Friel, Brian

Brian Friel was born in County Tyrone in Northern Ireland in 1929. With his family he moved to Derry at the age of 10 and attended secondary school in the city. Here he experienced at first hand aspects of the sectarian divide between Catholic and Protestant communities which played such an important part in the life of the province. He later taught in various schools in the area before becoming a full-time writer. He wrote a number of plays which have received both critical and popular acclaim, with productions mounted in Ireland, London and New York. Among the most successful are Philadelphia, Here I Come! (1964), The Faith Healer (1979), Translations (1981), Making History (1988) and Dancing at Lughnasa (1990). In addition, he translated plays by Turgenev and Chekhov. In 1980 he co-founded, along with the actor Stephen Rea, the Field Day Theatre Company, through which they aimed to produce plays and writing relevant to the Ireland which was emerging in the late twentieth century. He was awarded honorary degrees from a number of universities and was a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. He lived in County Donegal in the Irish Republic until his death in 2015, and the area was the setting for a number of his plays.