INTERNATIONAL

ian friel was born in 1929 in Omagh,County Tyrone, his father a schoolmaster fromDerry and his mother a postmistress fromGlenties, Co Donegal. Friel attended Long TowerSchool in Derry and continued his educationthere at St Columb’s College before studying forthe priesthood at St Patrick’s College,Maynooth. Ultimately, though, he decided tofollow his father into the teaching professionand went on to enter St Joseph’s TeacherTraining College in Belfast. He taught as a schoolteacher in and around Derry from 1950-60.He left the teaching profession in 1960 topursue a career as a writer. He had alreadybegun writing short stories for The New Yorkerand his stories would subsequently be publishedin two collections, The Saucer of Larks (1962)and The Gold in the Sea (1966). He had alsobeen writing radio plays for BBC NorthernIreland, and stage plays, A Doubtful Paradise(1960) and The Enemy Within (1962).Following a stint at the Tyrone Guthrie theatrein Minneapolis, Friel had his first major stagesuccess, Philadelphia, Here I Come, which wasthe undisputed hit of the Dublin TheatreFestival in 1964. Two years later he moved fromDerry to Donegal and future work included TheLoves of Cass McGuire (1966), Lovers (1967),The Mundy Scheme (1969), The Freedom of theCity (1973), Volunteers (1975), Living Quarters(1977) and Faith Healer (1979).In 1980, Friel co-founded the Field Day TheatreCompany with Stephen Rea and the company’sfirst production was Friel’s play Translations, thepremiere of which took place at Derry’sGuildhall in 1980 (the play was awarded theEwart-Biggs Peace Prize). Other plays producedunder the Field Day banner included TheCommunication Cord (1982) and Making History(1988). Friel also adapted Chekhov’s ThreeSisters (1981), and Turgenev’s novel Fathers andSons (1987),Friel’s most famous play, Dancing at Lughnasa(1990), won three Tony Awards in 1992,including Best Play. He followed this with aversion of Turgenev’s A Month in the Country(1992), The London Vertigo (from CharlesMacklin’s The True Born Irishman), WonderfulTennessee (1993), Molly Sweeney (1994) andGive Me Your Answer Do! (1997).Between 1997 and 2003, Friel wrote three oneactplays, The Bear, The Yalta Game andAfterplay. The latter two plays demonstratedonce again Friel’s continuing fascination withChekhov’s work. His most recent work isPerformances (2003), which combines dramaand a staged performance of Janacek’s IntimateLetters for string quartet and The Home Place(2005) which returns to Friel’s fictional settingof Ballybeg