“Is the play about this?”

Is the play about this?

This note towards Dancing at Lughnasa (1990) is an example of Brian Friel’s habit of asking himself questions as part of his composition process.

The Creative Process

Robbie Blake's blue notebook, 8

In this page from Robbie Blake’s project notebooks, Robbie sets out the aims and methodology of a week of workshops and rehearsals at Dance House in August 2020. They also make a note to ask Zosia Kuczyńska to record some monologues from Brian Friel’s Dancing at Lughnasa (1990) as a tool for generating material.

Lámhscríbhinn Ghaolmhar

should grow in joyousness

This note towards Dancing at Lughnasa (1990) dated 30 May 1989 contains a phrase that performance-maker Robbie Blake adapted for use as a direction for their piece ‘Running the Ending’.

Portrait: Marion Cronin

Marion Cronin is a dance artist based in Dublin, Ireland.

The Creative Process

Belfast Book Festival Trailer

A key phase in the development of ‘Don’t anticipate the ending’ was the showcasing of work-in-progress. This is a trailer for an illustrated talk at the Belfast Book Festival 2019, during which Friel scholar Zosia Kuczynska spoke about the process of creating new work by Jessie Keenan and Robbie Blake from creative encounters with the Brian Friel Papers. Keenan and Blake then performed early versions of ‘So what is surfacing’ and ‘Running the ending’ respectively. This trailer uses material from the first full recordings of Robbie Blake’s ‘Running the ending’, filmed in and around the UCD Humanities Institute in May 2019.

“At least it is a starting point. And all starting points are arbitrary – and then become an essence.” – Brian Friel