Brian Friel (born 9 January 1929) is a playwright and, more recently, director of his own works from Northern Ireland who now resides in County Donegal in the Republic of Ireland. is the 9th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 1929 (MCMXXIX) was a common year starting on Tuesday (link will display the full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ... Northern Ireland (Irish: , Ulster Scots: Norlin Airlann) is a constituent country of the United Kingdom lying in the northeast of the island of Ireland, covering 5,459 square miles (14,139 km², about a sixth of the islands total area). ... Statistics Province: Ulster Dáil Éireann: Donegal North East, Donegal South West County seat: Lifford Code: DL Area: 4,841 km² Population (2006) 146,956 Website: www. ...

Biography

Friel was born near Omagh County Tyrone, the son of Patrick "Paddy" Friel, a primary school teacher and later a borough councillor in Derry, and Mary McLoone, postmistress of Glenties, County Donegal (Ulf Dantanus provides the most detail regarding Friel's parents and grandparents, see Books below). He received his education at St. Columb's College in Derry and the seminary at St. Patrick's College, Maynooth (1945-48) from which he received his B.A., then he received his teacher's training at St. Mary's Training College in Belfast, 1949-50. He married Anne Morrison in 1954, with whom he has four daughters and one son; they remain married. From 1950 until 1960, he worked as a Maths teacher in the Derry primary and intermediate school system, until taking leave in 1960 to live off his savings and pursue a career as writer. In 1966, the Friels moved from Malborough Street, Derry to Muff, County Donegal, eventually settling outside Greencastle, County Donegal. During the 1970-71 academic year, he was Visiting Writer at Magee College. , Omagh (from the Irish: An Ómaigh meaning The Sacred (or Virgin) Plain) is the county town of County Tyrone in Northern Ireland, situated where the rivers Drumragh and Camowen meet to form the Strule. ... Statistics Province: Ulster County Town: Omagh Area: 3,155 km² Population (est. ... For other places with similar names, see Derry (disambiguation) and Londonderry (disambiguation). ... St. ... St Patricks College, Maynooth is the National Seminary for Ireland, a college and seminary often called Maynooth College located at Maynooth, Ireland. ... Greencastle Harbour - by Irish Artist, Sheila McClean Greencastle Fort Greencastle Pier at Dusk Carrickarory Pier at Night Greencastle, Donegal (An Caisleán Nua in Irish) is a commercial fishing port in County Donegal in the northwest of Ireland. ... The Magee College, is an English-medium higher education institution of the University of Ulster located in Derry, Northern Ireland. ...

He was appointed to the Irish Senate in 1987 and served through 1989. In 1989, BBC Radio launched a "Brian Friel Season", a series devoted a six-play season to his work, the first living playwright to be so distinguished. In 1999 (April-August), Friel's 70th birthday was celebrated in Dublin with the Friel Festival during which ten of his plays were staged or presented as dramatic readings throughout Dublin; in conjunction with the festival were a conference, National Library exhibition, film screenings, outreach programs, pre-show talks, and the launching of a special issue of The Irish University Review devoted to the playwright; in 1999, he also received a lifetime achievement award from the Irish Times. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the (British) Royal Society of Literature and the Irish Academy of Letters.^[1] The Irish Times is Irelands newspaper of record, launched in the late 1850s. ... American Academy of Arts and Letters is an organization whose goal is to foster, assist, and sustain an interest in American literature, music, and art. ...

On 22 January 2006 Friel was presented with a gold Torc by President Mary McAleese in recognition of the fact that the members of Aosdána have elected him a Saoi. Only five members of Aosdána can hold this honour at any one time and Friel joined fellow Saoithe Louis leBrocquy, Benedict Kiely (d. 2007), Seamus Heaney and Anthony Cronin. On acceptance of the gold Torc, Friel quipped, "I knew that being made a Saoi, really getting this award, is extreme unction; it is a final anointment--Aosdana's last rites." is the 22nd day of the year in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 2006 (MMVI) was a common year starting on Sunday of the Gregorian calendar. ... A torc, also spelled torq or torque (from Latin torqueo, to twist, because of the twisted shape of the collar) is a rigid circular necklace that is open-ended at the front. ... Mary Patricia McAleese (Irish: [1]; born 27 June 1951) is the eighth, and current, President of Ireland. ... Aosdána (IPA: ; from aos dána, Irish people of the arts) is an association of people in Ireland who have achieved distinction in the arts. ... Saoi, (pronounced See) (pl. ... Benedict Ben Kiely (August 15, 1919–February 9, 2007) was an Irish author and broadcaster from Omagh, County Tyrone, Northern Ireland. ... Seamus Justin Heaney (IPA: ) (born 13 April 1939) is an Irish poet, writer and lecturer who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1995. ... Anthony Cronin (born 1925 in County Wexford) is an Irish poet. ...

Early career through 1979

Friel began writing short stories for The New Yorker in 1959 and subsequently published two well-received collections: The Saucer of Larks (1962) and The Gold in the Sea (1966). His first radio plays were produced by the BBC, Belfast, in 1958, and he later went on to write two plays for Radio Telefís Éireann as well (all unpublished); Richard Pine's discussion of Friel's six unpublished early plays remains the most thorough discussion of these otherwise unavailable works (see Books below). While working as a struggling writer, Friel wrote 59 articles for The Irish Press, a Dublin-based newspaper, from April 1962 through August 1963; this diverse series included short stories, political editorials on life in Northern Ireland and Donegal, his travels to Dublin and New York City, and his childhood memories of Derry, Omagh, Belfast, and Donegal (see Boltwood under Books below). He struggled with little initial success to gain recognition as a playwright from 1958 through 1964; at one point the Irish journalist Sean Ward even referred to him in an Irish Press article as one of the Abbey Theatre's "rejects" (1962) and Friel later admitted in a 1965 interview that his play The Blind Mice (1963) nearly ruined Phyllis Ryan's Orion Company, while The Enemy Within was largely ignored by the public and critics when staged by the Abbey Theatre for a week during the summer of 1962. Shortly after his return from a short stint as "observer" at Tyrone Guthrie's theater in Minneapolis from April through July 1963, Friel wrote Philadelphia Here I Come! (1964), the play that was to make him immediately famous in Dublin, London, and New York; this plays retains its status as a turning point in Irish drama (away from the tired and ossified genre of peasant plays) and one of the most important plays of the 1960s. The Loves of Cass McGuire (1966), and Lovers (1967) were both successful in Ireland, with Lovers surprisingly popular in America. For other uses, see New Yorker. ... This article is an overview article about the Crown chartered British Broadcasting Corporation formed in 1927. ... The Irish Press was an Irish newspaper published by Irish Press plc between 1931 and 1995. ... The Enemy Within is an episode of Star Trek: The Original Series , and was broadcast October 6, 1966. ... Philadelphia, Here I Come! is a play written by Irish dramistist Brian Friel. ... Lovers is a 1967 play written by Northern Irish playwright Brian Friel. ...

The Freedom of the City (1973) is an explicitly political work about the Troubles in Northern Ireland, while The Mundy Scheme (1969) and Volunteers (1975) are pointed, and in the first case bitter, satires of the Irish government. However, by the mid 1970s, Friel had moved away from overtly political plays to examine family dynamics in a manner that has attracted many comparisons to the work of Chekhov (see Dantanus, Andrews, and Pine in Books below). Living Quarters (1977), a play that examines the suicide of a domineering father, is a retelling of the Theseus/Hippolytus myth in a contemporary Irish setting; that play, with its focus on several sisters and their ne'er-do-well brother serves as a type of preparation for Friel's more successful Aristocrats (1979), a Chekhovian study of a once-influential family's financial collapse and, perhaps, social liberation from the aristocratic myths that have constrained the children. For other uses, see Troubles (disambiguation) and Trouble. ... A play written by Brian Friel and first performed in the Abbey Theatre in Dublin in 1977. ...

Many plays of this period incorporate assertive avant-garde techniques: splitting the main character Gar into two actors in Philadelphia, Here I Come!; portraying dead characters in "Winners" of Lovers or the dead and Brechtian choric figures in Freedom of the City; and metacharacters existing in a collective unconscious Limbo in Living Quarters. These experiments came to fruition in Faith Healer (1979), a series of four conflicting monologues delivered by dead and living characters who struggle to understand the life and death of Frank Hardy, the play's itinerate healer who can neither understand nor command his unreliable powers, and the lives sacrificed to his destructive charismatic life. Faith healing is the use of solely spiritual means in treating disease, which, in some cases, is accompanied with the refusal of modern medical techniques. ...

1980s and 1990s

Translations was premiered in 1980 at the Guildhall in Derry, Northern Ireland by the Field Day Theatre Company, with Stephen Rea, Liam Neeson, and Ray MacAnally. Set in 1833, it is a play about language, the failed meeting of British and Irish cultures, the looming potato famine, the coming of a free national school system that will eliminate the traditional hedge schools, the English expedition to convert all Irish place names into English, and the crossed love between an Irish woman who speaks no English and an English soldier who speaks no Irish. Yet it was an instant success because of the play's deft ability to reference the Troubles and English-Irish relations without condemning or idealizing any side. The innovative conceit of the play is to stage two language communities (the Gaelic and the English), which have few and very limited ways to speak to each other, for the English know no Irish, while only a few of the Irish know English. Translations has gone on to be one of the most translated and staged of all post-World War II plays, having been performed in Estonia, Iceland, France, Spain, Germany, Belgium, Norway, Ukraine, the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland, along with all the world's English-speaking countries (including South Africa). Translations (Aistrichiuain) is a three-act play by Irish playwright Brian Friel written in 1980. ...

Despite his growing fame and success, the 1980s are often referred to as Friel's "Gap" because he published so few original works for the stage: Translations in 1980, The Communication Cord in 1982, and Making History in 1988. Privately, Friel complained both of the work required managing Field Day (granting written and live interviews, casting, arranging tours, etc.) and of his fear that he was "trying to impose a 'Field Day' political atmosphere" on his work. However, this is also a period during which he worked on several minor projects that fill out the decade: translations of Chekhov's Three Sisters (1981), Turgenev's Fathers and Sons (1987), an edition of Charles McGlinchey's memoirs entitled The Last of the Name for Blackstaff Press (1986), and Charles Macklin's play The London Vertigo in 1990. Making History is a play written by Northern Irish playwright Brian Friel in 1989. ... Chekhov in a 1905 illustration. ... For the short story by Ernest Hemingway, see The Snows of Kilimanjaro (book). ...

During the 1990s Friel was seen to return to a position of dominance of Irish theatre with the premiers of Dancing at Lughnasa (1990), Molly Sweeney (1994), and Give Me Your Answer Do! (1997), along with the less critically successful Wonderful Tennessee (1993). Friel's reputation as a playwright who creates compelling plays for women rests largely on the works of this period; however, Boltwood reminds us, in his discussion of what he calls Friel's "sororal plays" (see below in Books), that during his early career he was largely a playwright of the Irish male experience (for discussions of Friel's strong interest in father/son dynamics, see Maxwell and Pine below under Books), with 2 plays before 1975 with all-male casts (The Enemy Within and Volunteers [1975]), and an overall male to female ratio of 4 male to every female character in his plays from 1963 to 1975. Friel's ability to transform himself into a playwright of strong female roles is associated with the growth of his playwrighting relationship to actress Catherine Byrne, who had the lead in all four plays of the 1990s; this artistic dynamic eventually motivated Friel to direct his own plays for the first time in his career: beginning with the Gate Theatre production of Molly Sweeney and continuing with the Abbey Theatre production of Give Me Your Answer Do! (1997). Dancing at Lughnasa (see also Lughnasa, the ancient pagan ritual) is a play by Brian Friel set in Irelands County Donegal in August 1936. ... Brian Friel (born 9 January 1929) is a playwright and director from Northern Ireland. ... Catherine Byrne is a stage and film actress. ...

Dancing at Lughnasa (1990) is probably his most successful play, premiered at the Abbey Theatre, and then transferred to London's West End and went on to Broadway, where it won three Tony Awards in 1992, including Best Play. This play is loosely based on the lives of Friel's mother and aunts who lived in the Glenties, on the west coast of Donegal. Set in 1936, during the summer before de Valera's new constitution was approved by referendum, the play depicts the late summer days when love briefly seems possible for three of the Mundy sisters (Chris, Rose, and Kate) and the family welcomes home the frail elder brother, who has returned from a life as missionary in Africa. However, as the summer ends, the family foresees the sadness and economic privations under which the family will suffer as all hopes fade. Dancing at Lughnasa (see also Lughnasa, the ancient pagan ritual) is a play by Brian Friel set in Irelands County Donegal in August 1936. ... This article is about the Abbey Theatre, Dublin. ... The interior of Covent Garden Market in the West End The West End of London is an area of Central London, England, containing many of the citys major tourist attractions, businesses, and administrative headquarters. ... For other uses of Broadway, see Broadway. ... What is popularly called the Tony Award® but is formally the Antoinette Perry Award is an annual American award celebrating achievements in theater, including musical theater. ...

Friel had been thinking about writing a "Lough Derg" play for several years, and his Wonderful Tennessee (1993) stages three couples in their failed attempt to revive a pilgrimage to a small island off the Ballybeg coast. As they await their ferryman who never comes, the couples are forced to spend a night on an abandoned pier, singing (both inspirational songs and show tunes), recounting local history, expounding on religious myth, and reminiscing on their lives, friendships, secrets, and mishaps. As the night fades into morning, they are seized with the passionate determination to sacrifice one of their group--unconsciously re-enacting a local murder in the 1930s that was inspired by religious ecstasis--their friend survives, though all pledge to return next year to re-enact their ritual.

Molly Sweeney (1993) enjoyed considerable success on the stage, but it attracted little critical interest, perhaps because of its superficial similarities to Faith Healer (1979), another play comprised of a series of monologues. This play is about a blind woman in Ballybeg who constructed for herself an independent life rich in friendships and sensual fulfillment and her ill-fated encounter with two men who destroy her life--Frank, the man she marries who becomes convinced that she can only be complete when her vision is restored, and Dr. Rice, a once-renowned eye surgeon who uses Molly to restore his career. Richard Pine has written in depth on the relationship of his play to Oliver Sacks' work and the controversy that forced Friel to recognize Sacks' work as an inspiration for the play. Faith healing is the use of solely spiritual means in treating disease, which, in some cases, is accompanied with the refusal of modern medical techniques. ...

Give Me Your Answer Do! recounts the lives and careers of two novelists and friends who pursued different paths--one writing shallow, popular works and the other writing works that refuse to compromise to popular tastes. After an American university paid a small fortune for the popular writer's papers, their careers are cast into stark contrast when the same collector comes to review the manuscripts of the impoverished artist. They all gather for a dinner party as the collector prepares to announce whether he will recommend the papers to his university, but at the last moment the existence of two "hard-core" pornographic novels based on the writer's daughter forces everyone to reassess his career.

Late works

Entering his eighth decade, Friel found it difficult to maintain the writing pace that he returned to in the 1990s; indeed, between 1997 and 2003 he produced only the very short one-act plays "The Bear" (2002), "The Yalta Game" (2001), and "Afterplay" (2002), all published under the title Three Plays After (2002). The latter two plays stage Friel's continued fascination with Chekhov's work: the former staging Chekhov's story "The Lady with the Lapdog", the latter imagining a near-romantic meeting between Andrey Prozorov of Chekhov's Three Sisters and Sonya Serebriakova of his Uncle Vanya. However, the most innovative work of this period is Performances (2003), a meditation on the fears of aging and the intersection of life, love, and art in a long one-act play that combines drama with a staged performance of Leos Janáček's Intimate Letters for string quartet. In this play Anezka Ungrova, a graduate working on the impact of Janáček's unrequited love for Kamila Stosslova on his work, playfully and passionately argues with the composer--more than 70 years after his death--on his life and her life, while players of the Alba String Quartet interrupt their dialogue, warm up, chat, and finally play the first two movements of his Second String Quartet in a tableau that ends the play. In some transparent ways, Performances suggests Friel's personal concerns since the composer Janáček is portrayed as Friel's age at composition (74 years), and he expresses his anxiety over not being up to the challenges of scaling for a final time "the mountain" of creating a full-scale work. Chekhov in a 1905 illustration. ... Anton Chekhov (left) and Maxim Gorky in Yalta. ...

The final, full-scale work that Friel had in mind while writing Performances was The Home Place (2005), his final play set in Ballybeg. Although Friel had written plays about the Catholic gentry, this is his first play that directly considers the Protestant experience, and in this work, he considers the first hints of the waning of Ascendancy authority during the summer of 1878, the year before Charles Stuart Parnell became president of the Land League and initiated the Land Wars. The play focuses on the aging Christopher Gore, who struggles to maintain his authority over both maturing son David and restive peasants, the latter under the growing influence of local Fenians. Gore's ability to claim legitimacy as one of the region's model landlords is threatened by the arrival of his cousin Richard, who demeans the servants by seeking to advance his phrenological research, and the crisis that results places his son in the unresolved position as one who both usurps and submits to the paternal authority upon which the Gore family authority rests. After a sold-out season at the Gate Theatre in Dublin, it transferred to London's West End on 25 May 2005, making its American premiere at the Guthrie Theater (Minneapolis, MN) in September 2007. The Gate Theatre, in Dublin, was founded in 1928 by Hilton Edwards and Micheál MacLiammoir, initially using the Abbey Theatres Peacock studio theatre space to stage important works by European and American dramatists. ... For other uses, see Dublin (disambiguation). ... West End theatre is a popular term for mainstream professional theatre in London, England, or sometimes more specifically for shows staged in the large theatres of Londons Theatreland. Along with New Yorks Broadway theatre, West End theatre is usually considered to represent the highest level of commercial theatre... is the 145th day of the year (146th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 2005 (MMV) was a common year starting on Saturday (link displays full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ... The Guthrie Theater is a venue for staging plays in Minneapolis, Minnesota. ... This article is about the city in Minnesota. ... This article is about the city in Minnesota. ...

Also in 2007 the Gate Theatre, Dublin, will stage Friels version on Uncle Vanya as part of the annual Dublin Theatre Festival. Anton Chekhov (left) and Maxim Gorky in Yalta. ... The Dublin Theatre Festival is Europes oldest specialist Theatre Festival. ...

4. Over the course of his career Brian Friel has guarded his private life to such a great extent that many of his basic biographical details remain unclear; for example, uncertainly remains whether his father was named "Patrick", which is the consensus belief, or "Sean", as listed in "The Cambridge Companion to Brian Friel." Similarly, Dantanus, Pine, and Boltwood disagree regarding the length and itinerary of Friel's 1963 sojourn to the United States. While he was unusually responsive to interview requests from 1980 through 1985 because of his role as Field Day's premier artist, most of his career is marked by a public reluctance that often becomes reclusiveness. Unlike most writers, he has written very few essays, and after 1970 they have been very brief and increasingly rare--sometimes merely a page or two. Thus, the two published versions of his "Self Portrait", both of 1972, have attained a place of primacy for those practicing biographical criticism; in his book, Boltwood argues for a greater prominence for The Irish Press series in understanding Friel's intellectual and ideological development. (Boltwood further argues that Friel has sought to expunge these essays from his body of work--they are not included in the otherwise comprehensive Friel Papers housed in the National Library of Ireland--because, he argues, they are often too personal and revealing for the playwright.) Indeed, while Friel is occasionally filmed staring pensively into the distance in the authorized, year 2000 documentary produced by Ferndale Films (written by fellow playwright and Friel's personal friend Thomas Kilroy), he only speaks briefly at the film's end. Similarly, when Radio Telefís Éireann presented a series, entitled Reading the Future (1999), of hour-long interviews with Ireland's greatest living authors (including Seamus Heaney, Michael Longley, Edna O'Brien, and William Trevor), Friel was the sole designee not to participate--the Friel interview featured theater critic Fintan O'Toole, Irish scholar Declan Kiberd, and director Patrick Mason in a discussion of his work. Despite his famed public reticence, Friel is noted for his conversation and wit in private settings. Thomas F. Kilroy (1934 - ), the Irish playwright and novelist, was born in Green Street, Callan, County Kilkenny and studied at University College, Dublin. ... Seamus Justin Heaney (IPA: ) (born 13 April 1939) is an Irish poet, writer and lecturer who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1995. ... Michael Longley (b. ... Edna OBrien (born December 15, 1930) is an Irish novelist and short story writer whose works often revolve around the inner feelings of women, and their problems in relating to men. ... William Trevor, KBE (born May 24, 1928) is a short story writer, novelist and playwright of Irish origin, later living in Devon in England. ...

5. Twelve of Friel's plays have been set either in the fictional town of "Ballybeg" (from the Irish for "Small Town"--Baile Beag)) or in its environs: Philadelphia, Here I Come!, Crystal and Fox, The Gentle Island, Living Quarters, Aristocrats, Translations, The Communication Cord, Dancing at Lughnasa, Wonderful Tennessee, Give Me Your Answer Do! and The Home Place, while the seminal event of Faith Healer takes place in the town. (Pine additionally argues that The Loves of Cass McGuire belongs among the Ballybeg plays.) According to such scholars as Dantanus and Pine, Ballybeg is based upon Friel's childhood memories of Glenties, Co. Donegal, his mother's home town, while Boltwood has also traced aspects of the town's depiction to a series in his Irish Press essays that depicts Friel's attempts to gain social acceptance in a small Donegal town where he had bought a summer cabin. These plays present an extended history of this imagined community, with Translations and The Home Place set in the nineteenth century. With the other plays set in "the present" but written throughout the playwright's career from the early 1960s through the late 1990s, the audience is presented with the totalizing evolution of rural Irish society, from the isolated and backward town that Gar flees in the 1964 Philadelphia, Here I Come! to the propserous and multicultural small city of Molly Sweeney (1994) and Give Me Your Answer Do! (1997), where the characters have health clubs, ethnic restaurants, and regular flights to the world's major cities. A play written by Brian Friel and first performed in the Abbey Theatre in Dublin in 1977. ... Translations (Aistrichiuain) is a three-act play by Irish playwright Brian Friel written in 1980. ... Dancing at Lughnasa (see also Lughnasa, the ancient pagan ritual) is a play by Brian Friel set in Irelands County Donegal in August 1936. ... Faith healing is the use of solely spiritual means in treating disease, which, in some cases, is accompanied with the refusal of modern medical techniques. ...

6. Most of Friel's plays have been performed extensively in Dublin at the Abbey, Gate and Olympia theatres, in many West End theatres in London and on Broadway. ' This article is about the Abbey Theatre, Dublin. ... The Gate Theatre, in Dublin, was founded in 1928 by Hilton Edwards and Micheál MacLiammoir, initially using the Abbey Theatres Peacock studio theatre space to stage important works by European and American dramatists. ... West End theatre is a popular term for mainstream professional theatre in London, England, or sometimes more specifically for shows staged in the large theatres of Londons Theatreland. Along with New Yorks Broadway theatre, West End theatre is usually considered to represent the highest level of commercial theatre...

7. Brian Friel was awarded an honorary doctorate by Rosary College, River Forest, Illinois in 1974.^[2] River Forest is a suburban village located in Cook County, Illinois. ...

8. Friel's plays are often characterised by very heavy stage directions, from which much information is alluded to, and can be gleaned about the setting, characters and meaning A theatre director is a principal in the theatre field who oversees and orchestrates the mounting of a play by unifying various endeavors and aspects of production. ...

9. Friel uses a lot of foreshadowing in many of his plays, sometimes subtely and sometimes (when analysing the text, it seems) more heavy handedly. This article is about Foreshadowing, the literary device. ...

10. Friel's only known hobby is bee keeping, though he has elsewhere expressed some interest in other nature-based activitiies; he is not traditionally associated with environmentalism per se, yet his work does express an abiding interest in the interaction between nature and the individual: see especially, The Enemy Within, Crystal and Fox, The Gentle Island, Wonderful Tennessee, and The Home Place.

Plays

(Dates indicate year of first production)

• A Sort of Freedom (unpublished radio play, 1958)
• To This Hard House (unpublished radio play, 1958)
• A Doubtful Paradise (unpublished, 1960)
• The Enemy Within (1962)
• The Blind Mice (unpublished, 1963)
• Philadelphia Here I Come! (1964)
• The Founder Members (unpublished, 1964)
• Three Fathers, Three Sons (unpublished TV play, 1964)
• The Loves of Cass McGuire (1966)
• Lovers: Winners and Losers (1967)
• Crystal and Fox (1968)
• The Mundy Scheme (1969)
• The Gentle Island (1971)
• The Freedom of the City (1973)
• Volunteers (1975)
• Farewell to Ardstraw (unpublished BBC TV play, 1976)
• The Next Parish (unpublished BBC TV play, 1976)
• Living Quarters (1977)
• Faith Healer (1979)
• Aristocrats (1979)
• Translations (1980)
• Three Sisters (Chekhov adaptation, 1981)
• American Welcome (7-minute one-act play, 1981)
• The Communication Cord (1982)
• Making History (1988)
• Dancing at Lughnasa (1990)
• The London Vertigo (Charles Macklin adaptation, 1990)
• A Month in the Country (Turgenev adaptation, 1992)
• Wonderful Tennessee (1993)
• Molly Sweeney (1994)
• Give Me Your Answer, Do! (1997)
• Uncle Vanya (Chekhov adaptation, 1998)
• The Yalta Game (one-act Chekhov adaptation, 2001)
• The Bear (one-act Chekhov adaptation, 2002)
• Afterplay (one-act play, 2002)
• Performances (70-minute one-act play, 2003)
• The Home Place (2005)
• Hedda Gabler (Ibsen adaptation 2008)

Brian Friel (born 9 January 1929) is a playwright and director from Northern Ireland. ... Philadelphia, Here I Come! is a play written by Irish dramistist Brian Friel. ... Lovers is a 1967 play written by Northern Irish playwright Brian Friel. ... A play written by Brian Friel and first performed in the Abbey Theatre in Dublin in 1977. ... Faith healing is the use of solely spiritual means in treating disease, which, in some cases, is accompanied with the refusal of modern medical techniques. ... Translations (Aistrichiuain) is a three-act play by Irish playwright Brian Friel written in 1980. ... Chekhov in a 1905 illustration. ... Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (Russian: , IPA: ) was a Russian short story writer and playwright. ... Making History is a play written by Northern Irish playwright Brian Friel in 1989. ... Dancing at Lughnasa (see also Lughnasa, the ancient pagan ritual) is a play by Brian Friel set in Irelands County Donegal in August 1936. ... A Month in the Country is a novel by J. L. Carr, first published in 1980 and nominated for the Booker Prize. ... Ivan Turgenev, photo by Félix Nadar (1820-1910) “Turgenev” redirects here. ... Anton Chekhov (left) and Maxim Gorky in Yalta. ... View of The Bear public house from Bear Lane. ... A street musician with accordion in Bremen A performance comprises an event in which generally one group of people (the performer or performers) behave in a particular way for the benefit of another group of people (the viewer or viewers, or audience). ... Actress Cate Blanchett in the title role of Hedda Gabler Hedda Gabler is both a play and a fictional character created by Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen. ...

Awards

• 1988 First London production of Aristocrats wins Evening Standard best play award.
• 1989 First New York production of Aristocrats wins New York Drama Critics Circle award for best foreign play.
• 1991 First London production of Dancing at Lughnasa wins Olivier award for best play of 1991.
• 1992 First New York production of Dancing at Lughnasa wins New York Drama Critics Circle award for best play.
• 1992 First New York production of Dancing at Lughnasa wins three Tony awards, including Best Play.
• 1996 First New York production of Molly Sweeney wins New York Drama Critics Circle award for best foreign play.
• 2006 The New York production of Faith Healer wins a Tony Award for best male actor (Ralph Fiennes).

See aristocracy (social studies; social classes). ... See aristocracy (social studies; social classes). ... Dancing at Lughnasa (see also Lughnasa, the ancient pagan ritual) is a play by Brian Friel set in Irelands County Donegal in August 1936. ... Dancing at Lughnasa (see also Lughnasa, the ancient pagan ritual) is a play by Brian Friel set in Irelands County Donegal in August 1936. ... Dancing at Lughnasa (see also Lughnasa, the ancient pagan ritual) is a play by Brian Friel set in Irelands County Donegal in August 1936. ... Faith healing is the use of solely spiritual means in treating disease, which, in some cases, is accompanied with the refusal of modern medical techniques. ...

Books on Brian Friel

• Maxwell, D.E.S., Brian Friel. Bucknell University Press, 1973.
• Dantanus, Ulf, Brian Friel: A Study. Faber & Faber, 1989.
• O’Brien, George, Brian Friel. Gill & Macmilllan, 1989.
• Andrews, Elmer, The Art of Brian Friel. St. Martin's, 1995.
• Pelletier, Martine, Le théâtre de Brian Friel: Histoire et histoires. Septentrion, 1997.
• McGrath, F.C., Brian Friel's (Post)Colonial Drama. Syracuse University Press, 1999.
• Pine, Richard, The Diviner: The Art of Brian Friel. University College Dublin Press, 1999.
• Corbett, Tony, Brian Friel: Decoding the Language of the Tribe. The Liffey Press, 2002.
• Boltwood, Scott. Brian Friel, Ireland, and The North. Cambridge University Press, 2007.

See also

• Brian Friel: Essays, Diaries, Interviews, 1964-1999 (ed. Christopher Murray). Faber & Faber, 1999.
• Brian Friel in Conversation (ed. Paul Delaney). University of Michigan Press, 2000.

See also

• The Abbey Theatre
• The Gate Theatre
• Seamus Heaney
• Thomas Kilroy
• Frank McGuinness
• Stephen Rea
• Northern Ireland
• List of Northern Irish writers

Seamus Justin Heaney (IPA: ) (born 13 April 1939) is an Irish poet, writer and lecturer who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1995. ... Thomas F. Kilroy (1934 - ), the Irish playwright and novelist, was born in Green Street, Callan, County Kilkenny and studied at University College, Dublin. ... Frank McGuinness[1] (born 29 July 1953 in County Donegal, Ireland) is an Irish playwright, translator and poet. ... Stephen Rea (born October 31, 1946) is an Irish actor. ... Northern Ireland (Irish: , Ulster Scots: Norlin Airlann) is a constituent country of the United Kingdom lying in the northeast of the island of Ireland, covering 5,459 square miles (14,139 km², about a sixth of the islands total area). ... List of Northern Irish writers This is a list of writers born in Northern Ireland. ...

References

External links

• Aosdána biographical note
• Faber and Faber - UK publisher of Brian Friel's plays
• About Friel: The Playwright and the Work ed. by Tony Coult
• Brian Friel in Conversation ed. by Paul Delaney
• The Diviner: The Art of Brian Friel by Richard Pine
• Brian Friel, Ireland, and The North by Scott Boltwood

v • d • e « 17th Seanad «   Members of the 18th Seanad Éireann (1987–1989) » 19th Seanad » Cathaoirleach Tras Honan (FF)  • Leader of the Seanad Mick Lanigan (FF) Administrative Panel Katharine Bulbulia (FG) • Michael Doherty (FF) • Joe Doyle (FG) • Seán Haughey (FF) • Tras Honan (FF) • Patrick Kennedy (FG) • Mary Wallace (FF) Cathaoirleach (pronounced, ka-here-loch) is the title of the speaker of the sixty-member Irish upper house, Seanad Éireann (pronounced sch-anad air-inn). ... Tras Honan (born 4 January 1930) is a former Irish Fianna Fáil politician. ... Fianna Fáil – The Republican Party (Irish: ), commonly referred to as Fianna Fáil (IPA ; traditionally translated by the party into English as Soldiers of Destiny, though the actual meaning is Soldiers [Fianna] of Ireland[1]), is currently the largest political party in Ireland with 55,000 members. ... The Administrative Panel is one of five vocational panels which together elect 43 members of Seanad Éireann, the upper house of the Oireachtas (the Parliament of the Republic of Ireland). ... Joe Doyle is a member of Dublin City Council and a former Lord Mayor of Dublin. ... Seán F. Haughey (born November 8, 1961 in Dublin) is an Irish Fianna Fáil politician. ... Tras Honan (born 4 January 1930) is a former Irish Fianna Fáil politician. ... Mary Wallace (Irish: ; born 13 June 1959) is an Irish Fianna Fáil politician. ... Agricultural Panel Paul Bradford (FG) • John Connor (FG) • Michael Ferris (Lab) • Tom Fitzgerald (FF) • Thomas Hussey (FF) • Rory Kiely (FF) • Pádraic McCormack (FG) • Charles McDonald (FG) • Patrick McGowan (FF) • Martin O'Toole (FF) • William Ryan (FF) The Agricultural Panel is one of five vocational panels which together elect 43 members of Seanad Éireann, the upper house of the Oireachtas (the Parliament of the Republic of Ireland). ... Fuck. ... John Connor (born 14 February 1944) is an Irish Fine Gael politician. ... Michael Ferris (21st November 1931 – 20th March 2000) was an Irish Labour Party politician who served for more than twenty years as a member of the Oireachtas, as both a Senator and a TD. Ferris was elected to the 13th Seanad by the Agricultural Panel in a by-election on... This article needs to be cleaned up to conform to a higher standard of quality. ... Pádraic McCormack is an Irish Fine Gael politician and is currently a TD for Galway West constituency. ... Cultural & Educational Panel Sean Byrne (FF) • Joachim Loughrey (FG) • Maurice Manning (FG) • Tony McKenna (FF) • Paschal Mooney (FF) The Cultural and Educational Panel is one of five vocational panels which together elect 43 members of Seanad Éireann, the upper house of the Oireachtas (the Parliament of the Republic of Ireland). ... Dr Maurice Manning (born June 1943) is President of the Irish Human Rights commission. ... Paschal Mooney (born October 1947) is an Irish politician and member of the 22nd Seanad Éireann for Fianna Fáil. ... Industrial & Commercial Panel Eddie Bohan (FF) • Jack Daly (FG) • Sean Fallon (FF) • Willie Farrell (FF) • Jack Fitzsimons (FF) • Phil Hogan (FG) • Mick Lanigan (FF) • Brian O'Shea (Lab) • Gerry Reynolds (FG) The Industrial and Commercial Panel is one of five vocational panels which together elect 43 members of Seanad Éireann, the upper house of the Oireachtas (the Parliament of the Republic of Ireland). ... Edward Eddie Jospeph Bohan (born November 1932) is an Irish politician and member of the Fianna Fáil party. ... Phil Hogan is an Irish Fine Gael politician. ... (Gerard) Gerry Reynolds (born 1961) is an Irish Fine Gael politician. ... Labour Panel Donie Cassidy (FF) • Denis Cregan (FG) • Nuala Fennell (FG) • Des Hanafin (FF) • Jack Harte (Lab) • Brian Hillery (FF) • Peter Kelleher (FG) • Dan Kiely (FF) • Don Lydon (FF) • Larry McMahon (FG) • Brian Mullooly (FF) The Labour Panel is one of five vocational panels which together elect 43 members of Seanad Éireann, the upper house of the Oireachtas (the Parliament of the Republic of Ireland). ... Donal (Donie) Cassidy (born September 15, 1945) is a successful Irish businessman and Teachta Dála (representing Westmeath for Fianna Fáil). ... Nuala Fennell (born 1935) is an Irish economist and former Fine Gael Party politician. ... Des Hanafin (born 1930) is a former Irish Fianna Fáil politician. ... (John) Jack Harte (born 1920) is a retired Irish Labour Party Seantor. ... Dr. Brian Hillery is Chairman of Independent News and Media Plc, appointed in June 2004. ... This page is a candidate for speedy deletion. ... A photo of the senator Donal John Lydon (born August 7, 1938 in Dublin, is a psychologist and an Irish politician. ... National University of Ireland John A. Murphy (Ind) • Joe O'Toole (Ind) • Brendan Ryan (Ind) National University of Ireland (NUI for short) is a parliamentary constituency in Ireland, through which graduates of the National University of Ireland have elected members of various legislative bodies including currently Seanad Éireann. ... Joseph John Joe OToole (born July 1947) is an Irish politician and an independent member of Seanad Éireann. ... University of Dublin David Norris (Ind) • Mary Robinson (Ind) • Shane Ross (Ind) Dublin University is a constituency in Ireland, which has been used to elect members of various legislative bodies including currently Seanad Éireann. ... For other persons named David Norris, see David Norris (disambiguation). ... For the poet, see Mary Robinson (poet). ... Shane Ross is an Irish politician and an independent member of Seanad Eireann. ... Nominated by the Taoiseach Séamus Cullimore (FF) • Éamon de Buitléar (Ind) • George Eogan (Ind) • Brian Friel (Ind) • John Magnier (Ind) • John Robb (Ind) • Tom McEllistrim, Jnr (FF) • Jimmy Mulroy (FF) • Vivian O'Callaghan (FF) • John O'Connell (FF) • Nicholas O'Connor (FF) Éamon de Buitléar is an Irish writer and film maker. ... This article does not cite any references or sources. ... Thomas (Tom) McEllistrim, Jr (January, 1932 - February, 2000) was an Irish Fianna Fáil politician. ... John OConnell (born January 30, 1930), was a senior Irish politician. ... Elected or nominated later 1988: Tony Bromell (FF) • 1989: Michael Dawson (??) • Paul Kavanagh (??) • Frank McDonell (??) FF: Fianna Fáil • FG: Fine Gael • Lab: Labour Party • PD: Progressive Democrats • Ind: Independent •  ??: Unknown party