Essays on Irish playwright, Brian Friel

Modernity, Community, and Place in Brian Friel’s Drama shows how the leading Irish playwright explores a series of dynamic physical and intellectual environments, charting the impact of modernity on rural culture and on the imagined communities he strives to create between readers, and script, actors and audience.

Brian Friel is Ireland's foremost living playwright, whose work spans fifty years and has won numerous awards, including three Tonys and a Lifetime Achievement Arts Award. Author of twenty-five plays, and whose work is studied at GCSE and A level (UK), and the Leaving Certificate (Ire), besides at undergraduate level, he is regarded as a classic in contemporary drama studies. Christopher Murray's Critical Companion is the definitive guide to Friel's work, offering both a detailed study of individual plays and an exploration of Friel's dual commitment to tradition and modernity across his oeuvre. Beginning with Friel's 1964 work Philadelphia, Here I Come!, Christopher Murray follows a broadly chronological route through the principal plays, including Aristocrats, Faith Healer, Translations, Dancing at Lughnasa, Molly Sweeney and The Home Place. Along the way it considers themes of exile, politics, fathers and sons, belief and ritual, history, memory, gender inequality, and loss, all set against the dialectic of tradition and modernity. It is supplemented by essays from Shaun Richards, David Krause and Csilla Bertha providing varying critical perspectives on the playwright's work.

This essential guide provides a deeply informed survey of the criticism of all the plays and major stories authored by Brian Friel. Scott Boltwood introduces readers to the key themes that have been used to characterise Friel's entire career, moving chronologically from his early work as a successful short story writer to the present day. This is an essential text for dedicated modules or courses on Modern or Contemporary British and Irish drama offered as part of English literature degrees, or for the literature and culture modules of undergraduate and postgraduate Irish studies degrees. In addition, this book is an ideal companion for A-level students reading Friel's plays, or anyone with an interest in this complex writer's career.

Surveying the life, work and accolades of Irish playwright Brian Friel, this literary companion investigates his personal and professional relationships and his literary topics and themes, such as belonging, violence, patriarchy and hypocrisy. Character summaries describe his most significant figures, particularly St. Columba, the victims of Derry's Bloody Sunday, and Hugh O'Neill, the Lord of Tyrone. Entries analyze Friel's style in detail, from his column in the Irish Times and his short fiction in the New Yorker to his most recent plays, Philadelphia, Here I Come!, Translations, and Dancing at Lughnasa.

The Methuen Drama Guide to Contemporary Irish Playwrights is an authoritative guide to the work of twenty-five playwrights from the last 50 years whose work has helped to shape and define Irish theatre. Written by a team of international scholars, it provides an illuminating survey and analysis of each writer's plays and will be invaluable to anyone interested in, studying or teaching contemporary Irish drama. The playwrights examined range from John B. Keane, Brian Friel and Tom Murphy, to the crop of writers who emerged in the 1990s and who include Martin McDonagh, Marina Carr, Emma Donoghue and Mark O'Rowe. Each essay features: a biographical sketch and introduction to the playwright a discussion of their most important plays an analysis of their stylistic and thematic traits, the critical reception and their place in the discourses of Irish theatre a bibliography of texts and critical material With a total of 190 plays discussed in detail, over half of which were written during the 1990s and 2000s, The Methuen Drama Guide to Contemporary Irish Playwrights is unrivalled in its study of recent plays and playwrights.

Friel is recognised as Ireland's leading playwright and due to the ability of plays like Translations and Dancing at Lughnasa to translate into other cultures he has made a major impact on world theatre. This study draws on the Friel Archive to deepen our understanding of how his plays were developed.

In Brian Friel's writing, the distinction between public and private is closely linked to the concepts of home, family, identity and truth. This study examines the characters' excessive introspection and their deep-seated need to disclose their most intimate knowledge and private truths to define who they are and, thus, to oppose dominant discourse or avoid heteronomy. This study begins by investigating how a number of Anglo-Irish writers publicised their characters' private versions of truth thereby illustrating what they perceived to be the space of 'Irishness'. The book then focuses on Friel's techniques of sharing his character's private views to demonstrate how he adopted and adapted these practices in his own oeuvre. As the characters' superficial inarticulateness and their vivid inner selves are repeatedly juxtaposed in Friel's texts, his oeuvre, quintessentially, displays a great unease with the concepts of communication and absolute truth.

Brian Friel is widely recognized as Ireland's greatest living playwright, winning an international reputation through such acclaimed works as Translations (1980) and Dancing at Lughnasa (1990). This 2006 collection of specially commissioned essays includes contributions from leading commentators on Friel's work (including two fellow playwrights) and explores the entire range of his career from his 1964 breakthrough with Philadelphia, Here I Come! to his most recent success in Dublin and London with The Home Place (2005). The essays approach Friel's plays both as literary texts and as performed drama, and provide the perfect introduction for students of both English and Theatre Studies, as well as theatregoers. The collection considers Friel's lesser-known works alongside his more celebrated plays and provides a comprehensive critical survey of his career. This is a comprehensive study of Friel's work, and includes a chronology and further reading suggestions.

This Handbook offers a multiform sweep of theoretical, historical, practical and personal glimpses into a landscape roughly characterised as contemporary Irish theatre and performance. Bringing together a spectrum of voices and sensibilities in each of its four sections — Histories, Close-ups, Interfaces, and Reflections — it casts its gaze back across the past sixty years or so to recall, analyse, and assess the recent legacy of theatre and performance on this island. While offering information, overviews and reflections of current thought across its chapters, this book will serve most handily as food for thought and a springboard for curiosity. Offering something different in its mix of themes and perspectives, so that previously unexamined surfaces might come to light individually and in conjunction with other essays, it is a wide-ranging and indispensable resource in Irish theatre studies.