Brian Friel in Conversation

English

Series: Theater: Theory/Text/Performance Ser.

ISBN: 0472067109

EAN: 9780472067107

Category: Performing Arts / General

Publisher: University of Michigan Press

Release Date: 01/31/2000

Synopsis: The reluctance of contemporary Irish playwright Brian Friel to speak with the press is legendary. Fortunately, his willingness on occasion to grant interviews has fortuitously coincided with the productions of his pivotal works, including the highly celebratedDancing at Lughnasa, recently released as a motion picture starring Meryl Streep. In this comprehensive volume, theater critic and scholar Paul Delaney gathers an amazingly broad and consistently engaging range of Friels conversations with interviewers on both sides of the Atlantic. Friel talks with disarming openness about his own life. He is also surprisingly candid in decrying a dehydration of humanity in Pinter and an abnegation of life in Beckett, in pondering the dangers of Irish writers who are having to use a language that isnt our own, in revealing that his plays grow out of a willingness to delve into a particular corner of yourself thats dark and uneasy, and in talking about the way thatDancing at Lughnasamanifests his sense of a need for the pagan in life. Friel has preferred to talk primarily with Irish interviewers throughout much of his career, and many of his most important interviews were printed in rather obscure publications.Brian Friel in Conversationmakes available interviews that were formally virtually inaccessible, as well as more recent interviews in places such as theNew York Times, Vanity Fair, andVogue. The book concludes with an extensive bibliography and discography of Friel interviews to aid further reading and research. Paul Delaney is Professor of English, Westmont College. He is the author ofTom Stoppard: The Moral Vision of the Major Playsand editor ofTom Stoppard in Conversation, a collection of interviews.

Excerpt: Unknown Property Excerpt

Brian Friel in Conversation

Illustrated: Yes

Format: Paperback

Height: 1.15 inches

Width: 6.0 inches

Length: 9.0 inches

Weight: 17.95 oz

Pages: 312