DANCING AT LUGHNASA
by Brian Friel
MARCH 20 - APRIL 18, 2010
at Church Street Theater
Thursdays-Saturdays at 8:00 pm
Sundays at 3:00 pm
Directed by Mark A. Rhea and Abigail Isaac
Featuring Kevin Adams, Elizabeth Jernigan, Matthew Keenan, Brianna Letourneau, Emily Levey, Kerri Rambow, Susan Marie Rhea, and Colin Smith
"This play does exactly what theater was born to do, carrying both its characters and audience aloft on those waves of distant music and ecstatic release that, in defiance of all language and logic, let us dance and dream just before night must fall." -The New York Times
Loosely based on the lives of Friel’s mother and aunts, Dancing at Lughnasa depicts the late summer days of 1936, when love briefly seems possible for three of the five Mundy sisters. It is the festival of Lughnasa–-the Celtic festival of the first fruits, when the harvest is welcomed–-and the family has just welcomed home their frail elder brother from a life as missionary in Africa. Set in a time when Christianity and paganism were becoming uneasy partners in Ireland, Dancing at Lughnasa is an intimate, lyrical look at a country and a family at a crossroads.
