on the authenticity of Mark Hofmann’s Salamander Letter. This was after Gordon Hinckley had personally purchased two bogus documents from Hofmann and the “experts” that the Church had hired to examine Hofmann’s productions pronounced them almost assuredly authentic. The Tanners are also credited with bringing about a new day in the field of Mormon historical research, where organizations like the Mormon History Association have focused more on actual historical sources rather than just repeating themes that reinforced Church doctrine.
 * Anyone whose goal is to elucidate the circumstances of early Mormon history should therefore reckon the writings of the Tanners as of primary importance, instead of placing primary importance on LDS Church publications that have been changed over the years in order to preserve church dogma. This is particularly germane for resources such as Wikipedia, where the Neutral_point_of_view policy should give primacy to the proven historical accuracy of the Tanners’ research, rather than to publications biased by efforts to maintain LDS Church dogma. Reputable scholars have shown that the Church has falsified its history in the past, and it is only research from outside scholars that has reversed this policy somewhat in recent years. This means that the research of the Tanners cannot be swept under the rug by labeling it as a “minority view”; their research actually reflects the “majority view” of non-LDS historians, i.e. of historians in general.
 * Regarding the attempt to denigrate the Tanners’ research because it is “self-published:” Their work is largely published by the Utah Lighthouse Ministry (UTLM), an organization that publishes books and also provides other resources related to early Mormon history. Some, but not all, of the books published by UTLM are authored by the Tanners. In that regard, the UTLM might be compared to the Mormon-owned company Deseret News that publishes books and other material reflecting the viewpoint of the owners. Both UTLM and Deseret News are, surely, duly registered as companies doing business in the state of Utah. Having an established business that is producing books and other material, some of which is authored by the owners of the establishment, is quite different from an individual self-publishing a single book. Any attempt to discredit the UTLM as “self-publishing” needs to consider what this means to a lot of other publishing companies that just might have some of their titles authored by the owner(s) of the company. Those of us who are interested in presenting objective facts about the history of early Mormonism will therefore continue to use publications of the UTLM as a primary resource, recognizing the great value that this resource has had in shedding important light on the history of the LDS movement, as is recognized by the majority of non-LDS scholarship. Chronic2 (talk) 16:19, 15 February 2021 (UTC)
 * It's uncontroversial that Smith's theophany was similar to others at the time. Even his parents recalled similar experiences. We can just write in plain wiki voice that theophanies like Smith's were common at the time. There's no need to attribute it to the Tanners or describe it as a "criticism". And the block quotes are unnecessary. ~Awilley (talk) 18:05, 15 February 2021 (UTC)
 * I agree with and . I think a summary of the arguments, in the vein of what Awilley has proposed, is sufficient. A block quote of the Tanners is not needed to establish these points. Good Ol’factory (talk) 21:38, 15 February 2021 (UTC)
 * I'll record my agreement as well, largely because no one can accuse me of being unduly biased in favor of Mormonism. John Foxe (talk) 22:31, 16 February 2021 (UTC)

Attempt of FyzixFighter to remove all reference to Lucy Smith’s original account of the First Vision
On February 20 I had added the account of Lucy Smith regarding the “First Vision.” This was in keeping with previous entries, where the accounts of others that Joseph Smith--of Oliver Cowdery, Orson Pratt, and John Wentworth--were already in place. Any historian would know that the account of Smith’s mother would be of great importance, and would think it less than honest when the original account she gave was later changed by LDS editors so that its contradiction to the standard narrative was hidden. These are the things that ought to appear in a balanced account of the First Vision, in which the aim should be to evaluate the credibility of the various accounts in order to determine the best historical reconstruction. Such an aim, however, runs counter to the purposes of anyone who wants to hide from Wikipedia readers the best sources available because they run counter to the LDS church narrative. This latter goal, served by erasing well-documented early sources, should have no place in Wikipedia; those doing such should go to the many Mormon Web sites and present their views there.

Also, when I made my entries earlier today, I added just a few words to each heading. The purpose of this was to allow users to see more quickly the disparities between who or what was seen in each account. The purpose was to add clarity. What was the purpose of removing these extra words, if not to avoid such clarity?

Please inform me if there is some other purpose in such censorship of well documented sources, sources that pertain very much to providing the proper information so that people who go to Wikipedia can get factual presentations rather than views that are not compatible with the amount of excellent material that is already in this article, material that shows that the “standard narrative” of the LDS church needs exactly the kind of objective examination that Wikipedia can provide. I have found that the excuses for the censorship of Lucy Smith’s original account by no means justify the censorship I see: “ the intent of the editorializing is to draw readers' attention to the differences, then it fails NPOV and is likely an example of WP:RGW - removing for neutrality”  Really! These were just straight facts taken from the narrative. Wouldn’t the same apply to the narrative itself? What about the section “Side-by-side comparison of Joseph Smith vision accounts?” Isn’t that rather plainly an effort by honest editors of this site to show the disparities?

But just to avoid any appearance of failing NPOV, I’ll let your censorship of the small changes in the sub-section headings stand. What I do believe shows your own lack of NPOV is the deliberate erasure and censoring of the Lucy Smith testimony. Perhaps I don’t understand the reason given: “This was confusing - trying to rephrase the "Notes" for this since the Times and Seasons narrative was published in 1842, Lucy's autobiography began in 1844; also I'm not seeing in Lucy's rough draft her identifying it as the start of Mormonism” and “the two sources listed are primary sources, so any extrapolation as to why the 1838 account was inserted is pure SYNTH; moving to the more appropriate later reminiscences, adding a secondary source, fixing some oddities likely from the copy/pasting from the original blogpost that is ostensibly taken from”. Please explain yourself better. “blogpost. . . ostensibly??” I gave the sources. “pure SYNTH”? To me it looks like my references are as good as any in the article. So, in case I don’t understand what you’re saying, please clarify. Until that is done, I think most Wikipedia readers would see this as a case of censorship of an important issue related to the validity of the First Vision, i.e. the original testimony of Lucy Smith. Can anything be more important? This has every reason to be in the article. If you don’t like my references, put in your own; only don’t use the standard narrative that censored what she originally said, which is what the objective reader has every right to know. I plan to put back in what Lucy Smith said. If you don’t like the way I said it, use your own words, although that would be poor Wikipedia practice. Just don’t leave out this important information, and I think you owe all of us an explanation of why you don’t want the testimony of Joseph Smith’s mother regarding the First Vision to be included here. Sorry if this got too wordy, but it is important to resolve whether this kind of censorship of pertinent information will be allowed on Wikipedia. Chronic2 (talk) 01:56, 21 February 2021 (UTC)

 * That is one of the challenges of edit summaries - low bandwidth. One correction to your description above - I didn't remove the Lucy Mack Smith account - I moved it to the more appropriate "Smith's accounts found in later reminiscences" and kept the sources you provided (although I doubt that you actually put eyes on either of the sources you are referencing) and removed parts that were not verifiable or that represented original synthesis. I did also add another source, a recent publication of Lucy's family history/autobiography with extensive editorial explanations and analysis. The previous sections were for accounts written during Joseph Smith's lifetime. Lucy's autobiography/family history was written after his death in 1844-1845, so more appropriately belongs in the post-JS section. Lucy also didn't technically write it herself, her scribe for most if was Martha Jane Coray. It wasn't published in any form until 1853, first by Orson Pratt in England, actually causing some controversy. Later publications went through some editorial oversight of the Church.
 * As I mentioned above, it doesn't look like you actually laid eyes on Lucy's rough draft or the cited EMD source. Rather, it looks like you copy/pasted (with only a few minor alterations) from this blogpost. That's why I added the additional source of "Lucy’s Book: A Critical Edition of Lucy Mack Smith’s Family Memoir" which does show draft/later publication comparisons and modern editorializing about changes, history of the drafts and publications, and other modern historical analysis. While I kept basic mention of Lucy's account I did remove/change the following for the following reasons:
 * "When writing her autobiography..." - as I mentioned previously, this gets complicated as Lucy had a scribe who actually wrote the history (see )
 * "...said that the LDS movement began ..." - I couldn't find where Lucy actually makes the connection, but perhaps I missed it. What part of her rough draft supports this statement?
 * "...she was persuaded to use instead Joseph’s account from Times and Seasons" - I couldn't find anything to support this rationale for why the 1838 account was absent from the rough draft but included in the published version (any of the published versions). Who persuaded her? What is the source that explains the how/why the 1838 account was included?
 * "...in order so that her contradiction to what Joseph said at various times and the canonical version would be not be seen" - This is complete synthesis without a secondary source that supports this claim. We can state that there is a difference between the rough draft and the published versions simply from looking at the primary sources, but we need a secondary source to support the claim for why it was done. What in the sources you provided indicates that this was the reason why?
 * "Instead of publishing her original words, the Times and Seasons replaced them with what Joseph Smith said in the canonical version." - I found this mostly incoherent. It sounds like you are saying the newspaper, Times and Seasons, chose to ignore Lucy's original words and use Smith's canonical version. This doesn't follow the actual chronology. Times and Seasons published the first vision narrative in 1842, Lucy didn't start her rough draft until 1844, after Smith's death.
 * Again, I did not remove the summary of Lucy's account, but I did move it to a more appropriate section, I reworded it based on my reading of the sources, and I added a better source. Rewording other editors' words when one finds them lacking is not poor Wikipedia practice - it's standard Wikipedia practice. --FyzixFighter (talk) 02:59, 21 February 2021 (UTC)

 * (from Chronic2) You assume quite a bit. I had never seen the blogpost you thought I was copying from until I looked from your reference just now. I have seen the handwritten draft, available at https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/lucy-mack-smith-history-1844-1845/40 Lucy Mack Smith, History 1844-1845 book 3, p. 10. The fact that there is so much crossing-out in the handwritten draft indicates that Lucy was correcting her stenographer, so it seems like grasping at a straw to discredit the account because it is not in her own handwriting. It is as close as we will ever get to something she genuinely said and thought. Historians are always interested in comparing original documents, and seeing if there is any discrepancy with the "standardized" versions that institutions promote. Therefore this version deserves a paragraph of its own. So what if it is after Smith's death, or any other specious reason that might be given for not giving this important testimony the weight it deserves in determining the truth or falsity of the "standard version"?
 * Further, any historian or lawyer knows that, in order to determine the truth or falsity of a statement or position, the first things that are looked at are any discrepancies between the given statement and other, competing statements. If someone is telling the truth, there will be consonance with other, independent sources. If someone is lying, the differences or incongruities with other accounts will be the most important items that the historian, attorney, and the jury should examine. Therefore it is not a violation of NPOV to place emphasis on the difference in accounts. It is the sound method that anyone who is seeking the truth will follow: if the differences can be reconciled, fine and good; if they can't, then this is the basis for making a sound decision. What seems to me a decidedly non-NPOV view is to stuff under the rug any discussion of conflicting testimonies that could be useful in determining whether the account is true or not.

 * Suppose someone from Roswell, New Mexico, put on his blog that, 12 years ago, he was visited by a space ship while he was out in the desert meditating. From the space ship came a little green creature who told him that he had an important message for all the people of the earth. The Roswell person was terribly frightened and very impressed. But this was all 12 years ago. In the meanwhile, there is no record that Roswell-person told anyone about this all-important message until he publishes it 12 years later. Further, some handwritten copies are found in which he says it was not one little green creature, but two. But when a reporter goes to Roswell to investigate, he finds that the Roswell-person's mother says that something like that happened to her son, but it was a ghost-like apparition, it happened in his bedroom not the desert, and it was nine years ago, not 12. Is it not clear that the differences in accounts would be the most important thing for this reporter to make known? And what should be said about someone who maintained that the reporter should not be trusted because he was saying that the differences are the very things that should be highlighted, and the person making the claim should be given a chance to try to explain them; if no suitable explanation can come up, then it is not dishonesty, but honesty, to present to the public, in plain terms, the disparities in the account so that the public can make up their own mind whom to believe. The differences in account are the very things that an historian, a lawyer, or anyone honestly interested in the truth should be examining, not sweeping under the rug by claiming that this violates NPOV. Any person who thinks the differences can be reconciled should be given the opportunity to present their case: please do so. The proper response would be to do that, not to just erase a simple explanation that directly quotes a statement as important to this matter as Lucy Smith's testimony--that testimony should be given its due importance in presenting objective facts so that Wikipedia users can make up their own mind in the matter.     Chronic2 (talk) 05:32, 21 February 2021 (UTC)

 * It is truly an amazing coincidence then that the wording of your edit was so similar to that blogpost. It is also very similar to this pdf. Your edit and these two locations even use the same "p. 46" in the citation. If you were looking at just the JSP source, where did you get the "p. 46" in your citation? I don't see how you could have gotten that from the JSP source.
 * I'm not discrediting the account because it wasn't written in her handwriting. Rather I think it is technically incorrect to say that Lucy wrote her autobiography - technically she dictated it. That's why I would prefer to simply say "In her autobiography...".
 * The other accounts (subsection 3.1-3.7) are unique in that they are accounts recorded while Joseph Smith was alive. Lucy's account was written after his death. Therefore it fits better, imo, in the subsection "Smith's accounts found in later reminiscences". In fact, that's why I moved it there in my edit - I largely kept your paragraph, just removing the novel claims not found in the cited sources. With your most recent edit we now have Lucy's account mentioned in two places in the "Recorded accounts of the vision". I will also point out that the fact that Lucy's working draft copy doesn't have the canonical first vision narrative is already in the "Dating the Smith Family conversions to Presbyterianism" subsection, so with your edit we now multiple levels of redundancy.
 * WP:NPOV says that wikipedia "describe disputes, but not engage in them." The arguments you give for your edits above, and additionally in the section below for the edits you would like, violate this principle. You are crafting an argument based on the primary sources to lead readers to a conclusion not found in those sources. We cannot analyze, evaluate, interpret, or synthesize material found in a primary source ourselves, per WP:OR. We have to find reliable, secondary sources that do so. Calling something "important facts/information" is also a judgement call that you as an editor have made, indicating that you are engaging in the debate and not reporting it (violating NPOV). Such wording and arguments are also indicative of editing to "right great wrongs".
 * Your edit violates WP:OR by making the following claim that is not supported by the sources you cited: "...were all deleted in order to make this compatible with the “canonical” account from Times and Seasons." This is an interpretation of primary source material and requires a secondary source that makes this actual claim. Where is this claim made in the sources cited? --FyzixFighter (talk) 07:39, 21 February 2021 (UTC)
 * BRO GOT CAUGHT PLAGIARIZING THE PAGE NUMBER 73.94.176.159 (talk) 04:52, 13 June 2023 (UTC)

Need for a section of the vision’s effect on J. Smith’s character
One of the aspects of a study of the First Vision that has been neglected so far on this page is an examination of any effect that the vision had on J. Smith’s behavior. It is widely known that there were other “theophanies” in this period, that of Charles Finney being the most notable. According to his own testimony and the testimony of those who knew him best, Finney’s encounter with God changed him so that he renounced the occult practices of the Freemasons and made other changes in his life, eventually going on to become one of the best-known evangelists of the nineteenth century, found Oberlin College, etc. If a sincere enquirer claimed that he had an encounter with God that deeply affected him, then we would expect to see some evidence of the encounter in a changed life. However, virtually every credible account we have regarding Joseph Smith Jr., from his neighbors who knew him best and from the occasional official records of the day, states that he continued to be involved in occult practices such as treasure-seeking, first from participating with his father, and the, after 1822, by using the “peepstones” that he “borrowed” from Hale to continue to defraud others until the law caught up with him in the well-documented Bainbridge Court Case (1827). During all this time, 1820 through 1828, we have the testimonies of people like his father-in-law regarding his character, those who testified at the Court Case, those who testified about his character when he tried to join the Methodist Church in 1828, etc. These testimonies are well documented and should not be swept under the rug by some of the usual ploys, such as saying that because Hurlbut, who arranged for some of the testimonies to be sworn to, was an immoral person who committed adultery, therefore the persons giving the testimonies, and the various judges and justices of the peace before whom they were sworn, can be disregarded. As shallow as that sounds, this is the excuse offered by some LDS apologists.

Consequently I am putting the suggestion forth that there should be a section for this on the “First Vision” page. It seems to me that it is important to any honest inquiry into the truth or falsity of the First Vision, and so the evidence pro and con should have a fair hearing here. It is NOT irrelevant. I also realize that if I were to be the one to start this section, there seems to be a good chance it would get deleted by someone with a non-neutral POV. So I invite any, even those who might want to censor, to start this section themselves. I think it is needed, and invite discussion, especially from those who would argue, for some reason or other, that it is not necessary. Chronic2 (talk) 03:55, 21 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Question. And what are your proposed sources? Good Ol’factory (talk) 04:49, 21 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Let me see if I can wrap my head around this. You're arguing that Charles Finney's theophany was True because he rejected the occult practices of Freemasonry and became an evangelist, and Joseph Smith's theophany was False because he remained distant from established religions and didn't reject occult practices? ~Awilley (talk) 23:44, 26 February 2021 (UTC)

 * I didn't say Finney's experience was true and Smith's was false. What I am saying is that if someone had a profound religious experience--and what could be profounder than seeing God in the flesh--then any of us should be curious to see what change that made in the person's behavior. We see that change in Finney's life; whether you think that change was good or bad, it was a radical change. So I think it is a proper question to ask: what changes do we see in J. Smith's behavior? I think that would be something appropriate to document in an article on the First Vision. Let me ask you a simple question: If you saw God in the flesh, and he had an important message for all mankind, would you go on about your daily business as before? Would you wait 12 years or more before you told anyone about that important message that the whole world was supposed to hear, and which concerned the eternal destiny of every person? If J. Smith really saw a vision in one of the forms he described later, then it is entirely appropriate that we look at the best records we have for his subsequent behavior. Do you agree or disagree? Why should anyone hide those records or not want to do such an investigation? Let's look at them in a fair way. Chronic2 (talk) 02:20, 27 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Eh? Who's wanting to hide records? And what records? Look, my personal views don't really matter here. Any analysis we do of primary sources doesn't really matter here. What matters is the work that reputable scholars and historians have done. We write articles to reflect what they write, not our own analysis of primary sources.
 * You ask, "If you saw God in the flesh, and he had an important message for all mankind, would you go on about your daily business as before?" I think your premise is flawed. According to Richard Bushman, the leading scholar on all things Joseph Smith, Smith didn't understand the "first vision" to be an important message for all mankind. He understood it as a personal conversion...a forgiveness of sins, not the beginning of some grand restoration. The vision that really altered Smith's trajectory was the one of Moroni a few years later. The the first vision only became significant in hindsight.
 * That said, there is definitely a disconnect in the way the LDS Church romanticizes the story vs. how Smith and others understood it in the early days of the church. It might be useful to say something about that in this article. (I thought there was something already, but I couldn't find it just now.) ~Awilley (talk) 03:45, 27 February 2021 (UTC) Edit: Doh! There it is in the 3rd paragraph of the Lead: "The First Vision is revered in Latter-day Saint theology as the first step in the Latter Day Saint restoration, but it was relatively unknown to early adherents to the Latter Day Saint movement" ~Awilley (talk) 03:50, 27 February 2021 (UTC)

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Talk:First Vision


text:
Employment and Training Administration

The Employment and Training Administration (ETA) is part of the U.S. Department of Labor. Its mission is to provide training, employment, labor market information, and income maintenance services. ETA administers federal government job training and worker dislocation programs, federal grants to states for public employment service programs, and unemployment insurance benefits. These services are primarily provided through state and local workforce development systems.

President Joe Biden nominated labor lawyer and Florida politician José Javier Rodríguez for the position of Assistant Secretary for Employment and Training, the agency's leader, on June 2, 2021; he was confirmed by the Senate on March 21, 2024.

Programs administered

 * Career Advancement Accounts
 * Community-Based Job Training Grants
 * Disaster Unemployment Assistance
 * Federal Bonding Program
 * Foreign Labor Certification
 * High Growth Job Training Grants
 * Indian and Native American Job Training Program
 * Job Corps
 * Migrant and Seasonal Farmworker Job Training Program
 * National Emergency Grants
 * One-Stop Career Centers
 * Occupational Information Network (Holland Codes)
 * Registered Apprenticeship
 * Senior Community Service Employment Program (SCSEP)
 * Trade Adjustment Assistance
 * Unemployment Insurance
 * Wagner-Peyser Act Programs
 * Work Opportunity Tax Credit
 * Workforce Innovation in Regional Economic Development (WIRED)
 * Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act Adult Job Training Programs
 * Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act Dislocated Worker Programs
 * Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act Youth Job Training Programs
 * YouthBuild

History
The agency was at first called the Manpower Administration when it was founded in 1954. It was given its present name in 1975.

The most recent confirmed Assistant Secretary is John Pallasch, who was sworn in on July 29, 2019. He resigned on January 20, 2021. Suzan Levine was named as Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary by the incoming Biden administration on January 28, 2021, and served as the Acting Assistant Secretary.

title: Employment and Training Administration


text:
Hallowed Ground (Violent Femmes album)

Hallowed Ground is the second studio album by Violent Femmes, released on May 14, 1984. Like the band's first album, the songs were mostly written by singer/guitarist/lyricist Gordon Gano when he was in high school. "Country Death Song", for example, written by Gano during his high school classes, was inspired by the tradition of folk songs about "terrible, horrific stories". A departure from the straightforward rock style of their debut, Hallowed Ground was considerably divisive amongst fans and critics, with many at the time incorrectly thinking Gano's Christian lyrics were ironic.

Background
The songs were written before their first album. With multiple albums' worth of songs ready, the band decided to focus on more pop songs for their debut album and 'confuse people' with the more experimental songs that ended up as Hallowed Ground. They also stated a goal of "being unpredictable." "Country Death Song" was the first song Gano played to Ritchie after meeting in high school.

The Christian-related lyrics on Hallowed Ground were thought by some to be ironic, despite Gano being a devout Baptist. The other two members of Violent Femmes were atheists, and initially refused to perform those songs, but after their debut had been recorded, they relented and several of Gano's religion-themed songs were recorded for Hallowed Ground. Gano stated in 1989, "At the time, Brian (Ritchie) was very aggressively anti-anything Christian. He said he didn't want to be playing in a band that was expressing something that he felt so vehemently against." Avant-garde musician John Zorn plays saxophone and clarinet on "Black Girls", and the group Horns of Dilemma perform clarinet and trombone on the rest of the album.

Album artwork
The album artwork is a photo of a sculpture created by Mary Nohl.

Reception
AllMusic, in a 4.5 out of 5 star review, described the album as a "hellfire-and-brimstone-beaten exorcism that both enraged and enthralled critics and fans alike". Robert Christgau gave the album a negative review, stating "everything you might hum along with on the sequel was invented generations ago by better men than he", as well as criticizing the song "Black Girls" for perceived racism and homophobia. Robert Palmer described the album as having "a subterranean mother lode of apocalyptic religion, murder, and madness that has lurked just under the surface of hillbilly music and blues since the 19th century".

Legacy
Orlando Weekly described the album as both underrated and divisive. The Phoenix New Times, in a 30th anniversary look-back, called the album the band's "finest musical effort" and praised Gano's lyrics as his "definitive moment as a lyricist." They also stated the album was an early predictor of the alternative country movement.

Brian Ritchie was interviewed in 2018 about the album's divisive legacy: "People hated it. They hated it because there were a few Christian songs on there. Gordon's father was a minister. So that was something he was into. Vic and I weren't religious, but we thought it was funny to play those songs for a punk crowd and rub them the wrong way. To me, it's more punk to defy your audience than to play what they want to hear. But we lost our audience that way. Ironically, we had the material for both albums. We could've put out a double or put "Hallowed Ground" first and then the first album. We chose to make the first one a pop album and chose to make "Hallowed Ground" this sprawling exploration of American roots music. We're not considered in the Americana category."

Ritchie later revealed Hallowed Ground was the band's favorite album, and singled out "Never Tell" as his favorite song to play.

Personnel

 * Violent Femmes
 * Gordon Gano – vocals, acoustic guitar (1, 2, 4, 7, 9), electric guitar (3, 5, 6, 8), violin (4)
 * Brian Ritchie – acoustic bass (1, 2, 4, 7, 9), electric bass (3, 5, 6, 8), slide bass (8), celesta (5), marimba (2), jews' harp (8), vocals (2, 3, 6, 7, 8, 9)
 * Victor DeLorenzo – tranceaphone (1, 2, 4, 7, 8), acoustic and electric drum kits (1, 3, 5, 6, 8, 9), stompatron (8), percussion (8), vocals (all songs except 1)

 * Additional musicians
 * Mark Van Hecke – piano on "Hallowed Ground" and "It's Gonna Rain", organ on "I Know That It's True but I'm Sorry to Say"
 * Tony Trischka – banjo on "Country Death Song" and "It's Gonna Rain"
 * Christina Houghton – autoharp on "Jesus Walking on the Water"
 * Peter Balestrieri – vocals on "Jesus Walking on the Water", tenor saxophone on "Black Girls", harmonica on "It's Gonna Rain"
 * Cynthia Gano Lewis – vocals on "Jesus Walking on the Water"
 * Drake Scott – cornetto on "Black Girls", sackbut on "Sweet Misery Blues"
 * John Zorn – alto saxophone, clarinet and game calls on "Black Girls"
 * John Tanner – clarinet on "Sweet Misery Blues"
 * Horns of Dilemma - clarinet and trombone

 * Production
 * Mark Van Hecke – production
 * John Tanner – engineering
 * Warren Bruleigh – engineering

title: Hallowed Ground (Violent Femmes album)


text:
Afrirampo

Afrirampo (あふりらんぽ) is a band from Osaka, Japan. The band was active from 2002 to 2010 and announced a reform in 2016. The members are Oni (guitar, vocals) and Pikachu (drums, vocals). Afrirampo has toured with Sonic Youth and Lightning Bolt, played with Yoko Ono collaborated with Acid Mothers Temple and released several CDs on various labels.

Musical style
Afrirampo's music often features call and response vocals, catchy distorted pop melodies, looping fret noise, droning feedback, guttural barks and impromptu squealing. Their early albums featured a sound that could be described as noise-punk, albeit with surprisingly melodic vocal parts, along with some longer, less melodic improvised jam pieces. Their later albums, especially Suuto Breakor and We Are Uchu No Ko, featured a much more expansive sound, sometimes with very long songs and quieter, more ethereal passages. The band's later albums featured noticeable elements of African music, with a tribal percussive sound and call-and-response vocals. This derived in part from a 2004 stay with pygmy tribes in Cameroon documented on their 2006 album Baka Ga Kita.

History
After playing in several bands throughout their teens, Oni with an instrumental trio called Hankoki and Pikachu with a psychedelic quartet of girls called Z, the pair started Afrirampo in the spring of 2002 at the ages of 18 and 19. The band started out using a pair of Casio synthesizers before adopting the guitar/drum format that they became known for.

The period of 2002-2005 saw Afrirampo's visibility within the ranks of contemporary noise rock increasing in a manner that Matthew Murphy of Pitchfork described as "meteoric". This might be attributed to their powerful stage presence, and hyper-energized live performances which generated considerable interest within the alternative music press.

The duo put out a few independent releases in their in the 2002–2004 period, notably the album A. During the same period of time, they played extensively in Japan, played their first shows in the US, toured Europe with Sonic Youth and spent some time in Cameroon with the Baka pygmy tribe.

In 2005, they had a particularly productive year, including their major-label Japanese debut Urusa in Japan, the album Kore Ga Mayaku Da on the New Yorked-based Tzadik (record label), and a collaboration with Acid Mothers Temple entitled We Are Acid Mothers Afrirampo! In the same year, they performed at All Tomorrow's Parties, the avant-garde music festival curated by Vincent Gallo, and joined performance artist Yoko Ono on stage for her closing piece.

2006 saw the release of their album Baka Ga Kita, which was recorded during the 2004 Cameroon visit. This album consisted mostly of a cappella chants recorded by Afrirampo with members of the Baka tribe, and features no electric guitar.

In early 2007, they canceled some shows and took a break for several months, due to Oni's pregnancy. Later that year, they released Suuto Breakor, which showed their style becoming more complex, melodic and ethereal, with more noticeable African influences than their other electric releases, although the music still contained healthy doses of noise.

The band did not release any more albums for the rest of the decade, although they did continue to play live extensively, both inside and outside of Japan.

In 2010, they released their final studio album to date, the double album We Are Uchu No Ko. While this release saw a return to the band's original noise-punk on some songs, it also showcased the band's growing musical complexity and influenced of psychedelia and world music. In June 2010, Afrirampo announced that they would be disbanding after their final show in Osaka on June 26. However, their homepage stated in Japanese that if the "Mother of Heaven" called upon them to play together again, they would play. In the English version, they stated "If our mother of monster say 'PLAY!PLAY!together!!', then we will play," indicating that the door was open for future reunions.

After breaking up, Afrirampo did a special "Bye-bye Matsuri" performance on July 26, 2010, a month after their supposed final show, in which members of the Osaka underground music scene appeared with them onstage. In 2011, they released a live CD/DVD entitled Never Ending Afrirampo, which consists of material from the last official performance on June 26, 2010, as well as some clips from the "Bye-bye Matsuri" performance on July 26, 2010. During their hiatus, the band also maintained their website and appeared in each other's solo shows.

It was announced on their official website that the band were reforming in March 2016 after six years of hiatus to embark on a reunion tour in Japan. Since then, they have continued to play live in Japan and abroad and have introduced new songs to their sets. In August 2018, they announced their first studio album since 2010, to be entitled Afriverse. The album was released on September 18, 2018.

title: Afrirampo