The Creative Process

Jessie Keenan notes, 1

In this extract from Jessie Keenan’s project notes (8 July 2020), Jessie considers some of the possible core elements of what was, at the time, intended to be a live performance piece. These include issues around access, ideas about radio, and elements of Zosia Kuczyńska’s research (including aspects of phenomenology as derived from Clive Cazeaux’s thinking around the ‘invitational’ quality of radio space).

Clive Cazeaux, ‘Phenomenology and Radio Drama’, British Journal of Aesthetics, 45.2 (April 2005), 157–174

Video

Mixed interview, extract 5

Zosia Kuczyńska, Jessie Keenan, and Robbie Blake talk about the origins of the project and the experience of collaboration.

Related Manuscript

It doesn't matter if the rains come

This note was written by Brian Friel during the composition process for Dancing at Lughnasa (1990). Many of Friel’s notes explore the significance of the play’s various dances and what it is they might be expressing.

Related Manuscript

Structure the ages.

In Friel’s play Dancing at Lughnasa (1990), the radio is an important theatrical device. Apart from connecting the Mundy sisters to an emerging modernity, it also functions as an almost supernatural presence as it makes sudden musical intrusions that disturb the domestic scene.

Related Manuscript

Has the play its own reality?

In this note dated 28 May 1989, Brian Friel interrogates the reality of his own play, Dancing at Lughnasa (1990), in relation to its narrator.