Terzieff’s last role was as Philoctète, in the eponymous play after Sophocles by the poet Jean-Pierre Simeon the figure of the wounded Greek warrior had also inspired poet Seamus Heaney, a close lifelong friend of Friel’s, who wrote The Cure at Troy for Field Day in 1990. Laurent Terzieff (1935-2010), who died only a few months later in July 2010, 4 4 On that night, the conversation between the two men, as well as the heartfelt tribute Terzieff paid Friel before reading an extract from Molly Sweeney, demonstrated eloquently the close personal, aesthetic and spiritual bond between two men whose dedication to the art of the theatre was absolute and quasi-mystical. When approached to open the event, Terzieff had immediately agreed and said he deemed it an honour to be able to express publicly his admiration for the Irish playwright with whom he shared a passion for Anton Chekhov. On 4 June, the proceedings were launched by Laurent Terzieff himself. Twelve of his translations have been published so far. 2 2Īlain Delahaye has translated most of Brian Friel’s plays into French and over the years became the playwright’s official and exclusive translator for France. In Paris, the tribute coincided with the launch of the translations into French by Alain Delahaye of seven of the playwright’s works by publisher L’avant-scène theatre. accessed 10 November 2019 accessed 10 November 2019. The 80-year old playwright attended both occasions. In June 2009, the Irish Cultural Centre in Paris hosted an event entitled “A Feast of Friel,” in partnership with the McGill Summer School, which had organized a tribute to the playwright in June 2008 in Glenties, the real-world model for his fictional Ballybeg. The emergence of Brian Friel’s work in France is closely linked to Laurent Terzieff, a major figure of French theatre, universally respected and admired by the profession. My focus in this article will be, first, on the association between Brian Friel and the late great French actor and director Laurent Terzieff, who introduced French theatre professionals and audiences to Friel and secondly on Dancing at Lughnasa, the play that has been most often performed on French stages, with specific reference to productions twenty years apart by two women directors, Irina Brook (1999) and Gaëlle Bourgeois (2019 Bourgeois, Gaëlle. Its aim is to progressively document the history of productions of plays by Friel in France, to identify what draws French directors to them and see what French critics and audiences make of them. This research is part of a larger project on the translation, adaptation and reception of Brian Friel in France. My concern in this article is with French-language productions and audiences. Many plays have also been widely translated into a whole range of languages, leading to numerous productions worldwide. Ever since Philadelphia Here I Come! became the hit of the 1964 Dublin Theatre Festival, most of his works have been performed not only in Dublin and throughout Ireland but also in London, the United States and further afield.
The success of Brian Friel’s drama on stage in the English-speaking world is beyond dispute. Her most recent publications, as co-editor, are Ireland: Authority and Crisis (2015), with Carine Berbéri, and “La Crise? Quelle crise?/Crisis? What Crisis?” a special issue of Études Irlandaises (Winter 2015), with Valérie Peyronel. She has also written the prefaces of the eleven translations into French of Brian Friel's plays by Alain Delahaye, published by L'avant-scène théâtre (2009-2010). Local and Global Perspectives, edited by Nicholas Grene and Patrick Lonergan (2012) and Adapting Chekhov. She has written widely on Brian Friel, Field Day and on contemporary Irish and Northern Irish theatre, with contributions to The Cambridge Companion to Brian Friel, edited by Anthony Roche (2006) Irish Literature Since 1990: Diverse Voices, edited by Michael Parker and Scott Brewster (2009) Irish Drama. She is the author of Le Théâtre de Brian Friel. Phil in Anglo-Irish Literature from Trinity College and a PhD from the University of Rennes. Senior lecturer in English and Irish Studies at the University of Tours, France.