A large wooden horse has appeared before Derry’s walls.
“What is it?” one woman asks, bemusement in her voice. “A Trojan Horse,” another explains. “Brilliant,” comes the reply.
Just as the Trojans awoke to find the horse at the walls of their city, so too did the people of Derry wake on Saturday morning to find a wooden beast peering over the city’s fortifications.
It’s designed to look as if it was built from the timbers of a ship – as was the original horse – and is surrounded by its own beach to represent the sandy shores where the Greeks constructed the horse to trick the Trojans.
And, like every Trojan Horse, there is a surprise inside.
The elaborate construction is the opening event of "Frielfest", which celebrates the works of Brian Friel through a series of performances and events in Derry and Donegal. That festival is part of Seán Doran and Liam Browne's wider "Arts Over Borders" initiative, which sets Friel in the context of the "northern literary lands" of Ireland's Border counties.
The horse – and other dramatic events such as readings of The Odyssey in a tent on five of Donegal's beaches – explores Friel's love of Homer and the ways in which the classics influenced his plays.
"The question is, when is a wooden horse a Trojan Horse," asks project manager Declan Sheehan. "It's important that it looks Greek and carries the message that this refers back to the translations in Friel's work and his references to Greek myth, but it's very much a live project. "A lot of our early meetings were looking at the message the horse is carrying . . . but of course we had to accept that people are going to come and they are going to put their own meanings on it."
So far, these meanings have been contemporary rather than historical. "Protestant stallion" was one description overheard as the horse was being lifted into place; "Ferrari horse" was another.
“It is a Trojan Horse,” says Sheehan, “so it carries this secret within it and no one knows what it is, even we don’t know.
“With the parallels to the walls of Troy, people are maybe thinking, is it military or not military, is it trying to send a message into the walled city, or maybe there’s a message coming out.
“With Derry in particular and the site that we have in Guildhall Square in front of the walls, and of course the connotations of those walls and the Maiden City, it’s perfect in a way.”
"It was tricky – like a Trojan Horse – but also exciting," says designer Ewan Berry of the creative process around it. "It looks very Greek but I also did research on children's puzzles and this is basically a massive slot puzzle.
“I think it’s quite easy to be contentious in Derry, it’s happened in the arts before, so it’ll be interesting to see how it’s received.”
As part of the construction, Berry gave the horse an internal wooden structure so that it would be strong enough to support something – or someone.
"Much like the Greek armies which were hidden in the original Trojan Horse, it has to have something inside," says artist Paddy Bloomer. He's constructed a trapdoor that will allow a storyteller to descend from the belly of the horse, and a set of wooden curtains that will create a performance space around it.
“That will be an interesting moment for us, when the stories are coaxed out of the horse,” says Bloomer.
“There is something great about a Trojan Horse and a Donegal storyteller coming out of it, and it sort of sums up Friel in a way,” adds Sheehan. “That will create a sense of theatre and a sense of spectacle, and we really want the festival to be almost reacting to the feedback we get from people around the horse.
“So we have the little surrounding of sand as if the horse has appeared on a beach, and there’ll be some little deckchairs, and we’ve live archery like the games the Greeks would have played on the beach, and you wouldn’t be surprised if some buskers started singing some Greek folk songs.
“This is lifting Friel out of the theatres and out of the arts centres and putting him right in the centre of the city, in the heart of everything. It’s a fantastically elaborate way of getting people to come and sit with a storyteller.”
The storyteller will work for two hours a day, leaving a fairly long period of time for the horse to simply stand there. “You know the way the statues in Dublin are all nicknamed, maybe it’ll be there long enough for it to be given its own moniker,” says Sheehan.
“The mare in the square,” says Bloomer.
FrielFest runs in Derry and Donegal until August 28th. artsoverborders.com
