Linen Hall Library

Field Day Five Years OnAuthor(s): John GraySource: The Linen Hall Review, Vol. 2, No. 2 (Summer, 1985), pp. 4-8, 10Published by: Linen Hall LibraryStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20533667 .

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In their very first, programme, that for the triumphant Derry premiere of Brian Friel's 'Trans

lations' in October 1980, Field

Day used the Oxford English Dictionary to define themselves in terms which matched the spontaneous enthusiasm of the

occasion -

'a day on which troops are drawn up for exercise in field evolution, a military review, a day

occupied with brilliant or exciting events'. Implicit here was a sense

of the moment at hand, rather than any formal longer term

perspective. Almost five years on their flair

for the occasion, and their

idealism remains undiminished. This was very evident when they came last month to the Linen Hall

Library to launch three pamph lets under the title The Protestant Idea of Liberty. The choice of the

library was no mere matter of

convenience, rather an oppor

tunity to summon up the ghosts of the Presbyterian radicals of '98, in the hope that their successors

may be found today. Presbyterian Minister, Rev. Terence Mc

Caughey, as main speaker, contributed rather more to this heady atmosphere than the ? pamphlets. Baptised in the same ] church as Mary Ann McCracken j he made a direct connection <

between her times and our own:- <

i

'These people had been set free, ] I think, from fearfully extra- ] polating from their own \

ri FIELD DAY

|

FIVE

f

YEARS ON

r ^ by John Gray

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situation as they contemplated the world outside. Without fear of the domestic consequences they could look at tyranny and the struggle against it in other countries and side with the oppressed... And why? I think because they had not suffered the loss of nerve which has largely paralysed the pro testant mind since 1912.'

Moving -

yes, but outside there ire other views of history. Weeks ater, a few hundred yards distant rom the Library, the Moderator lesignate of the Presbyterian General Assembly described his 'aith as synonomous with Ora lgeism rather than the United 'rishmen. It is in this outside

vorld too that Field Day faces the

burdens of its own history. Publishers now as well as theatre company they have increasingly sought to define their identity, and in turn have been defined. The origins of Field Day owe as

much to a romantic vision in direct line with the traditions of the Irish theatre as to any radical snapping of the links with that past. Although Seamus Deane in his subsequent Field Day pamph let Heroic Styles (1984) has attacked what he views as the baleful influence of Yeats on the Northern situation, Brian Friel admits that when he and Stephen Rea were thinking of Field Day in 1979 the Irish Literary Theatre

and the Ulster Literary Theatre were 'the only previous models to consider*. For Stephen Rea, the

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initial moving force behind Field

Day, the debt is more evident, interviewed in the Irish News in _

1982 he suggested 'maybe Field

Day is some kind of pretentious attempt to imitate what Yeats was striving for, but'in a

Northern context.'

From the beginning there was a

great difference between Field

Day and earlier models, and this ! did not arise entirely from the content of the new theatre, rather

| from the circumstances of its 1 creation. The conjunction of Friel f and Rea, both with significant I reputations, meant that from the I

beginning the new company was I centre stage in the critical eye. I The Derry launch pad created in I two respects unique circum- I

stances; the prospect of a theatre I company caught up from the I

beginning in an explosion of civic I

pride, and a company presenting I itself in a physical sense on the I communal frontier. Translations \ was ideally suited to these

conditions, by locale, by ex

ploration of language and of cultural frontiers. As theatre it

was acclaimed but it was the occasion rather than the play which aroused overt political interest. This was made explicit in an Irish Times editorial which enthused 'whatever the critics

may eventually make of either the

play or its performance, the manner of its presentation, across time and territory deserves the

warmest of welcomes;' this was a

reminder that 'this island is all of a piece.'

It was an early illustration of what Friel now sees as an

agonising difficulty - that in

Ireland 'everything is im

mediatley percieved as political and the artist is burdened

instantly with politicisation\ In terms of their stated objectives, as for example at the outset of their 1981 tour with Friel's Irish

English translation of Chekov's Three Sisters, Field Day appeared to take few formal risks in the

political arena, aiming to 'per form plays of excellence in a

distinctively Irish voice that would be heard throughout Ireland'. In fact Friel and Rea consider this a highly political chemistry and in the case of the

Three Sisters tour perhaps more so than some of their critics

notably in Dublin, who were

unimpressed by Friel's revolt

against the tradition of the Irish actor 'pretending to be an

Englishman, pretending you're a

Russian'. Rea who directed the

play still views the Dublin resDonse as a reflection on

4

0, m

The launch of the latest Field Day series of pamphlets in the Linen Hall

library.

Dublin, rather than a rebuff to the Irish English of Friel's tran slation. For him Dublin is 'the centre of cultural sophistication

which means no sophistication at all* a place where audiences were

'familiar with Chekov and were

expecting a certain kind of Chekov' which they did not get from Field Day. Subsequently he notes that the Abbey has done a

Micheal Frayn version of Chekov, Chekov in English, and for him this is 'a complete avoidance of

responsibility'. FrieT Communication Cord

followed in 1982, but Field Day's next play of major substance came in 1983 with Athol Fugard's

Bosemann and Lena, a South

African classic, played to acclaim

by Field Day in African accents. For Rea a play located on 'the

edge of the world' but one which to him seemed too often to evoke the

parochial response 'do you think

you are as oppressed as the

blacks?' The combined chemistry of

politics and Irish English re

turned in 1984 with Tom Paulin's

Antigone (after Sophocles) and Derek Mahon's High Time (after Moli?re). Antigone had been on

Field Day's agenda for some time; as Rea recalls 'we were a little

chary of the obvious political implications', but another dif

ficulty was 'to do justice to its scale'. For Paulin the audience could see Antigone as Bernadette

Devlin or Ian Paisley if they chose. In the case of Mahon he

was thinking of hippy Dublin in

1968, and only at the last moment was the milieu changed to

contemporary punk. In thes circumstances Field Day criticise those like Lynda Henderson, who as reviewer on Kaleidoscope found the programme 'a fairly comprehensive indictment of both the, temperament and the tendencies of the Ulster Pro testant'.

Faced by responses such as these Rea comments 'sometimes local

critics cannot get beyond the local context perhaps because they lack theatrical experience', and

contrasts this with 'the mature criticism of some British critics

who put what we do into a world context.' Rea does admit that 'the

problem with local accents is that

people identify with the issues\ Critics in particular do so in a

context where both Friel and Rea o f f e r s t a teme n t s o u t s i d e t h e theatre on Field Day's role. Thus

Friel in an In Dublin interview (1982) suggested that then

activity 'should lead to a cultural state, not a political state. And I think out ofthat cultural state, a

possibility of a political state follows'. P>iel worries about

wearing his conscience on his sleeve in this fashion - in the same interview he added immediately 'it's very grandiose this, and I

want to make notice of abdication

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quickly', aware very validly that

'you have got to retain some

strong element of cynicism about the whole thing'. Rea argues that Field Day is 'a very political kind of theatre without sloganizing', suggesting that its politics are rooted in its actuality a key part of

which is that 'we stress our Northern but also our Irish

identity' and this he thinks 'bothers a lot of people' par ticularly in Belfast.

In expressing that aspect of the theatre Rea is anxious that artistic matters are not lost sight of; for him 'theatrical excellence is as important as anything else'.

The road adopted by Field Day in this direction has been questioned; thus, in Theatre Ireland 2, it was noted that Field Day 'does not

make use of the well-recognised advantages of establishing a "core" company.' To this Rea

responds; 'that is their notion of a

professional theatre company -

what you really need are the

people who are right for the parts in a particular play.' Com

menting further on Field Day's particular reliance on expatriate Irish actors and actresses

- 'we

deliberately try to use ones who have gone away'

- Rea not only

reasserts the validity of his own

experience, but his rejection of the Irish theatrical standards that he left. He says of Field Day's new

recruits, 'they didn't go away to evade something, they went away to come to terms with their own

talent, to discover areas that weren't available in Ireland.' The same rejection of prevailing Irish standards is evident in the use of

non Irish directors, or even in the comment that 'there is no great existing canon of Irish plays

which we wish to produce'. In this sense Field Day sees itself as

breaking completely with esta blished conventions. The fluctuating nature of the

Theatre Company is combined with a rejection of any fixed base. Rea makes it clear that they must not 'get tied up with a building' where the danger is that the

objective of your theatre is reduced to 'keeping up the takings at the coffee bar and paying staff. The Derry association remains,

and there they owe a debt - 'the very creative succour and support' of the early days, but they are less

euphoric now about Derry's special qualities. Friel's early designation of the town as 'a

psychic city' has given way before a sober realisation that it is divided like so many others.

In all this Field Day seeks to find itself space in a way outlined by

Friel in a Sunday Press interview

(30 August 1981) when he stated 'we want to be transient in the

aesthetic sense as well as in the practical sense, which gives us

independence.' That of course frustrates those who wish to pin them down and led Lynda

Henderson to note aptly in Theatre Ireland (Autumn 1984) that 'the line on which they stand is (deliberately?) left obscure.'

By 1984 those wishing to judge Field Day had harder texts to turn to. Lynda Henderson has herself

helped chart early progress in this direction in Theatre Ireland

(No.2). In order to achieve charitable status Field Dav

appointed 4 more directors, Seamus Heaney, Tom Paulin, Seamus Deane and David Ham

mond. Rea recalls them as 'part of the supportive entourage* in the

early days. Connections went closer than that -

Heaney was a

long standing friend of Friel, Deane was at school in Derry with

Heaney. Rea had made acquaint ance with Paulin in England. Their role was not intended to be a

passive one - Rea saw it as

'helping to define what we are

doing'.

Tom Paulin in the programme for the Communication Cord

(1982) issued an ambitious

prospectus in referring to Matthew Arnold's essay on The

Literary In?uence of Academies, in fact an account of the setting up of the Acad?mie Fran?aise, Fied Day pamphlets have

followed, 3 each year since 1983. As Richard Kearney, a con tributor to the second series, noted in reviewing the first, 'these are

not penny pamphlets for the man in the street. They are ?2.50

pamphlets written by intellec tuals for intellectuals.' This has been no defence against con

troversy voiced by academics in unacademic terms. Consider Professor Owen Dudley Edwards,

To taste a puker shade of green, Imbibe a Professor Seamus

Deane

Wrongs antique dealt and served up trite,

With sparkling whine.'

- this in response to Deane's Civilians and Barbarians (1983) and already a stale joke when

repeated by Edna Longley in her criticism of the second series of

pamphlets (1984) as 'old whines in new bottles'. Certainly Deane's contribution to this series, Heroic Styles: the Tradition of an Idea, encapsulates an absolutism calculated to provoke. There he argues 'everything, including our

politics and our literature, Has to be re-written

- i.e. re-read'. His

attacks on the influence of Yeats have been interpreted as an assault on the Anglo Irish or on

Protestants, but rather too readily - in the same piece Joyce is a

casualty too. Nor indeed have the Field Day pamphlets purely fallen foul of Unionists, thus Tom Paulin's A New Look at the

Language Question (1985) with its arguments for the indepen dence of Irish English was assailed by Padraig O Conchuir as 'ten pages of blather on the cre?le dialects of English on the

Page?

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island of Ireland'. Such controversy was not

unexpected by Rea of Friel who

wanted the pamphlets to be

'quick, instant and stinging'. They are parties to them in that as

Deane notes the pamphlets do

'have the imprimatur of the whole

board, though if there is any

meaning to the group there are

bound from tim? to time to be i

tensions'. Rea believes that the '

pamphlets 'release the theatrical side of Field Day from being overtly political'. Friel has more

doubts about the relationship and

thinks that 'if there is any

political spillage from the one to

the other it is going to come from

the pamphlets', perhaps for this reason he views them as 'opening debate' and argues that 'a vision is not best articulated in this

form'. Rea feels that they should come 'from a committed point of

view.'

The more overt politics of the

pamphlets have pursued Field

Day even into other worlds,

notably the 'fifth province'. This was a concept originally explored by Richard Kearney and Mark

Hederman in the first Crane Bag in 1977. They noted that the Irish

word for province was 'coiced',

literally a fifth, and that

'although Tara was always the

political centre of Ireland, this

middle or fifth province acted as a

second centre which though non

political, was just as important, acting as a necessary balance.' It

was 'the secret centre... where all

oppositions were resolved ,.. The

constitution of such a place would

require that each person discover it for himself within himself.

Brian Friel interviewed in the Irish Times of 18th September 1984 agrees that Field Day

'appropriated the phrase "Fifth

Province",' although as Kearney himself has become Field Day

pamphleteer in Myth and Mother land (1984) this may have been a

mutually agreeable process. Friel

suggests that the 'Fifth Province'

'may well be a province of mind

through which we hope to devise another way of looking at Ireland, or another possible Ireland' - one

that first must be 'articulated,

spoken, written, painted, sung',

but then may be legislated for.

One can well appreciate that the

'Fifth Province' appeared as a

sanctuary in which it might be

possible to distance Field Day from tribal name calling in order to render its message more

effective, but as debate in the

latest issue of Crane Bag (1985) makes clear pursuit was not long in coming. Edna Longley argues there that 'as for "the fifth

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province", adumbrated by or in

art, I attack not the admiraDle

notion (which I too explore) out

the Field Day version, and its

acceptance as the genuine

article'. As Longley more gently chides Hederman's version for

owing 'more to transformed Nationalism and transformed

Catholicism than perhaps he

realises', it is easy to see that she

believes that Field Day reflects

the same problem writ large. Asked today about the 'Fifth

Province' concept Friel still views

it as useful - 'a place for dis

senters, traitors to the prevailing mvtholoeries in the other four

provinces'.

Stephen Rea is less enamoured

by such philosophic devices

arguing rather that'the process oi"

your work is to d ef i n e you r

dissent' and that at a certain

point 'you just ?know that you

have stepped outside.' However in

the light of the other debates even

the work itself, notably Tran

slations is being re-assesed in more political terms. Writing in the March 1985 issue of Fortnight

Brian McAvera argues that 'within the context of the North the play actually shores up a

dangerous myth - that of cultural

dispossession by the British', and

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concludes more generally that Friel's '"awareness" is one sided.

The 'shape' observed is a Nationa list one - and a limited partial view at that'. In the case of Translations while admitting that 'it is self evident that no

playwright has to be bound by historical accuracy while writing a play', McAvera enumerates

factual inaccuracies. The officers of the Ordnance Survey, central to the play, did not carry bayonets and did not assist in evictions.

McAvera enlists the support of J.H. Andrews, the leading historian of the Ordnance Survey to further assert that Friel merely uses the Ordnance Survery as a dramatic device, that he 'tran

sposes Cromwellian notions into a nineteenth century framework'.

It is an indictment that angers Stephen Rea who thought it

'shabby' and symptomatic of those 'who couldn't niggle when

Translations was on stage such

was its impact'. However if Field

Day has a wider mission, and if Translations remains as Seamus

Deane asserts a 'central text', it is

bound to be examined as such.

What is more questionable is the manner in which McAvera has done so. In relation to Tran

slations the views he expresses depend on the borrowed authority of J.H. Andrews whose analysis is far better read in Crane Bag (1983). As a historian one might expect Andrews to be concerned

purely with the factual issues.

Although robust and indeed conclusive on these points in a

way which Friel would not

contest, he also offers perceptive

comment on the play seeing it:

'as a set of images that might have been painted on screens,

each depicting some passage from Irish history, ancient or

modern, the screen placed one behind the other in a tunnel with a light at one end of the tunnel and the audience at the

other, so that it is only the

strongest colours and the boldest lines that appear in the

composite picture exhibited on the stage/

He continues 'on this reading Captain Lancey's brutal threats would be justified as projections perhaps backwards, perhaps forwards, from some quite different period/ Here there is a crucial distinction between

McAvera's version of Andrews and what Andrews actually says.

McAvera suggests that Friel's vision is entirely anachronistic, a throwback to Cromwellian Ireland. Andrews merely ad

vances this as one of his 'screens';

at other points for him it was

possible to 'see Translations as a

play about late twentieth century Ireland', and hence as having qualities not limited by time. Friel himself in the same discussion states trenchantly, 'Drama is first a fiction, with the authority of fiction. You don't go to Macbeth for history'. It was in this context understood by both parties that he apologised to Dr Andrews 'for the tiny bruises inflicted on

history in the play', and was therefore hardly being 'worrying' or 'disingenuous' in the way implied by McAvera through selective quotation. Here it is

worthwhile recording two of Dr Andrews concluding remarks; he found the play 'an extremely subtle blend of historical truth -

and some other kind of truth' and he also sees the play as 'sharing the burden of historical guilt' (my emphasis). Undoubtedly Friel and Rea have

called down upon themselves debate of this kind, genuinely caught as they are between the desire to avoid destroying their art

through political definition, and

yet at the same time anxious to offer external explanations of their activity. In theatrical terms

what does this imply for the future? Plans earlier this year to

proceed with Shaw's Androcles and the Lion have been shelved for the moment, and instead rehearsals begin in early 1986 of a new play by Tom Kilroy. It features Brendan Bracken and

William Joyce (Lord Haw Haw), and addresses, as Friel puts it, questions of 'betrayal and an

exploration of the necessities of treason'. Certainly it is essential to the theatrical side of Field Day, and Rea's hopes are heightened by the awareness that 'we must do a new play'.

Planning is rather further ahead on the publication side. Following the 3 pamphlets on the theme The

Protestant Idea of Liberty, three more are now planned on 'law and

order'. Here Field Day are

perhaps encouraged by the decision of Hutchinson to re

publish this autumn the first six

pamphlets under the title Ire land's Field Day. The largest prospective Field Day project is however their proposed 'com

prehensive anthology of Irish literature (in both languages)'.

Now envisaged as running to two

volumes, 1200 pages in all, it amounts to the closest thing to an institutional commitment which

Field Day has acquired, with three years' work envisaged prior to publication.

First aired in Seamus Deane's Heroic Styles (1984), the mani festo for the anthology has not diminished in the meantime. Deane has most recently described the intentions behind it in the June 1985 issue of Ireland

Today, where he tells us that the

anthology 'will cover 500 years of

Irish.writing of every kind . . .

literary, political, philosophical, social and scientific . .. and from every tradition. The aim is to

provide a definition of what consititutes our tradition.' Having taken on board the apparent paradox between 'every tradition' and 'our tradition', Deane ex

presses an objective akin to that of the alchemists of old:- the 'aim' is to provide a view of 'the

continuity and coherence, of the Irish achievement in letters'. Deane admits the 'immodesty' of

the exercise, but in a concluding paragraph which appears to

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Ascendancy and Tradition in Anglo-Irish Literary History from 1789 to 1939 W. J. McCormack

This wide-ranging and combative study of Irish literary history uncovers the origins of

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embrace both the anthology and Field Day (the general subject of the article) continues to advance on a grand scale:- 'the central crisis of the island has reached such an advanced stage that it seems irresponsible to avoid the

opportunity to provide a sense or vision of the island's cultural integrity which would operate as a basis for an enduring and

enriching political settlement/ This 1985 statement is con

sistent with Friel's 1981 interview in In Dublin in which he en

visaged progression from cultural state to political state, but

Dearie's new formulation is devoid of Friel's disarming quick

'abdication* and urging of 'a

strong element of cynicism'. Field Day must by now ap

preciate that if they themselves do not view aspirations with this healthy cynicism, others will

apply it for them. There is in Deane's statement a congruence

with the rhetoric of the New Ireland Forum the language of -which has been greeted elsewhere

by Tom Paulin in his Ireland and the English Crisis (1985). In both cases entirely legitimate criticism has arisen, and will arise from those who question the substance behind lofty sentiment. Rea's

emphasis here on actual practice . is a valid one. In Field Day's

theatrical endeavour there is substantial achievement al

though less revolutionary than Rea might imply. They have addressed the major cultural issues which should affect us, they do relate to our Irish context and yet both in terms of repertoire and in terms of theatrical standards have looked outwards to the world rather than inwards. If that is as yet an achievement

inadequate for the carriage of more portentious manifestos it is nonetheless one which probably justifies Rea's confidence that 'we are gaining confidence and

momentum.'

What remains to be seen is whether the publishing side of Field Day will affect its theatrical

impetus. The anthology project carries with it a clear risk that the

creativity generally associated with Field Day will appear counterbalanced by an actual narrowness masquerading as all

encompassing breadth. The

warning shots here were fired by Eilean Ni Chuilleanain writing in

Cyphers (No. 21 Summer 1984) where she argued that 'especially in the educational sphere which is

Deane's home ground they (anthologies) reinforce the curriculum and promote a mono lithic orthodoxy, the opposite of the provocative, occasional

insights which at their best the Field Day pamphlets represent.' Deane admits that this is 'not a

danger that can be totally avoided' and confirms Eilean Ni Chuilleanain's educational point when he notes that 'anthologies are being increasingly used in

undergraduate courses.' It may

well be that the anthology will be useful combined as it will be by

much 'framing material', a

general introduction, introduc tions to the specific pieces, footnotes, bibliographies, but it has a clearly intended ideological significance.

In a Belfast context there are those who would welcome the

sight of Field Day expending its

energies tilting at ideological windmills or indeed constructing its own windmill -

this, not least because Field Day has, in other ways, posed uncomfortable and relevant questions about the

relationship between politics and the arts which remain to be

answered, perhaps above all in Belfast. So long as Field Day illuminates and inspires change in that necessary debate it has life. If it comes actually to obscure the issues then what Rea describes as 'its own inbuilt death' will occur.

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