The Under Room is a play for three actors and a puppet, divided into nine scenes. It targets a teenage audience. The story is set in a dystopian future, behind closed doors. The Under Room is the second play in which Bond uses a dummy (the first being The Children). This puppet (called Dummy) allows Bond to experiment with on-stage violence, through a distancing technique. Dummy is not a manipulated puppet, as it remains motionless all through the play, while an actor (called Dummy Actor) standing at the back of the stage speaks and moves for Dummy.

The introductory stage directions indicate that the puppet is simple, and is about half the size of the Dummy Actor. It resembles a pillow or a bolster. After Joan has taken Dummy in illegally, she turns against him: he experiences extreme violence at her hands and is burst open at the end. Throughout the play, Joan addresses the Dummy, and not the Dummy Actor. Yet, little by little, the Dummy Actor dresses the puppet with his own clothes: as it does so, the audience identifies the actor and the puppet as the same character. As such, the violence inflicted on Dummy is heightened.

The play is set in 2077, in a military dictatorship. Everything happens in the cellar of a common citizen – Joan. One day when she comes back from work, she finds Dummy in it. He broke into her apartment by breaking a window, as he was trying to hide from the army. He does not own papers and has been shoplifting to survive. At first, Joan believes that he wants to rob her and asks him to hand her his knife. But Dummy is homeless and undocumented: his knife is his only means of defence. What is more, he is emotionally attached to it. Joan then agrees to feed and hide Dummy. He relates his past and confides that he was forced by soldiers to kill one of his parents. Joan and Dummy call on a smuggler, Jack, who promises to forge papers for Dummy, which would allow him to cross the border. However, the money Dummy was keeping in a box has disappeared. At this point, Jack declares that he has links with the army and threatens to report them. Despite the help Joan offers him (she goes as far as trying to request a loan), Dummy turns down her offer to run away with her: he says he wants to leave with Jack and to continue to steal for a living. Joan’s life has radically changed since meeting Dummy, for whom she says she has sacrificed everything. She does not understand his decision and launches into a xenophobic monologue, during which she inflicts extreme violence on Dummy. She stabs him several times, steps on him and tears him up. At the end of the play, the actor dubbing Dummy’s voice walks among the “debris” of the puppets and speaks in a fictional language.