Brian Friel's play Dancing at Lughnasa takes place in 1936 and focuses on the Mundy sisters who live together in rural Ireland. The play explores themes of memory, change, and the conflict between traditional pagan rituals like dancing and music versus the encroaching modernity and Catholicism of the time. Through the adult narrator Michael's memories, the play depicts the sisters finding joy and connection through spontaneous dancing inspired by their new radio, representing their clinging to ritual and tradition as their world rapidly changes around them.

1. DANCING AT LUGHNASA
by BRIAN FRIEL
 Introduction
 Brian Friel Biography
 Characters
 A Brief Summary
 Themes and Criticism

2. Introduction
 Dancing at Lughnasa opens with a
monologue by Michael,who introduces his
nostalgic memories of the summer of 1936.
He is seven at that time and the five Mundy
sisters living together have just acquired their
first wireless radio.
 Dancing at Lughnasa belongs to the
contemporary Irish Drama period.

3. Introduction
Irish Drama Periods

4. Anglo-Irish precedents
 With the collapse of the Gaelic social and
political order at the beginning of the
seventeenth century,the cultural traditions of
Ireland were abandoned.Until the end of the
nineteenth century,the only contacts with the
ancient civilization available were relatively
inaccessible relics in the folklore of the
countryside and manuscript rooms of the
museums and academies.

5.  Therefore,it is not surprising that although
many of the most distinguished dramatists
writing in English between 1700 and 1900
were born in Ireland,their works were written
according to the idiom and conventions of the
English stage.
 During all this period and until the nineteenth
century,the most visible feature of the drama
was the convention of the stage Irishman:

6.  A humorous character,either gentleman or
peasent,whose distinctive features were his
outrageous dialect,proclivity to “Irish bulls”
(blunders in speech or logic) and pugnacious
disposition.
 This caricature like character has many
variants such as “soldier,priest,gentleman,
fortune hunter,servant…”.

7. Irish National Drama
 By the late nineteenth century,the Irish
Literary Renaissance had introduced to the
stage the resources of Ireland’s long-
neglected cultural tradition.The father of this
movement was the poet William Butler Yeats.
 Yeats founded the Irish Literary Theatre in
1899,which became the showpiece of the
national literary movement: Dublin’s Abbey
Theatre.

8.  Although this group had a diversity of talents,
sensibilities and inclinations,they agreed on the
necessity to replace the caricature of Irish life on
stage with serious and authentic drama which would
be popular yet not ruled by political orthodoxies and
they committed themselves to the experimentation
with an imaginative and poetic drama that would
harness the heroic legend to the demands of the
modern stage.

9. Contemporary Irish Drama
 A significant development of the period has
been the appearance of a considerable body
work for the stage by dramatists from
Northern Ireland whose work reflects both
the social disruption caused by the political
violence and the questions of political and
cultural identity provoked by the physical
confrontations on the streets.

10. Brian Friel Biography
 Friel was born in County Tyrone in Northern
Ireland on 9 January 1929.His father was a
teacher and when Friel was ten,the family
moved to Londonderry where his father
became the principal at Long Tower School.
Friel at first thought of becoming a priest but
he abandoned his plans to enter the
priesthood and entered St.Joseph’s Teacher
Training College in Belfast.

11.  From 1950 to 1960,Friel worked as a teacher during
which time many of his short stories were published.
 Friel quit teaching in 1960 to become a full-time
writer of short stories,radio plays and stage plays.
 In 1980,Friel founded the Field Day Theatre
Company in Northern Ireland along with Stephen
Rea and produced works of social and political
significance.

12. Friels Major Works
 Philadelphia,Here I
Come
 Crystal and Fox
 The Freedom of the
City
 Volunteers
 Translations
 Dancing At Lughnasa
 Molly Sweeney

13. Characters
 Uncle Jack
 Agnes Mundy
 Chris Mundy
 Kate Mundy
 Maggie Mundy
 Rose Mundy
 Michael Mundy as the
narrator and the child
Michael

14. Uncle Jack (Jack Mundy)
 Jack is fifty-three and he is the brother of the
five women.He spent twenty-five years as a
missionary priest in Uganda and he has
recently returned to Ireland,sick with malaria.
 He can not keep the names of his sisters
straight and has difficulty in remembering
English words.
 The character of Uncle Jack highlights Friel’s
theme of paganism.

15. Agnes Mundy
 She is thirty-five and is the middle of the five
sisters.she knits to support them.
 After a knitting factory opens in their town,the
sisters lose their jobs and Agnes,together
with Rose,leave the family home,never to
return.Michael locates her in London where
she has died after 25 years.

16. Chris Mundy
 Chris is twenty-six and the youngest of the
five sisters.Her son,Michael, was born out of
wedlock,her love child with Gerry Evans.
 Chris is repeatedly taken in by Gerry’s
unreliable promises.Gerry jokes with
her,makes her laugh and frequently breaks
into a dance with her.

17. Kate Mundy
 Kate is the oldest of the five sisters.She is
forty years old and was once a
schoolteacher.She is the most resistant to
the changes taking place around her and
especially critical of the pagan singing and
dancing.

18. Maggie Mundy
 Maggie,thirty-eight,is the second oldest of the
five sisters and works as the cook and
housekeeper of their home.Michael
describes his Aunt Maggie as “the joker of
the family”.

19. Rose Mundy
 She is thirty-two and the second youngest
sister.She works knitting to support the
family.Rose is in love with Danny Bradley, a
married man with three children.

20. Gerry Evans
 Gerry is thirty-three and he is the father of
the illegitimate son Michael.Gerry appears
every year or so and Chris is charmed by him
all over again each time.Gerry is unreliable
and has a new idea for a career path with
each visit.

21. Michael Mundy
 Michael,as a young man,functions as a
narrator and describes the action of the play
through direct monologue to the audience.
 The child michael in the flashbacks is making
and painting a series of kites.Only toward the
end of the play are his paintings displayed to
the audience.

22. Brief Summary/Act I
 Act I is set on a warm day in early August,
1936,in the home of Mundy family,two miles
outside the village of Ballybeg,County
Donegal,Ireland.
 The play opens with a monologue by
Michael’s memory of the summer when he
was seven.The family have just acquired a
new radio.

23.  In addition to the arrival of the radio, Michael’s uncle
Jack has returned home from Uganda.
 The action of the play opens as the five sisters do
chores while breaking into singing and
dancing,inspired by their new radio.
 Agnes suggests that they all attend the upcoming
local harvest dance,to which Maggie,Rose and Chris
respond enthusiastically.Act I ends with Uncle Jack’s
re-enacting a ritual dance from Uganda.

24. Act II
 The act takes place in early september,three
weeks later.The women are doing chores,the
little boy is making kites.After one of his
annual walks of the day,Uncle Jack
describes a ritual ceremony in Uganda that
he participated in,which included the sacrifice
of animals.
 In the meantime,Rose returns from a boat
ride with Danny Bradley.

25.  The adult Michael then provides a long
monologue that explains the fate of all
characters.Agnes and Rose leaves the family
and never returns;Uncle Jack dies of a heart
attack.
 The scene returns to the kitchen in
September,1936,where women are doing
chores.The kites with the primitive faces on
them are presented to the audience.

26.  The adult Michael ends with a monologue in
which he states that “much of the spirit and
fun had gone out of their lives;and when my
time came to go away,in the selfish way of
young men,I was happy to escape”.Michael
tells the significance of music and dance to
his nostalgic memories of the summer of
1936.

27. Themes and Criticism
 Memory
 Change
 Paganism
 Music
 Dancing,rituals and history

28. Memory
 Friel is interested in personal memory not as
a means of reproducing factual incidents,but
as a means of recapturing the atmosphere
of the memory.Thus,for Friel,memory is
simultaneously actual and illusory because it
is true to the emotional content of the
memory without necessarily being true to the
actual events that took place.

29. Change
 The acquisition of the wireless radio in
Mundy household represents a turning point
in the make-up of the family,as well as in
rural Irish cultural history.The radio in 1936 is
a newfangled technology that brings mass
culture into the home.The radio is also a
harbinger of more significant historical and
socioeconomic changes;namely the
Industrial Revolution.

30. Paganism
 Pagan ritual and paganism are central
themes of friel’s play.He presents all dancing
and singing as a form of pagan ritual.
 Kate makes the connection between
paganism,or non-Christian belief, and the
music brought into the house by the radio
when she claims : “D’you know what the
thing has done?Killed all Christian
conversation in this country”.

31. Music
 Music is a central theme of the play.The
radio represents an agent of change in
Mundy family.
 Music is associated with the pagan or non-
Christian rituals.

32. Criticism
 Elmer Andrews explains that Lughnasa “was
one of the four major pre-christian,celtic
festivals…Basically a harvest festival,
Lughnasa was celebrated over fifteen days in
honour of the god Lugh,one of the most
important Irish gods”.Andrew goes on to
conclude that “Thus,Lughnasa is traditionally
associated with sexual awakening,rebirth…”

33.  Michael’s father Gerry embodies the free-
spirited,pagan rituals of song and dance.
”This country is graophone crazy” tells Gerry
to Chris.In the play,Gerry’s mention of
gramophone links his character to the pagan
rituals of popular song and dance inspired by
newly developed technologies.

34.  References to Hollywood movie stars known
for their song and dance routines are link
between the medium of mass-produced
popular culture to pagan spirit of song and
dance in the Mundy family.

35.  At various points,characters sing lyrics from
the famous Hollywood musical “Anything
Goes” which features songs by the composer
Cole Porter.Porter was known for his
nontraditional relationships,such as open
homosexuality in conjunction with his open
marriage to a wealthy divorcee.

36.  Reference to a song by Porter in Friel’s play
indirectly invokes the free-spirited lifestyle
that Porter led,as well as the free-spirited
sexual implications of his famous song lyrics.
 It is this free-spirited quality that Friel
associates with the pagan ritual of song and
dance.

37.  Long-ago suitors and missed chances at love
hang in the air like ghosts.The women
discuss attending the festival,which none of
them have gone to for years,but which was
once the site of much youthful revelry.In
dancing,they find a sense of release and
belonging,which resembles religious ecstacy.

38.  Religion functions more as a set of rules and
admonishments than as a source of strength
and spiritual renewal.It’s not the faith but the
ceremony they yearn for.Uncle Jack
suggests that in the realm of the ritual,
spoken language is unnecessary.

39.  Like the Celtic-inspired dance the Mundy
sisters burst into very often,ritual
traanscends language and intellect.Words do
not convey meaning of the past and today all
together and can not go beyond the
superficial reality.
 The play ends with Michael’s vivid memory of
dancing as if language had surrendered to
movement.This wordless ceremony was now
the new way to speak.

40.  Movement is the new way to whisper private
and sacred things,to be in touch with some
otherness.This is a play about growing up,the
transition from innocence to experience.
 The play enacts an ideal balance-between
narration and enactment,the rational and
irrational,language and music,the religious
and the secular,past and present.

41.  To live in one sphere alone is inadequate.
 Not only belief but also history should be
regarded from different point of views,the
theatre should renew and reveal and it’s a
rejection of “fossilised history”.
The End