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Brian Friel biography:
19.01.11
As an author,
playwright and dramatist Brian Friel is widely
recognised as one of the greatest contemporary
dramatists writing in the English language.
He was born in Tyrone in 1929, his mother Mary
McLoone was from Glenties, and his father Patrick,
was from Derry. In 1939 his family moved to Derry
where he attended St Columb's College in Derry, he
received his B. A. from St. Pat's College, Maynooth
(1948), and qualified as a teacher at St. Joseph's
Training College in Belfast, 1950. In 1960 after 10
years as a teacher he left to pursue a full time
writing career. He married Anne Morrison in 1954 and
in 1966 moved his young family to Inishowen, finally
settling in Greencastle. |
His first big success
came in 1964 with 'Philadelphia, Here I Come’.
Critically acclaimed, it opened the doors of the
theater world to Brian Friel and to Ballybeg [the
fictional Donegal town based on Glenties, the
setting for most of his plays]. It is seen as a
turning point for Irish drama and is one of the most
important plays of the 1960’s.
Brian Friel went on to write many more original
plays, including 'Lovers' (1967); 'Aristocrats'
(1979); 'Faith Healer' (1979); 'Translations'
(1981); 'Dancing at Lughnasa' (1990); 'Molly
Sweeney' (1994). Dancing at Lughnasa (1990) is
probably his most successful play; winning three
Tony Awards in 1992, including Best Play |
and was made into a
film in 1998 starring Meryl Streep and scripted by
Donegal playwright Frank Mc Guinness.
He was appointed to the Irish Seanad in 1987 and in
January 2006 he was presented with a gold Torc by
President Mary McAleese in recognition of his
election as a Saoi by the members of Aosdána for
singular and sustained distinction in the arts.
Brian Friel has made an immeasurable contribution to
cultural identity. We can easily identify with the
dramatic, rugged, landscapes and characters of ‘Ballybeg’.
Who we are and where we are from, are inextricably
linked. And perhaps it is poignant with the recent
re-emergence of immigration to consider that
wherever we go in the world that Donegal will always
be found between the covers of a Brian Friel play. |
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