Dancing at Lughnasa by Brian Friel

Direction: Everett Dixon
Translation by Claudia Vélez, Everett Dixon, and the Performance Workshop group.
A production of the Theatre Department of the University del Valle in Cali, Colombia.
















Cristian Vásquez and Francia Solano (Gerry, Chrissie) in Dancing at Lughnasa by Brian Friel. (Photo: Catherine Ávila)


Dancing at Lughnasa is very similar to another famous “chekhovian” play, The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams, but it parts with this play (and Chekhov) for its remarkable lack of cruelty. Without sentimentality, this play manages to dignify simple people through the poetry of their daily life. Friel’s strategy is the same as that used by his character Lombard, arch-bishop and chronicler from Making History: he adjusts the chaotic narrative of the life of his characters – of narrator Michael, Aunt Maggie, Father Jack – to the idealist vision they have of their own lives, then he plays at interweaving this vision with contrasting scenes from reality, making for a structure of constantly unexpected surprises. And the result is an unusual conflict in the theatre: the chasm which opens between our imaginative flights and the irrevocability of the passage of time. As does his compatriot, Bernard Shaw, Friel touches on a modern problem – existential anguish – and as Shaw he gives a common-sense solution: be happy. Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die. This play has the painful happiness of an Afrocolombian alabao, the celebratory songs to the dead that are sung in the Colombian Pacific – an African legacy like others described by Father Jack in the second act – and the insistent presence of music in the play is no coincidence. And since the play talks of time, it takes it time, and asks us to do the same, as in the same wakes where alabaos are sung.
















Lauren Ceballos, Francia Solano, Satiana Ordóñez and Gianina Arana (Maggie, Chrissie, Aggie and Rose) in Dancing at Lughnasa by Brian Friel. (Photo: Catherine Ávila)

Brian Friel (Omagh, 1929)

The most important contemporary Irish playwright, Friel has cultivated a deceptively simple dramatic structure: His plays, which deal with the passage of time and the fragmentary and idealistic mirages of memory, are testimonies of the failures of characters who nevertheless manage to tranform their reality through the poetization of their past. Friel is master at details that distract our attention, the pauses we make to contemplate a child's kite or smell the herbs in the garden, episodes and details that finally have more weight in the fortunes of these characters than their most painful misfortunes, Adapter of Ivan Turgenev, (Fathers and Sons, 1990), this Irish dramatist has an extraordinary affinity to the great notoriously warm-hearted Russian stylist. Other plays: Translations, 1986; Making History, 1989; Wonderful Tennesse, 1993.













Camilo López and Satiana Ordóñez (Father Jack and Aggie) in Dancing at Lughnasa by Brian Friel (Photo: Catherine Ávila)

Characters

Michael, young man, narrator: Johann Philipp Moreno
Kate, forty, schoolteacher: Ximena Orozco
Maggie, thirty-eight, housekeeper: Lauren Emilia Ceballos
Agnes, thirty-five, knitter: Satiana Ordóñez
Rose, thirty-two, knitter: Gianina Arana
Chris, twenty-six, Michael's mother: Francia Elena Solano
Gerry, thirty-three, Michael's father: Cristian David Vázquez
Jack, fifty-two, missionary priest: Andrés Camilo López

Michael, who narrates the story, also speaks the lines of the boy, i. e. himself when he was seven. Act One: A warm day in early August 1936. Act Two: Three weeks later. The home of the Mundy family, two miles outside the village of Ballybeg, County Donegal, Ireland.


Crew

Direction: Everett Dixon
Traduction: Claudia Vélez
Production: Satiana Ordóñez, Gianina Arana
Musical Consultant: Ramiro Soto
Music: Catherine Ávila
Choreography: Satiana Ordóñez, Gianina Arana
Lighting: Cristian Vásquez, Edwin Ramos
Stage Technician: Sergio Cardona
Secretary, Theatre Department: Myriam Valencia
Chair, Theatre Department: Mauricio Doménici
Programa Director: Gabriel Uribe


Visit the website of the same play at the Fomenko Studio Theatre (Moscow): «Танцы на прaздник урожaя» To see photos of the performance, click on the website photo.