History

Abstract

If the individual and the world are substantially (though not entirely) constituted through language and if, therefore, ‘ identity’ and ‘ reality’ are fictional constructs which continually elude full representation, then there is always the possibility that both the individual and the social reality in which he is inscribed can be reinvented. To effect such a re-creation was precisely the challenge taken up by the Field Day Theatre Company. Field Day was born in 1980 in the depressed city of Derry, from the conviction that the political crisis in the North and its reverberations in the Republic made the necessity of a reappraisal of Ireland’s political and cultural situation explicit and urgent. ‘ Everything, including our politics and our literature, has to be re-written — i.e. re-read’,¹ announced Seamus Deane, one of the founding directors. Field Day set out to ‘ contribute to the solution of the present crisis by producing analyses of the established opinions, myths and stereotypes which had become both a symptom and a cause of the current situation’.² The initial moving force behind the formation of the company was the Belfast actor, Stephen Rea who, despite his success on television and the London stage, wished to return to Ireland to contribute to cultural life there. He approached Brian Friel whose play The Freedom of the City, Rea had acted in at the Royal Court.