Brian friel festival

Brian Friel was a dramatist and writer often referred to as the ‘Irish Chekhov’ for his plays exploring social and political life in both the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland. Over the course of a career spanning more than sixty years, Friel examined the tangled relationships between nationality, history, and narrative, with large, intergenerational casts of characters. His work was influenced by his upbringing in the rural north of Ireland, with more than a dozen of Friel’s works set in the fictional Donegal town of Ballybeg (translating to “small town”).

Friel was born in Killyclogher near Omagh, County Tyrone, to Sean Friel, a primary-school principal, and Mary McLoone, a postmistress. Friel spent half of his childhood in his father’s home city of Derry before attending St. Patrick’s College in Maynooth as a seminarian — he was never ordained, but graduated with a BA in 1948. In 1954, Friel married Anne Morrison, with whom he raised four daughters and a son. Alongside his work as a teacher, Friel began his career as a writer of short fiction, p

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