Irish literary giants Brian Friel and Seamus Heaney to be celebrated with major festival across Derry, Tyrone & Donegal
‘FrielDays: A Homecoming’ will begin with a 35th anniversary production of his most celebrated play, Dancing at Lughnasa, staged just 50 metres from the house in which it is set, with a combined 50th anniversary celebration of the work of Ireland’s greatest poet – and Friel’s close friend - Seamus Heaney also planned.
Curated by Arts Over Borders, FrielDays will bring 29 plays to locations of resonance across Brian Friel’s homeland of the three north-west border counties of Donegal, Tyrone and Derry, a part of Ireland he rarely left.
FrielDays will build each year adding new plays and places, so that by 2029, the centenary of Friel’s birth, all 29 plays will be performed across the full calendar year.
Five anniversary plays will be rolled out this August, with each opening at the time of year in which it was set by Friel and taking place in resonant settings which will become a newly chosen ‘Ballybeg’ and ‘Ballymore’, the fictional towns at the heart of 14 of Friel’s 29 plays.
On its 35th anniversary, Dancing at Lughnasa will be presented at St Columba’s Comprehensive School in Glenties, Co. Donegal, close to The Laurels, the home of Friel’s grandparents and the five daughters who inspired the play’s central characters, the Mundy sisters.
In 1990, Dancing at Lughnasa opened to widespread acclaim and, soon after garnered multiple theatrical awards, and received further plaudits when it was adapted for a film starring Meryl Streep in 1998. This August’s production, with a newly-commissioned score by electro-acoustic composer John D’Arcy, will be the first multi-racial reading of the play in these islands, as a series of stage and screen actors reads the role of Michael, The Narrator.
During the run of Dancing at Lughnasa, Faith Healer will also take place in Glenties and across west Donegal, with audiences boarding the FrielDays bus for unique site-specific readings in three west Donegal community halls and the Highlands Hotel, an area that was the boyhood summer idyll for Friel. Over four acts, Faith Healer weaves an unreliable narrative about the life and death of the charismatic Frank Hardy, apparently gifted in his ability to perform healing miracles.
A play about language, colonialism and identity, Translations will be performed on its 45th anniversary at the Dunlewey Centre in north-west Donegal, a Gaeltacht, Irish-speaking area. The play is set in Donegal in the 1830s, a time when place names were being translated into English for Ordnance Survey maps. While the FrielDays presentation will be in English, the Irish roles will be taken by actors who can also speak Gaelic, while the two English soldier roles will be filled by English actors coming to Donegal for the first time. As part of their ticket, audiences will take a short trip across Lake Dunlewey to visit Glentornan, an early 19th century ghost village, where they will experience a Seanchaí, traditional Gaelic storyteller and music.
2025 marks the 50th golden anniversary of Volunteers, which premiered in 1975 at the Abbey Theatre, Dublin. Friel’s tale of excavation by political prisoners is reflected by its FrielDays stage setting of an archaeological site overlooking the River Foyle in the Keep area at Ebrington Square, a former British army barracks in Derry.
The first professional production this century of Friel’s most contentious play, is a co-production with The Playhouse in Derry staged by Kabosh Theatre in a specially constructed outdoor ‘dig’ set.
The opening night on August 29 will be the whole performance in one sitting, while the performances on August 30 and 31 will follow Friel’s scenography with Act 1 at 8.30am and Act 2 at 4.30pm.
Between Acts 1 & 2, FrielDays will celebrate the power of Seamus Heaney's poetry collection, North, in its 50th anniversary year with a series of community-led readings across four city venues in Derry, weaving together diverse voices from across the city and emphasising the links between the works of Friel and his great friend. Tickets for North will be on sale from 9 June at www.artsoverborders.com
Rounding off this year’s programme is The Home Place; Friel’s final full-length play will be staged at Sion Stables Heritage Education Centre in Co. Tyrone, close to his own childhood home in Killyclogher, in a building constructed at the time when the play takes place.
The 42 cast members spanning all five plays will be announced through June and July. Visit www.artsoverborders.com for updates.
FrielDays is conceived and produced by Arts Over Borders, Ireland’s leading producer of cross-border arts festivals.
Seán Doran and Liam Browne of Arts Over Borders, in a joint statement said: “We are on the eve of arguably the largest and most ambitious cross border cultural initiative celebrating the work of a single Irish artist and his relationship with the landscape and communities he grew up in and worked within.
"Brian Friel was very particular about the seasons, months, days and times of day in which his plays took place, so we will present each play in a setting relevant to its theme and at the time, of year and day, in which it was set.
"Friel is Ireland’s preeminent dramatist of the late 20th century. He is the ultimate ‘shared island’ dramatist, the 86 years of his life shared almost equally between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. Therefore, FrielDays is a truly transnational cross-border project, bringing the stories and characters of Friel’s life’s work to the very locations that inspired their creation.”
Schedule of performances:
Dancing at Lughnasa: August 1-23 at St. Columba’s Comprehensive School, Glenties, Co. Donegal.
Faith Healer: August 8-10 and 15-17 at Edeninfagh, Portnoo, Ardara and Glenties, west Donegal.
Translations: August 22-25 at Gweedore, Co. Donegal.
The Home Place: August 23-25 at Sion Stables Heritage Education Centre, Co. Tyrone.
Volunteers: August 29-31 at The Keep, Ebrington Square, Derry.
North: August 30-31 across four venues in Derry.