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