Editing Brian Friel (section)

==Literary career==
A common setting for Friel's plays is in or around the fictional town of "[[Ballybeg (fictional town)|Ballybeg]]" (from the Irish ''Baile Beag'', meaning "Small Town").<ref name="times-friel-letters-exile"/><ref name="friel-furrow-heart"/> There are fourteen such plays: ''[[Philadelphia, Here I Come!]]'',  ''[[Crystal and Fox]]'', ''[[The Gentle Island]]'', ''[[Living Quarters]]'', ''[[Faith Healer]]'', ''[[Aristocrats (play)|Aristocrats]]'',<ref name="three-flavors-emotion-aristocrats">{{cite news|first=Linda|last=Winer|url=https://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/newsday/access/43382752.html?dids=43382752%3A43382752&FMT=ABS&FMTS=ABS%3AFT&type=current&date=Jul+23%2C+1999&author=Linda+Winer.+STAFF+WRITER&pub=Newsday+%28Combined+editions%29&desc=Three+Flavors+of+Emotion+in+Friel%27s+Old+Ballybeg&pqatl=google|title=Three Flavors of Emotion in Friel's Old Ballybeg|work=Newsday|date=23 July 2009|quote=FOR THOSE OF US who never quite understood why Brian Friel is called "the Irish Chekhov," here is "Aristocrats" to explain – if not actually justify – the compliment."|access-date=5 July 2017|archive-date=13 March 2013|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130313040820/http://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/newsday/access/43382752.html?dids=43382752%3A43382752&FMT=ABS&FMTS=ABS%3AFT&type=current&date=Jul+23%2C+1999&author=Linda+Winer.+STAFF+WRITER&pub=Newsday+%28Combined+editions%29&desc=Three+Flavors+of+Emotion+in+Friel%27s+Old+Ballybeg&pqatl=google|url-status=dead}}</ref> ''[[Translations (play)|Translations]]'',<ref>{{cite news|first=Steven|last=McElroy|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/21/arts/21weekahead.html|title=The Week Ahead: Jan. 21 – 27|newspaper=The New York Times|date=21 January 2007}}</ref> ''[[The Communication Cord]]'', ''[[Dancing at Lughnasa]]'', ''[[Wonderful Tennessee]]'', ''[[Molly Sweeney]]'', ''[[Give Me Your Answer Do!]]'' and ''[[The Home Place]]'', while the seminal event of ''[[Faith Healer]]'' takes place in the town. These plays present an extended history of this imagined community, with ''Translations'' and ''The Home Place'' set in the nineteenth century, and ''[[Dancing at Lughnasa]]'' in the 1930s.  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 evolution of rural Irish society, from the isolated and backward town that Gar flees in the 1964 ''Philadelphia, Here I Come!'' to the prosperous 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.

===1959 – 1975===

Friel's first radio plays were produced by [[Ronald Mason (drama)|Ronald Mason]] for the [[British Broadcasting Corporation|BBC]] Northern Ireland Home Service in 1958: ''[[A Sort of Freedom]]'' (16 January 1958) and ''[[To This Hard House]]'' (24 April 1958).<ref name="dantanus2">Dantanus, Ulf, ''Brian Friel: A Study.'' Faber & Faber, 1989.</ref><ref name="pine2">Pine, Richard, ''The Diviner: The Art of Brian Friel.'' University College Dublin Press, 1999.</ref> 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). These were followed by ''[[A Doubtful Paradise]],'' his first stage play, produced by the Ulster Group Theatre in late August 1960. Friel also wrote 59 articles for ''[[The Irish Press]],'' a Dublin-based party-political newspaper, from April 1962 to August 1963; this 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.<ref>Boltwood, Scott. ''Brian Friel, Ireland, and The North.'' Cambridge University Press, 2007.</ref>

Early in Friel's career, the Irish journalist Sean Ward even referred to him in an ''Irish Press'' article as one of the Abbey Theatre's "rejects". Friel's play, ''[[The Enemy Within (play)|The Enemy Within]]'' (1962) enjoyed success, despite only being on the Abbey stage for 9 performances. Belfast's Lyric Theatre revived it in September 1963 and the BBC Northern Ireland Home Service and Radio Éireann both aired it in 1963. Although Friel later withdrew ''[[The Blind Mice]]'' (1963), it was by far the most successful play of his very early period, playing for 6 weeks at Dublin's Eblana Theatre, revived by the Lyric, and broadcast by Radio Éireann and the BBC Home Service almost ten times by 1967. Friel had a short stint as "observer" at [[Guthrie Theater|Tyrone Guthrie's theater]] in early-1960s Minneapolis; he remarked on it as "enabling" in that it gave him "courage and daring to attempt things".<ref name="obituary_irish_times2"/>

Shortly after returning from his time at the Tyrone Guthrie Theatre, Friel wrote ''[[Philadelphia Here I Come!]]'' (1964). The play made him instantly famous in Dublin, London, and New York.<ref name="obituary_irish_times2" /> ''The Loves of Cass McGuire'' (1966), and ''[[Lovers (play)|Lovers]]'' (1967) were both successful in Ireland, with ''Lovers'' also popular in The United States. Despite Friel's successes in playwriting'','' Friel in the period saw himself as primarily a short story writer, in a 1965 interview stating, "I don't concentrate on the theatre at all. I live on short stories."<ref>Russell, R. (2012). "Brian Friel's Transformation from Short Fiction Writer to Dramatist". ''Comparative Drama'', ''46''(4), 451–474.</ref>

Friel then turned his attention to contemporary Irish political issues, writing ''The Mundy Scheme'' (1969) and ''Volunteers'' (1975). Both plays heavily satirised the [[government of Ireland]]. The latter depicted an archaeological excavation on the day before the site was turned over to a hotel developer, using Dublin's Wood Quay controversy as its contemporary point of reference. The play's title refers to a group of [[Irish Republican Army]] detainees who have been indefinitely interned by the Irish government, and the term ''Volunteer'' is both ironic, in that as prisoners they have no free will, and political, in that the IRA used the term to refer to its members. Using the site as a physical metaphor for the nation's history, the play's action examines how Irish history has been commodified, sanitized, and oversimplified to fit the political needs of society.<ref name="McGrath, F. C 1999">McGrath, F. C. 1999. "Brian Friel's (Post) Colonial Drama  : Language, Illusion, and Politics". ''Irish Studies##. Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press (1999). 99.</ref>

By 1968, Friel was again living in Derry, a hotbed of the [[Northern Ireland civil rights movement]], where incidents such as the [[Battle of the Bogside]] inspired Friel's choice to write a new play set in the city.<ref>Winkler, E. (1981). Brian Friel's "The Freedom of the City": Historical Actuality and Dramatic Imagination. ''The Canadian Journal of Irish Studies'', ''7''(1), 12–31. doi:10.2307/25512520.</ref> The play Friel began drafting in Derry would eventually become ''[[The Freedom of the City]]'' (1973). Defying a government ban, Friel marched with members of the [[Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association]] against the policy of internment on 13 January 1972, an event that would become known as  [[Bloody Sunday (1972)|Bloody Sunday]]. During the march, British troops from the [[1st Battalion, Parachute Regiment]] opened fire on the marchers, killing 14 people and wounding a further 26. His personal experience of being fired at by soldiers during the march greatly affected the drafting of ''The Freedom of the City'' as a heavily political play.<ref>{{Cite news|url=https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/brian-friel/brian-friel-s-interview-with-fintan-o-toole-i-m-not-really-very-good-at-this-kind-of-question-1.2372705|title=Brian Friel's interview with Fintan O'Toole: 'I'm not really very good at this kind of question'|newspaper=The Irish Times|access-date=11 October 2018|language=en-US}}</ref> In the interview, Friel recalled: "It was really a shattering experience that the [[British Army|British army]], this disciplined instrument, would go in as they did that time and shoot thirteen people... to have to throw yourself on the ground because people are firing at you is really a terrifying experience."<ref name="McGrath, F. C 1999"/>

===1976 – 1989===
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.<ref name="dantanus2"/><ref name="pine2"/><ref name=andrew>Andrews, Elmer, ''The Art of Brian Friel.'' St. Martin's, 1995.</ref> ''[[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. This 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 (play)|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. ''Aristocrats'' was the first of three plays premiered over a period of eighteen months which would come to define Friel's career as a dramatist, the others being ''[[Faith Healer]]'' (1979) and ''[[Translations (play)|Translations]]'' (1980).<ref name="obituary_irish_times2"/>

''Faith Healer'' is 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 itinerant healer who can neither understand nor command his unreliable powers, and the lives sacrificed to his destructive charismatic life.<ref>{{cite news|first=Ben|last=Brantley|url=https://www.nytimes.com/1994/04/26/theater/review-theater-faith-healer-3-versions-shared-past-vision-memory-s-power.html|title=Faith Healer; From 3 Versions of a Shared Past, a Vision of Memory's Power|newspaper=The New York Times|date=26 April 1994|access-date=4 October 2015}}</ref> Many of Friel's earlier plays had incorporated assertively avant garde techniques: splitting the main character Gar into two actors in ''Philadelphia, Here I Come!'', portraying dead characters in "Winners" of ''Lovers,'' ''Freedom'', and ''Living Quarters'', a Brechtian structural alienation and choric figures in ''Freedom of the City'', metacharacters existing in a collective unconscious Limbo in ''Living Quarters''. These experiments came to fruition in ''Faith Healer''. Later in Friel's career, such experimental aspects became buried beneath the surface of more seemingly realist plays like ''[[Translations (play)|Translations]]'' (1980) and ''[[Dancing at Lughnasa]]'' (1990); however, avant-garde techniques remain a fundamental aspect of Friel's work into his late career.

''Translations'' was premiered in 1980 at [[Guildhall, Derry|Guildhall]], Derry by the Field Day Theatre Company,<ref name=londonderry_sentinel_bidding/> with Stephen Rea, Liam Neeson, and Ray MacAnally. Set in 1833, it is a play about language, the meeting of English and Irish cultures, the looming [[Great Famine (Ireland)|Great 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. It was an instant success. 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'' went on to be one of the most translated and staged of all plays in the latter 20th century, performed in Estonia, Iceland, France, Spain, Germany, Belgium, Norway, Ukraine, the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland, along with most of the world's English-speaking countries (including South Africa, Canada, the U.S. and Australia). It won the [[Christopher Ewart-Biggs Memorial Prize]] for 1985. [[Neil Jordan]] completed a screenplay for a film version of ''Translations'' that was never produced. Friel commented on ''Translations'': "The play has to do with language and only language. And if it becomes overwhelmed by that political element, it is lost."<ref name="obituary_irish_times2"/>

Despite growing fame and success, the 1980s is considered Friel's artistic "Gap" as he published so few original works for the stage: ''Translations'' in 1980, ''[[The Communication Cord]]'' in 1982, and ''[[Making History (play)|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 filled out the decade: a translation of Chekhov's ''[[Three Sisters (play)|Three Sisters]]'' (1981), [[Fathers and Sons (play)|an adaptation]] of Turgenev's novel ''[[Fathers and Sons (novel)|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. Friel's decision to premiere ''[[Dancing at Lughnasa]]'' at the Abbey Theatre rather than as a Field Day production initiated his evolution away from involvement with Field Day, and he formally resigned as a director in 1994.<ref name="obituary_irish_times2"/>

===1990 – 2005===
Friel returned to a position of Irish theatrical dominance during the 1990s, particularly with the release of ''[[Dancing at Lughnasa]]'' at the turn of the decade. Partly modelled on ''[[The Glass Menagerie]]'' by [[Tennessee Williams]], it is set in the late summer of 1936 and loosely based on the lives of Friel's mother and aunts who lived in Glenties, on the west coast of Donegal.<ref name="obituary_irish_times2"/> Probably Friel's most successful play, it premiered at the [[Abbey Theatre]], transferred to [[West End of London|London's West End]], and went on to Broadway. On Broadway, it won three [[Tony Awards]] in 1992, including Best Play. A film version, starring [[Meryl Streep]], soon followed.<ref name=londonderry_sentinel_bidding>{{cite news|url=http://www.londonderrysentinel.co.uk/news/local/londonderry_beats_norwich_sheffield_and_birmingham_to_the_bidding_punch_1_2101970|title=Londonderry beats Norwich, Sheffield and Birmingham to the bidding punch|newspaper=Londonderry Sentinel|date=21 May 2010|access-date=17 July 2011|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20111002223928/http://www.londonderrysentinel.co.uk/news/local/londonderry_beats_norwich_sheffield_and_birmingham_to_the_bidding_punch_1_2101970|archive-date=2 October 2011|url-status=dead}}</ref>

Friel had been thinking about writing a "[[St Patrick's Purgatory|Lough Derg]]" play for several years, and his ''[[Wonderful Tennessee]]'' (less of a critical success after its premiere in 1993 when compared to other plays from this time) portrays three couples in their failed attempt to return to a pilgrimage sit to a small island off the Ballybeg coast, though they intend to return not to revive the religious rite but to celebrate the birthday of one of their members with alcohol and culinary delicacies. ''[[Give Me Your Answer Do!]]'' premiered in 1997 and recounts the lives and careers of two novelists and friends who pursued different paths; one writing shallow, popular works, the other writing works that refuse to conform to popular tastes. After an American university pays a small fortune for the popular writer's papers, the same collector arrives to review the manuscripts of his friend. The collector prepares to announce his findings at a dinner party when the existence of two "hard-core" pornographic novels based upon the writer's daughter forces all present to reassess.

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 Yalta Game" is concerned with Chekhov's story "The Lady with the Lapdog," "Afterplay" is an imagining of a near-romantic meeting between Andrey Prozorov of Chekhov's ''[[Three Sisters (play)|Three Sisters]]'' and Sonya Serebriakova of his ''[[Uncle Vanya]]''. It has been revived several times (including being part of the Friel/Gate Festival in September 2009) and had its world premiere at the Gate Theatre in Dublin.<ref>{{cite news|first=Patrick|last=Jackson|url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/2254294.stm|title=Chekhov revived in Afterplay|work=BBC News|date=20 September 2002}}</ref>

The most innovative work of Friel's late period is ''[[Performances (play)|Performances]]'' (2003). A graduate researching the impact of [[Leoš Janáček]]'s platonic love for Kamila Stosslova on his work playfully and passionately argues with the composer, who appears to host her at his artistic retreat more than 70 years after his death; all the while, the [[Alba String Quartet]]'s players intrude on the dialogue, warm up, then perform the first two movements of [[String Quartet No. 2 (Janáček)|Janáček's Second String Quartet]] in a tableau that ends the play. ''[[The Home Place]]'' (2005), focusing on the ageing Christopher Gore and the last of Friel's plays set in Ballybeg, was also his final full-scale work. Although Friel had written plays about the Catholic gentry, this is his first play directly considering the Protestant experience. 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.<ref>{{cite web|first=Charlotte|last=Loveridge|url=http://www.curtainup.com/homeplace.html|title=A CurtainUp London Review: The Home Place|publisher=CurtainUp|year=2005|access-date=4 October 2015}}</ref> 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]] in September 2007.