LUGHN L ASA A G B E INT E ER L N NAT IO F O FR NA IEL L A D FE STIVAL S 20-31 AUGUST 2015 T MUSIC / THEATRE / KITE FLYING / OPEN AIR DANCING / TALKS / READINGS AND FOOD DONEGAL, WELCOME TO FRIEL COUNTRY 20-26 AUGUST BELFAST, HERE I COME! 27 - 31 AUGUST F r o n BOOKING & INFORMATION t a n d B donegal box office donegal box office a c k An Grianan Theatre Visit Belfast Welcome Centre C o Port Road 9 Done gall Square North v e r Letterkenny Belfast BT1 5GJ p h o + 353 (0) 74 9120777 + 44 (0) 28 90246609 t o www.angrianan.com www.visit-belfast.com o f B r i a n getting here getting here F r Please visit Please visit i e l www.lughnasainternationalfrielfestival.com www.lughnasainternationalfrielfestival.com for full b y for full details on how to get to Donegal. details on how to get to Belfast. B o b b i e accommodation accommodation H a Donegal Discover Ireland Centre Visit Belfast Welcome Centre n v e www.govisitdonegal.com/stay www.visit-belfast.com/stay-in-belfast y +353 (0) 74 9721148 +44 (0) 28 9024 6609 taxi companies taxi companies Quinn’s, Donegal Town Value Cabs +353 (0) 87 2620 670 +44 (0) 28 9080 9080 Letterkenny Cabs, Letterkenny Fonacab +353 (0) 74 9127 000 +44 (0) 28 9033 3333 Brennan’s Taxis, Glenties Belfast Cabs +353 (0) 87 6675 555 +44 (0) 28 9024 2700 elcome to the inaugural Lughnasa It is particularly fitting that the festival is being Each morning our programme for Donegal International Friel Festival , Ireland’s first held in Donegal and Belfast as Brian Friel’s life reaches to the very edges of the county whereas W annual cross border arts festival - a and work has demonstrated a certain duality. He the afternoons and evenings are centred in West festival that comprises two territories: Donegal, lived in Northern Ireland from 1929 to 1967 but Donegal’s Ballybeg landscape. In Belfast we Welcome to Friel Country (August 20-23) and since then his home has been in Inishowen, Co. stretch across the city with five distinct responses Belfast, Here I Come! (August 27-31) Donegal; his work also has been set on both sides to the themes and activity of this year’s of the border. Dualism is a powerful theme in the signature play, Dancing at Lughnasa. All in all, We consider it an honour to be curating a festival work (think of Gar Private and Gar Public in it’s a wonderfully rich and diverse terrain in devoted to Brian Friel, the third of our Philadelphia, Here I Come!) through the endless which to explore and celebrate a writer of such biofestivals this year following Samuel Beckett fascination with how we see ourselves as complexity and brilliance. and Oscar Wilde. Brian Friel is undoubtedly one opposed to the faces we present to the world. of Ireland’s greatest writers, his plays having a We would like to acknowledge Brian Friel for his profound influence on how we view ourselves The festival locations play with duality and personal warmth, generosity and support in and our place in history in Northern Ireland and geography. Our opening weekend is in Donegal helping us bring to life the first of many festivals Republic of Ireland. His work asks difficult but our first event starts in Northern Ireland, in in his honour. But most of all, we acknowledge questions, is highly innovative and provocative, County Derry; our last weekend is in Belfast but Brian for the extraordinary range of work that he yet it is lyrical with an almost unparalleled the festival circles back to Donegal for the closing has given us and for the beauty of his artistic understanding of the power of memory in our event. The political and geographical landscape imagination. lives. means that Belfast is of course both east and north of Donegal, while Donegal is west and Sean Doran south of Belfast. One is urban, the other rural. Founder & Artistic Director One is Ballybeg, the other Ballymore. Liam Browne Co-Founder & Deputy Artistic Director brian friel was born in 1929 in Omagh, He left the teaching profession in 1960 to Friel’s most famous play, Dancing at Lughnasa County Tyrone, his father a schoolmaster from pursue a career as a writer. He had already (1990), won three Tony Awards in 1992, Derry and his mother a postmistress from begun writing short stories for The New Yorker including Best Play. He followed this with a Glenties, Co Donegal. Friel attended Long Tower and his stories would subsequently be published version of Turgenev’s A Month in the Country School in Derry and continued his education in two collections, The Saucer of Larks (1962) (1992), The London Vertigo ( from Charles there at St Columb’s College before studying for and The Gold in the Sea (1966). He had also Macklin’s The True Born Irishman), Wonderful the priesthood at St Patrick’s College, been writing radio plays for BBC Northern Tennessee (1993), Molly Sweeney (1994) and Maynooth. Ultimately, though, he decided to Ireland, and stage plays, A Doubtful Paradise Give Me Your Answer Do! (1997). follow his father into the teaching profession (1960) and The Enemy Within (1962). Between 1997 and 2003, Friel wrote three one- and went on to enter St Joseph’s Teacher Following a stint at the Tyrone Guthrie theatre act plays, The Bear , The Yalta Game and Training College in Belfast. He taught as a school in Minneapolis, Friel had his first major stage Afterplay . The latter two plays demonstrated teacher in and around Derry from 1950-60. success, Philadelphia, Here I Come , which was once again Friel’s continuing fascination with the undisputed hit of the Dublin Theatre Chekhov’s work. His most recent work is Festival in 1964. Two years later he moved from Performances (2003), which combines drama Derry to Donegal and future work included The and a staged performance of Janacek’s Intimate Loves of Cass McGuire (1966), Lovers (1967), Letters for string quartet and The Home Place The Mundy Scheme (1969), The Freedom of the (2005) which returns to Friel’s fictional setting City (1973), Volunteers (1975), Living Quarters of Ballybeg (1977) and Faith Healer (1979). In 1980, Friel co-founded the Field Day Theatre Company with Stephen Rea and the company’s first production was Friel’s play Translations , the premiere of which took place at Derry’s Guildhall in 1980 (the play was awarded the Ewart-Biggs Peace Prize). Other plays produced under the Field Day banner included The Communication Cord (1982) and Making History (1988). Friel also adapted Chekhov’s Three Sisters (1981), and Turgenev’s novel Fathers and Sons (1987), CONTENTS DONEGAL, WELCOME TO FRIEL COUNTRY 4'17 FESTIVAL SIGNATURE PLAY 6 & 21 OPENING TALK 7REHEARSED READINGS 8, 9, 11 THE CASIMIR CONCERTS 10 BALLYBEG TALKS & DISCUSSIONS 12'15 SUMMER SCHOOL 16 FESTIVAL CLOSING EVENT 17 BELFAST, HERE I COME! 18'39 REHEARSED READINGS 22'23 AMONGST WOMEN 24'31 THE MUNDY CONCERTS 32'33 DANCING CRANES & NEW NORTHS 34'37 KITETANICA KITE FESTIVAL 38'39 DONEGAL, 4 LUGHNASA INTERNATIONAL FRIEL FESTIVAL 2015 DONEGAL, WELCOME TO FRIEL COUNTRY! Donegal County Council is delighted to support and to work with the inaugural Lughnasa International Friel Festival to explore, to interpret and to celebrate the work of one Ireland’s finest living playwrights, Brian Friel. A much-loved and valued member of our community, we are proud that he has made his home here and has been a beacon of inspiration to creative artists in this county for nigh on 50 years. There is no better way to experience and enjoy the plays of Brian Friel than here among the villages and townlands and the communities of Donegal, that have so inspired his writing. We welcome the Lughnasa International Friel Festival to Donegal and we are confident that this timely celebration of Brian Friel’s unique artistic talent will inspire, entertain, and hopefully surprise, the local community and visitors to the county alike. Mícheál Uas. ó hÉanaigh, Director of Service, Community, Culture and Planning Development, Donegal County Council. LUGHNASA INTERNATIONAL FRIEL FESTIVAL 2015 5 FESTIVAL SIGNATURE PLAY DANCING AT LUGHNASA BY BRIAN FRIEL An Grianan Theatre, Letterkenny Thursday 20 - Sunday 23 August Thursday - Saturday 8:00pm, Sunday 2:30pm Thurs ¤20, Fri & Sat ¤25/¤20, Sun ¤20/¤15 2hrs 15mins Winner of an Olivier Award and a Tony Award, Dancing at Lughnasa is one of the most acclaimed and loved Irish plays of recent times. Set in County Donegal in 1936 during the Celtic harvest festival of Lughnasa, the play tells the story of the five Mundy sisters and their brother Jack, who has returned home from the missions after 25 years away. This new production, which marks the 25th anniversary of the play’s premiere in Dublin, is directed by award- winning Annabelle Comyn. Presented by Lyric Theatre, Belfast in association with the Lughnasa International Friel Festival. For more information and to book tickets, see website: www.angrianan.com 6 LUGHNASA INTERNATIONAL FRIEL FESTIVAL 2015 FESTIVAL OPENING TALK FINTAN O’TOOLE FESTIVAL INTRODUCTION BY GARY MCKEONE The Guildhall, Derry Thursday 20 August 7:30pm | £8/£6 | 75 mins “Confusion is Not an Ignoble Condition” Brian Friel and the Courage of Uncertainty Brian Friel’s work is about people coming up against the limits of what they thought they knew and the limits of what they can express. No living dramatist gives us such a powerful sense of how people really live, not with full knowledge of the forces that are shaping their lives but borne along on invisible currents of history.