Brian Friel

Brian Friel at Home–Photo Credit: Boston College; Creative Commons

A Brief Biography of Brian Friel

Considered one of the most important contemporary Irish playwrights, Brian Friel was born on January 9, 1929 in Killyclogher, Co. Tyrone, Northern Ireland to a Catholic, Nationalist family. At the age of ten he moved to the city of Derry in Northern Ireland, where he later witnessed the breakdown of the Northern Irish state in 1969. He would eventually use Derry as the setting of his play Freedom of the City.

In 1948 he graduated from seminary at St. Patrick’s College in Maynooth, but decided against going into priesthood. Instead he attended St. Mary’s Training College in Belfast to earn a teaching degree. For the next 10 years (1950-1960) he taught in various schools around Derry and began writing short stories. During that time, in 1954 he married Anne Morrison, whom he would have five children with. In 1960 he decided to retire from teaching and start writing full time. For several years he was also a member of Derry’s Nationalist Party, but believed “the party had lost initiative,” (Hickey and Smith 221) and resigned in 1967.

The Enemy Within, one of Friel’s first staged and published plays was produced at the Abbey Theatre in Dublin in 1962. Ten years later he became an elected member of the Irish Academy of Letters, and one year later (1973) Freedom of the City opened at the Royal Court Theatre in London, and at the Abbey Theatre in Dublin. Although Friel attempted to stay away from political commentary in his previous works, Freedom of the City was undeniably written in response to the real political event of Bloody Sunday. Like this one, many of his stories and plays tend to take place in Derry, Donegal, and Tyrone. Places that Seamus Deane describes as largely Catholic communities that lead to, “a reduced existence under pressure of political and economic depression” (7).

In 1980 Friel co-founded the The Field Day Theatre Company with actor and friend, Stephen Rea. Translations, a play written by Friel that demonstrates the social conditions and loss of the Irish language through British Imperialism, opened as the company’s first production in the Guildhall in Derry. Field Day’s goal was to create a “fifth province” in response to the crisis of Northern Ireland that had been strengthened by the competing discourses, myths, stereotypes, and histories. This “fifth province” was meant to find a middle ground between the country’s deeply rooted positions, and create a space in which the Irish community could discover new identities. Friel described Field Day to be inspired by “that sense of impermanence, of people who feel themselves native to a province or certainly to an island but in some way feel that a disinheritance is offered to them” (Friel 20).

In all, Brian Friel has written 34 published stage plays and several other plays for radio. He has also won many awards and honors including, being appointed to the Irish senate in 1987, and the Lifetime achievement award in the Irish Times in 1999. Alexander Gonzalez, author of Modern Irish Writers: A Bio-critical Sourcebook, states:

Brian Friel’s plays continue to probe the ways in which human beings perceive and deceive themselves, the collision between private self and public image. Rooted in the cultural fissures of Northern Ireland, his drama reveals an intimate awareness of hid native place. Yet Friel’s profound understanding of humanity has enabled him to translate his world to an international audience, and though eavesdropping in Ballybeg, listeners hear the cadences of their own disparatic hearts (89).

Through the examination of his life, it is clear that Brian Friel has contributed a tremendous amount to the world of Irish theatre, as well as the realm of postcolonial studies. Without these brilliant contributions, neither of these subjects would be where they are today, making him one of the most important playwrights of today.

Sources Consulted:

Andrews, Elmer. The Art of Brian Friel: Neither Reality nor Dreams. New York, N.Y.: St. Martins Press, 1995. Print.

Gonzalez, Alexander G. Modern Irish Writers: A Bio-critical Sourcebook. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1997. Print.