The Lughnasa International Friel Festival will cross the Irish border with events in both County Donegal in Republic of Ireland and Belfast in Northern Ireland.
The Festival will feature a major production each year of one of Brian Friel's plays presented in both Festival locations. This year, Annabelle Comyn will direct Dancing at Lughnasa for performances at Donegal and Belfast.
This year's Festival will begin with a journey across the Foyle estuary from Magilligan to Greencastle, Co Donegal, where Brian Friel lives, launching four days of events and performances that evoke the relationship between the writer and the place.
These include a lecture from Fintan O’Toole at The Guildhall Derry, the setting for Friel’s play Freedom of the City, introduced by Gary McKeone, to whom Brian Friel dedicated his final play The Home Place.
The second leg of the festival in Belfast will feature a variety of events, many of them free, including classical and traditional music, five open air stages for dancing, a harvest food festival, Belfast’s first ever kite flying festival and Amongst Women, an all-women talks programme curated by Deputy Artistic Director Liam Browne featuring Shami Chakrabarti, Director of UK Liberty, Kamila Shamsie, Pakistani novelist and commentator, Kathy Lette, comedian and author, Ahdaf Soueif, Egyptian novelist and political and cultural commentator, and Sandi Toksvig, writer, presenter, comedian and politician.
Brian Friel said, "if you want a festival that is tame and conventional and mildly entertaining don't ask Sean Doran to organise it. Witness his Beckett Festival in Enniskillen—it is wild and imaginative and creative and riveting. I have total confidence he'll do the same with the Friel Festival."
The Lughnasa International Friel Festival will run from 20 to 31 August 2015.