Donegal to celebrate literary great Brian Friel in cross-border project

Irish playwriting great Brian Friel, will be celebrated in a series of events in Donegal called FrielDays - A Homecoming 2025 throughout August.

Organised by Arts Over Borders, FrielDays will bring 29 plays across Donegal, Tyrone, and Derry, three counties that were of major importance to Brian Friel’s life.

In Donegal, plays will be held at Glenties, Edeninfagh, Portnoo, Ardara, and Dunlewey.

Brian Friel, was one of Ireland’s “preeminent dramatists of the late 20th century,” and spent much of his life in Donegal. Although born in Tyrone, he would live in Muff and Greencastle and is buried in Glenties.  

This year marks the 35th anniversary of the play, Dancing at Lughnasa, which will be presented at St Columba’s Comprehensive School in Glenties from August 1-23. The location is close to The Laurels, the home of Friel’s grandparents and the five daughters who inspired the play’s central characters, the Mundy sisters. 

In 1998, Dancing at Lughnasa, which had won multiple theatrical awards, was adapted for film, starring Meryl Streep. 

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During the run of Dancing at Lughnasa, another Friel play, Faith Healer, will also be performed in Glenties. Audiences will be able to board the FrielDays bus for unique site-specific readings in three west Donegal community halls and the Highlands Hotel, an area that was the boyhood summer idyll for Friel. 

Dates for Faith Healer are on August 8-10 and August 15-17, and will see performances at Edeninfagh, Portnoo, Ardara, and Glenties.

Finally, a production of the 45th anniversary of Translations will be performed at the Dunlewey Centre in northwest Donegal from August 22-25. As part of their ticket, audiences will take a short trip across Lake Dunlewey to visit Glentornan, an early 19th-century ghost village. 

Seán Doran and Liam Browne of Arts Over Borders said: “We are on the eve of the largest and most ambitious cross-border cultural initiative celebrating the work of a single Irish artist and his relationship with the landscape and communities he grew up in and worked within.

“Brian Friel was very particular about the seasons, months, days and times of day in which his plays took place, so we will present each play in a setting relevant to its theme and at the time, of year and day, in which it was set.

“FrielDays is a truly transnational cross-border project, bringing the stories and characters of Friel’s life’s work to the very locations that inspired their creation.”