Field Day preparations at The Playhouse!

Preparations have begun at The Playhouse for a series of exciting events in partnership with the renowned Field Day Theatre Company, Playhouse patron, in the lead up to City of Culture 2013!

Internationally acclaimed playwright, actor and director Sam Shepard has begun work at The Playhouse with Stephen Rea and Field Day with an actors' workshop in April 2012. It is now expected that Sheaprd will premiere a new Field Day play in Derry as part of the city's 2013 celebrations.

Founded in Derry by playwright Brian Friel and actor Stephen Rea, Field Day will also partner with the city's Playhouse Theatre to premiere ‘Farewell', a new short play by the young, up-and-coming Antrim writer Clare Dwyer-Hogg. Rea will direct and perform in the production in November this year. Writing in a clear and sparse style, Dwyer-Hogg pitches her voice to a contemporary local audience while addressing universal themes-in this instance death and betrayal.

Clare Dwyer-Hogg has also been commissioned by Field Day to write a second play, which is scheduled to show in Derry in June 2013 as part of the City of Culture celebrations.

In the lead up to both plays, however, the Field Day Lectures Series will return to the Playhouse on Saturday July 7 from 2pm to 4pm. Poet, critic, novelist and member of Field Day board of directors Seamus Deane will explore the idea of ‘sense of place' in a selection of Field Day plays past. A question-and-answer session will follow the event, which is organized by the Playhouse in association with local community development group the Holywell Trust.

"To produce something very special in partnership with Field Day was a vision that The Playhouse had at a very early stage of the bid document for City of Culture 2013" Pauline Ross, founder and director at The Playhouse said.

Ciarán Deane, Field Day managing editor and project manager said: "Field Day is delighted to take the opportunity presented by Derry's Year of Culture 2013 to stage exciting new work in its home town. The wonderful success of the Sam Shepard workshop at The Playhouse in April last has added an even greater momentum to all of Field Day's planned activities, which, in addition to the plays, will include an archival exhibition, a new website, and a special Derry-focused issue of the Field Day Review."

Group photograph: (L-R) Neil Martin, Hannah Shepard, Sam Shepard, Stephen Rea, Colin Reid, Andrea Irvine, Clare Dwyer-Hogg, Lisa Dwyer-Hogg, Andréa Laurent, Sean McGinley

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