How have The Troubles and Irish politics influenced Brian Friel and his plays and

how would this impact an audience.

Over the past eight hundred years there has been an ongoing conflict between
England and Ireland, boiling down to difference in religious belief and discrimination,
and these conflicts are still prominent in Northern Ireland today; more commonly
known as the Troubles. Playwrights like Brian Friel, whom have witnessed and
experienced these troubles first hand, encompass it in their plays to emphasise the
ongoing, more implicit injustices by writing about the explicit historical injustices. This
essay seeks to discuss the influence of the Troubles and Irish politics on Friels
plays; focussing on aspects of setting, historical content, language and
characterisation in Translations and Dancing at Lughnasa.
Translations was written and performed in 1980; the very height of the Troubles.
The Troubles refer to the conflict officially beginning 30 th January 1972 (Bloody
Sunday) when 13 Irish, unarmed Catholics were shot down by British paratroopers.
The play looks back to 1833, in the midst of the time British soldiers were sent to
carry out an Ordnance Survey of County Donegal. It is plain to see what influenced
Friel to write this; not necessarily to reopen wounds but to make very clear the
progression, or lack of, in relationship between the Irish and English.
Translations is set in the town of Ballybeg; an Anglicisation of the Gaelic Baile
Beag, translating to little town. This fictional town, Friel uses in several of his plays,
including Dancing at Lughnasa, as a microcosm for the whole of contemporary
Ireland, depicting many political views and standpoints throughout. Even from just
this small decision in Friels plays, an audience can see the shaping of his choices
comes from the discriminations and conflicts he was aware of in Ireland. Friel spent
a lot of his life in Derry, whether that be in school or teaching yet his family was
originally from Donegal, it is where he spent a lot of his childhood vacations and it is
where he lived up until his death in October 2015. Friel was known to see Donegal
as an image of possibility and a place of hope, suggesting why it is a running theme
throughout his plays, possibly to portray the irony in his image of Donegal and the
discrimination that occurs throughout the plays within his fictional Ballybeg, or
perhaps to suggest that there is always some form of hope; Friels political stance is
never explicitly stated.
Another creative decision made by Friel, yet shaped by his Northern Irish
background is the use of the idea of language throughout Translations. Jimmy Jack,
a character within the play, does not speak English, only Greek, Latin and Gaelic, all
dying languages, he believes in mythology and lives in the mythological world in his
head, believing that he is to marry Athene; the daughter of Zeus. For Jimmy, the
world of the gods and the ancient myths is as real and as immediate as everyday
life. (Translations, pg 20). It is as if Jimmy Jack wants to escape from the world that
he is living in; the one where his heritage and culture is being destroyed by the
English. It is easier to believe in mythological world than to accept what is

happening. Within the play, Friel depicts the Ordnance Survey that took place
between 1824 and 1846, where all Irish named places were anglicised; hence Bally
Beg from Baile Beag. Change is a very prominent factor throughout the play, it just
unclear what Friel himself thinks; accept change or defy it. We might say that Friel
could possibly be portraying the devastation of the people, like Jimmy Jack,
attempting to grip onto the culture that the English were, have and are still ripping
away or he could well be saying that holding onto the culture, the Gaelic language in
this example, is as futile as holding onto the Latin language, as it is no longer
practical to speak that language.
Finally, the most prominent factor within Translations is the fact that the whole play
is written and spoken in English The sad irony, of course, is that the whole play is
written in English. It ought to be written in Irish (Friel, B. Brian Friel in
Conversation, pg 140). The clear influence on Friel, here, is the domination of the
English over the Irish; during 1833, the Irish had an inability to maintain their culture
due to the forced Anglicisation from the English and the want of loyalists to progress
economically and socially, like Marie within the play We should all be learning to
speak EnglishThats what Dan OConnell said last month, referring to the
influential Irish politician who fought for the Catholic Emancipation and equal rights
yet thought the English language was still a necessity. At the time of writing the play,
this would still be prominent enough for it to have influence Friel as the injustices
against Irish Catholics that took place on Bloody Sunday were just a few years prior
to Translations.
The fact that the crux of the arguments made by characters such as Hugh within the
play, is that the Irish language is A rich language. A rich literature, and that it is
not the literal past, the 'facts' of history, that shape us, but images of the past
embodied in language, (meaning that language links with identity) is ironic, as this is
all being said whilst actually speaking English. This speaks volumes about the
message Friel is trying to send. His plays, like Translations, all revolve around his
perceived political neutrality, giving the audience the ability to make decisions for
themselves on their opinions of history or the cruelty of the English and the Irish, as
Fintan OToole highlighted he [Friel] treated public history as if it were private
memory the characters in his plays turn history into words, images, stories. It is
their way of not being crushed by the weight of its cruel inevitability . (OToole, 2015)
Nearing the end of the play, Hugh, after being the main character to stick by his Irish
heritage and identity, in a drunken and hysterical states We must learn these new
names We must learn where we live. We must learn to make them our own. We
must make them our new home(pg 88). It could be said that Friel, here, is trying to
show that Hugh is smart enough to know that his culture is dying and that he should
move with progression: is it better to inherit a foreign culture or to have none at all?
Dancing at Lughnasa follows the story of the five Mundy sisters and is loosely
based around the Brian Friels life and the life of his mothers and aunts; his first play
to revolve around, mainly, women. The plays main focus is the separation between
Catholic beliefs and expectations within the society the sisters lived and the interest of
some of the sisters in traditional pagan rituals, i.e dancing. During the 1930s dancing

was banned and thought to be immoral. The sisters talk about the pagan festival,
Lughnasa: the celebration of the Celtic god of sun, Lugh and then in, arguably, the
most famous scene from the play, as their radio Marconi plays Irish folk music
sporadically, all of the sisters lose themselves in a ritual dance, yelling and laughing.
This scene, and the theme of pagan rituals and dance throughout the play,
emphasise the influences these traditions had on Friel and highlights that his
yearning for a return to pre-Christian values in Ireland is evident throughout.
(Bernard Patrick Friel facts, 1993). During the 1990s, the conflict between the Irish and
English was still rife, in the year of the October Proxy Bomb attacks, where the IRA sent out
three human bombs to three separate British army posts, killing 8 soldiers and wounding
many more, it is no wonder that Friel was wistful of a simpler, peaceful Ireland like the
Donegal he remembers as a child; again, why it is used as the setting for Dancing at
Lughnasa as well as many other of his plays.

One of the biggest links between the two plays is through the use or importance of
language. In Translations it is obvious the use of language is a tool used by Friel
to separate people and to provoke questions in the audience such as is the
heritage were fighting for, worth the conflict still going on? Is progress a better
solution? Whereas, language is used in a completely different way in Dancing at
Lughnasa in the sense that it is made LESS important. The dancing scene is
completely wordless and is the most powerful scene as it is the sisters standing
against the norm and authority a sense of order being consciously subverted
near-hysteria being induced(pg 22). The repression of these women in the context
of a rural 1930s Irish setting is being thrown away with the dance and Friel portrays
this strongly through the character of Kate Kate, who has been watching the
scene with unease, with alarm, finally leaps to her feet, flings her head back, and
emits a loud Yaaaah! (pg 21)
To conclude, the happenings over the past forty years are a huge reflection of the
happenings of the 19th and early 20th century, the effects of the domination of the
British are still prominent in the lives of the Irish and these effects still resonate
enough with people like Brian Friel that there is almost an inability to not question
or ask people to question it. As a born and bred Irish man, brought up on the
knowledge of the injustice towards to the Irish; who lived through the Irish Civil war,
the establishment of the Republic of Ireland, Bloody Sunday, the beginning and the
whole journey of the Troubles, his plays actively reflect the influence all of this had
on his life and his writings; the Troubles became almost a muse for his writings.

References
Friel, B. (1981) Translations. 70th edn. London: Faber & Faber Plays.
Friel, B. (1990) Dancing at Lughnasa. London: Faber & Faber Plays.
Bernard Patrick Friel facts (1993) Available at:
http://biography.yourdictionary.com/bernard-patrick-friel (Accessed: 25 April 2016).
OToole, F. (2015) Fintan OToole: The truth according to Brian Friel. Available at:
http://www.irishtimes.com/culture/brian-friel/fintan-o-toole-the-truth-according-tobrian-friel-1.2375988 (Accessed: 25 April 2016)

Bibliography
How is the play translations by Brian Friel about language? (2013) Available at:
http://www.enotes.com/homework-help/how-play-translations-by-brian-friel-about451975 (Accessed: 25 April 2016).

Brian Friel, Translations (2011) Available at:

https://thatfaintlight.wordpress.com/2011/12/03/brian-friel-translations/ (Accessed: 25
April 2016)

2016, D.C. (2014) Theatre review: Translations at Sheffield crucible. Available at:
http://www.britishtheatreguide.info/reviews/translations-sheffield-cruci-9895
(Accessed: 25 April 2016).

BBC (2010) History - the troubles. Available at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/troubles

(Accessed: 25 April 2016).

Fionn, A.S. (2015) The Long Shadow of the human proxy bomb. Available at:
https://ansionnachfionn.com/2015/10/24/the-long-shadow-of-the-human-proxy-bomb/
(Accessed: 25 April 2016).

Hayes, T. "Brian Friel and the Conflict in Northern Ireland: How the Troubles Have
Shaped the Playwright and Informed his Plays." The Review: A Journal of
Undergraduate Student Research 1 (1997): 22-36. Web. [Acessed 25 April 2016].