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‘To Define Your Dissent’: The Plays and Polemics of the Field Day Theatre Company

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 January 2009

Eamcnn Hughes
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Extract

The Field Day Theatre Company was founded in 1980 by Stephen Rea, the actor, and Brian Friel, the playwright, at the former's suggestion. The combination of a playwright and an actor in the founding of a theatre in response to a crisis which is both cultural and political recalls the Irish National Theatre Society and the founders of Field Day were conscious that such parallels would be drawn. For both Friel and Rea, the only available models were the Irish Literary Theatre and the Ulster Literary Theatre. The differences between Field Day and other such ventures are however as instructive as the parallels. The Irish National Theatre Society and the Abbey were always Yeats's project; his plays, his theories on drama and speech, and his cultural politics were the informing elements in the development of the theatre. Field Day's founders, however, quickly took on four other fellow-directors – Seamus Deane, Seamus Heaney, David Hammond and Tom Paulin – for just as the Abbey had had Beltaine, Samhain, and The Arrow so Field Day has had its pamphlets and other non-theatrical projects, although in the case of Field Day, these are once again open to contributors from outside the company. The purpose of the pamphlets has been to re-examine the various pieties of Irish cultural life in this past century. In its short history Field Day has already attracted widespread attention, but the time seems right for a stock-taking since by the end of 1988 the company will have reached a plateau of sorts in its development. Since 1980 it has produced eight plays, twelve pamphlets, and one volume of poetry, not to mention the work its directors have produced outside the confines of the company; this work places Field Day at the centre of Irish cultural debate. 1988 saw the production of a new play by Friel, Making History – his first for Field Day since The Communication Cord (1982) – the publication of another set of pamphlets, which for the first time were by non-Irish critics – Terry Eagleton, Frederic Jameson, and Edward Said – and preparations for its anthology of Irish writing. The completion of these three projects should consolidate the company's position.

Type
Articles
Information
Theatre Research International , Volume 15 , Issue 1 , Spring 1990 , pp. 67 - 77
Copyright
Copyright © International Federation for Theatre Research 1990

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References

Notes

1. Hunter, Charles, ‘Close-Up: Stephen Rea: actor-manager with a mission’, The Irish Times, 19 09 1987.Google Scholar

2. See Gray, John, ‘Field Day Five Years On’, The Linenhall Review (Summer 1985), pp. 4–10, 4–5.Google Scholar

3. Summaries of the history of the company can be found in the articles by Charles Hunter and John Gray already cited, and more information can be gleaned from other articles cited below.

4. I gratefully acknowledge the help and information I have received from the Field Day Theatre Company, and especially from Julie Barber, the company's ex-administrator, who answered my enquiries with efficiency and enthusiasm above the call of duty.

5. McGrath, John, A Good Night Out: Popular Theatre: Audience, Class and Form (London, Methuen, 1981), p. 83.Google Scholar

6. Brown, Terence, Ireland: A Social and Cultural History, 1922–1979 (London, Fontana, 1981), pp. 321–4.Google Scholar

7. See the introduction to Deane, Seamus et al. , Ireland's Field Day (afterword by Donoghue, Denis) (London, Hutchinson, 1985), vii.Google Scholar

8. Kennedy, Douglas, ‘Talking to Itself’, BBC Radio Three, 21 06 1987.Google Scholar

9. Brown, Terence, The Whole Protestant Community: the making of a historical myth (Derry, Field Day, (Pamphlet No. 7), 1985), pp. 6, 8.Google Scholar

10. Mulloy, Eanna, Dynasties of Coercion (Derry, Field Day, (Pamphlet No. 10), 1986).Google Scholar

11. Farrell, Michael, The Apparatus of Repression (Derry, Field Day, (Pamphlet No. 11 ), 1986), p. 6.Google Scholar

12. Deane, Seamus, Civilians and Barbarians (Derry, Field Day, (Pamphlet No. 3), 1983), p. 14.Google Scholar

13. Longley, Edna, Poetry in the Wars (Newcastle, Bloodaxe Books, 1985), pp. 199, 185.Google Scholar The phrase ‘unhealthy intersection’ is Conor Cruise O'Brien's, quoted by Longley. Another critic who has asserted the need for a separation of culture and politics is John Wilson Foster, but where Longley demands the separation as a matter of principle, Foster requires it as a strategy; see Foster, John Wilson, ‘The Critical Condition of Ulster’, The Honest Ulsterman, No. 79, 1985, pp. 38–55.Google Scholar

14. McCormack, W. J., The Battle of the Books: Two Decades of Irish Cultural Debate (Gigginstown, Mullingar, The Lilliput Press, 1986), p. 85Google Scholar, The book can be recommended as a useful critique of the various critical positions espoused in Ireland over the period 1965–85.

15. Bew, Paul and Patterson, Henry, The British State and the Ulster Crisis from Wilson to Thatcher (London, Verso, 1985), p. 67, n. 116.Google Scholar

16. Quoted in Dantanus, Ulf, Brian Friel: A Study (London, Faber, 1988), p. 185.Google Scholar

17. Williams, Raymond, Drama from Ibsen to Brecht (London, The Hogarth Press, 1987), p. 107.Google Scholar

18. Ibid, p. 106.

19. Fugard, Athol, Boesman and Lena in Selected Plays (introduction Dennis Walder) (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1987), p. 231.Google Scholar

20. Ibid., p. 233.

21. Mahon, Derek: High Time, a comedy in one act based on Moliere's ‘The School for Husbands’ (Dublin, The Gallery Press, 1985), p. 29Google Scholar; Paulin, Tom: The Riot Act: A Version of ‘Antigone’ by Sophocles (London, Faberand Faber, 1985), p. 14.Google Scholar

22. Merquior, J. G., Western Marxism (London, Paladin (Movements and Ideas), 1986), p. 22.Google Scholar

23. Paulin, Tom, ‘The Making of a Loyalist’ in his Ireland and the English Crisis (Newcastle, Bloodaxe Books, 1984), pp. 27–8.Google Scholar

24. Deane, Seamus, ‘Field Day: An Introduction to the Company's History and Work’, 1984, TS from Field Day.Google Scholar

25. Deane, Seamus, Friel, Brian, Hammond, David, Heaney, Seamus, Paulin, Tom, Rea, Stephen, ‘Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing’, 1984, TS from Field Day.Google Scholar

26. Friel, Brian, The Communication Cord (London, Faber and Faber, 1983), p. 11.Google Scholar

27. Kilroy, Thomas, Double Cross (London, Faber and Faber, 1986), p. 19.Google Scholar

28. Ibid., p. 65.

29. Longley, Edna, op. cit., p. 190.Google Scholar

30. Friel, Brian, TranslationsGoogle Scholar, in his Selected Plays (London, Faber and Faber, 1984), p. 446.Google Scholar

31. Ibid., p. 419.

32. Yeats, W. B., The Poems: a new edition (edited by Finneran, Richard J.) (London, Macmillan, 1983), pp. 528–9.Google Scholar The phrase is ironically (given that Yeats is a bête noire for Field Day) from Yeats' elegy for Parnell; the poem translates Parnell from death and memory into a pillar of fire leading into the future.

33. Anderson, Benedict, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London, Verso, 1983), p. 19.Google Scholar

34. Richards, Shaun, ‘To bind the Northern to the Southern Star: Field Day in Derry and Dublin’, The Irish Review, No. 4, Spring 1988, pp. 52–8.Google Scholar I am grateful to Dr Richards for allowing me to see a pre-publication copy of this article, especially as he uses the phrase to criticise the shortcomings of the production of Stewart Parker's Pentecost.

35. Gray, John, op. cit., pp. 6, 7.Google Scholar