“Dance as memory – dance as dream-memory, dance as substitute for language, dance as worship.”

Quote

this nagging idea of Dance

Among Friel’s preoccupations whilst writing Dancing at Lughnasa (1990) were what he called ‘this nagging idea of dance’ on the one hand and the extent to which the play’s form should be naturalistic on the other.

Video

Friel's creative process

Friel scholar Zosia Kuczyńska gives an overview of some of the distinctive features of playwright Brian Friel’s creative process as revealed by his literary archives at the National Library of Ireland.

Related Manuscript

Michael's monologue

This draft of Michael’s opening/closing monologue from Dancing at Lughnasa (1990) features some of the ways in which Friel would annotate his notes.

The Creative Process

Robbie Blake's blue notebook, 6

In these pages from Robbie Blake’s project notebooks, Robbie makes notes from a discussion with Jessie Keenan and Zosia Kuczyńska in which Zosia shares some of her research around theatrical space.

Related Manuscript

Is the play about this?

This note towards Dancing at Lughnasa (1990) is an example of Brian Friel’s habit of asking himself questions as part of his composition process.

“In some ways I've been looking into archives without even giving it a name.” – Jessie Keenan