Plays Two:

Dancing at Lughnasa

Fathers and Sons

Making History

Wonderful Tennessee

Molly Sweeney

Introduced by Christopher Murray, this second collection of Brian Friel's plays includes some of his most acclaimed work for the stage.

From the troubled family life of five sisters in 1930s Donegal that is the core of Dancing at Lughnasa (now a major motion picture starring Meryl Streep) to the current-day birthday celebration that is the major external event of Wonderful Tennessee, Brian Friel demonstrates his emotional range and empathy for his characters. He evokes not simply the interior landscape of human beings trapped in their domestic situation but the wider landscape-interior and exterior-of which they are a part.

Brian Friel was born in Omagh, County Tyrone (Northern Ireland) in 1929. He received his college education in Derry, Maynooth and Belfast and taught at various schools in and around Derry from 1950 to 1960. He is the author of many plays that have taken their place in the canon of Irish Literature, including Philadelphia, Here I Come! (1964), Lovers (1967), Translations (1980), The Communication Cord (1982), and Dancing at Lughnasa (1990). In 1980 he founded the touring theatre company, Field Day, with Stephen Rea.