ANOTEFROMFIELDDAYTHEATRECOMPANY

Field Day began in 1980 in Derry as a cultural and intellectual response to the political crisis in Northern Ireland. Playwright Brian Friel and I set out to identify and develop a new audience for theatre. Friel’s critically acclaimed Translations was the first of many Field Day plays to show at Derry’s Guildhall before travelling throughout Ireland and the world; these included world premieres of Friel’s The Communication Cord (1982) and Making History (1988), Derek Mahon’s High Time (1984), Tom Paulin’s The Riot Act (1984), Thomas Kilroy’s Double Cross (1986), Stewart Parker’s Pentecost (1987), Terry Eagleton’s Saint Oscar (1989) and Seamus Heaney’s The Cure at Troy (1990).

From its beginnings as a theatre company, Field Day also developed into a publishing company and since the mid 1990s, has become synonymous with the development of Irish Studies. Field Day publishes works of literary criticism, history, politics, and cultural studies. During a decade-long (2004–14) collaboration with the KeoughNaughton Institute for Irish Studies at the University of Notre Dame, Field Day copublished the Field Day Review, an annual journal of Irish political and literary culture.

In 2012, Field Day returned to theatre production in Derry after a 16-year hiatus with world premieres of new plays by then up-and-coming Northern Irish playwrights Clare Dwyer Hogg and David Ireland. David’s Half Glass of Water and Clare’s Farewell were presented as a double bill at The Playhouse as part of Derry’s City of Culture celebrations.

A little before that, I had invited David to Belfast’s Europa hotel to seal a deal to write a play called Sadie for Field Day theatre company.

It was a difficult play to get right, and took him a long time to finish, but both David and I knew that there was something about the character of Sadie that somehow demanded to be heard. And so he persevered, for almost ten years.

While ultimately we haven’t been able to produce the play, I am thrilled that Sadie has now been produced by the Lyric Belfast, and will be broadcast by BBC Four and BBC 2 NI.

Stephen Rea