Season Select: Dancing at Lughnasa

DANCING AT LUGHNASA

By Brian Friel
Directed by Brenda DeVita

Fast Facts

Playing: Hill Theatre | August 2 - September 27
Featuring: Tracy Michelle Arnold, Nate Burger, Maggie Cramer, Colleen Madden, Elizabeth Reese, James Ridge, Laura Rook, Marcus Truschinski
Genre: Irish Memory Play
Last Seen at APT: First time!
Go If You Liked: Once Upon a Bridge (2023), Stones in his Pockets (2022), Molly Sweeney (2013)

About Dancing at Lughnasa

In the beautiful and desolate reaches of rural Ireland, a family leads a simple life. But beneath the fog of their poverty lies a kindling fire, exploding out in moments of music and heat and the frenzy that comes with long-denied want. A rich tapestry woven with the lives of five women, each overflowing with hope and resilience. Each thread vital to the strength of the whole. Immersive, poetic and devastating, with an incredible cast who can carry the weight of this family and send it floating like a kite on a chilled Celtic breeze. Running August 2 - September 27.

Playwright Brian Friel left behind an impressive catalogue of work upon his death in 2015, including some twenty-four published original works and an accompanying eight adaptations. Of the twenty-four original plays, more than half are set in the fictional town of Ballybeg, a play on the Gaelic Baile Beag, meaning simply “small town.” Friel would establish his prolific and celebrated career exploring the lives and longings of those characters that called the town home, including the five Mundy sisters at the center of Dancing at Lughnasa.

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.

In addition to the 1998 movie adaptation featuring Meryl Streep, Dancing at Lughnasa has received international accolades since premiering in Dublin, including the 1991 Olivier Award for Best Play of the Year and the 1992 Tony Award for Best Play. An intimate and starkly human play, Dancing at Lughnasa presents strife, triumphs and the power of sisterhood in a way that sticks to your bones long after you leave the theater.

Artistic Director (and Director) Brenda DeVita Says

"I could not be more excited to direct Dancing at Lughnasa. It is a play that I am in love with; that I have history with. I was in this play myself. And it has something new to tell me every time I see it. It is about women, and family, and want. About the way people with means view 'a simple life' with gauzy nostalgia, when in reality, there is nothing more difficult than simple; nothing more expensive than being poor. Yet these women, these sisters, find meaning and joy in each other, and in their very different, individual personalities and strengths. It’s a play with a lot to say about family, responsibility and love of all kinds, and it dives into all these topics in a very meaningful, very forgiving way that’s just exquisite, and so human. And it’s written by Brian Friel, who is one of the great Irish playwrights, and his poetry is so evocative of Ireland that you just feel like you’re there. The cast is full of Core Company – Tracy Arnold, Colleen Madden, Laura Rook (who is new to the core company, but not to us or to you), Nate Burger, James Ridge, Marcus Truschinski – and Elizabeth Reese, who we love, and Maggie Cramer, who is new to APT this year. And it’s exactly the right group of actors, who know each other, and are like family themselves. And Friel’s poetry will just flow through them in the most beautiful way. This play was, and is, life-changing for me. It’s going to feel right at home on our Hill Stage, as a story built on the hills of a rural village. Some plays are just meant to be seen outside, under the stars. This is one of them."