Dancing at Lughnasa Director's Note

Perhaps Friel’s best known work, Dancing at Lughnasa follows sisters Kate, Maggie, Agnes, Rose and Chris in the summer of 1936. Loosely modeled after Friel’s own childhood when he would spend time with his mother and her sisters, Friel dedicated the play to “those five brave Glenties women,” in reference to his mother’s hometown of Glenties where he is buried today.

Director's Note

I often tell folks when they ask where I am from, “I lived on a small farm on a dead-end dirt road.” I admit that by saying it like that I always hope for them to ask for more. I want to tell them about my 15 siblings, the acre garden, the marauding rooster, Chucky, the mice in the silverware drawer, and the snakes my brothers would torment me with under my bedroom door. And the chores. All the chores. The milking, the walking beans, the bailing, the cleaning, the cooking and the laundry, the laundry, the laundry. Without a doubt, the work of a family set apart and on their own, to keep themselves fed and alive, is done without ever talking about it. It just is. It is necessary to make do. Snakes and all.

But even while I write this, I have to confess a tiny bit of pride, a shadow of satisfaction rests on my chest. I have a lump in my throat. I love my people. They are the people in this play.

Because like the Mundy sisters of this story, I understand that, between the cracks of the incessant work—the work of constantly making do—profound moments sink in. Moments of pure joy – sometimes almost imperceptible. Sometimes overwhelming.. Every one of them well-earned, desperately needed, and utterly gratifying.

If the art of “making do” results in fresh bread, bedsheets that smell like the breeze, homemade jam, hand-knit mittens, and dancing with your sisters in the kitchen, then there is something to this lump in my throat, this understanding of the contract we all made while we pulled weeds and scrubbed the worn-out back steps until you could eat off them. If we all did our part and said a few prayers, we would all be ok.

I love this family, the Mundy girls of Brian Friel’s beautiful, poetic, gauzy play. Because they are all kneading, knitting, dancing; quietly but desperately trying to stay away from the edge, the unspoken drop off; honing this delicate, fragile existence together. Knowing that by the grace of God and doing their part they just might have a chance of getting by. Or getting on. Or better yet getting out.

- Brenda DeVita, Director of Dancing at Lughnasa