Brian Friel's Transformation from Short Fiction Writer to Dramatist

• Published in: Comparative drama Vol. 46; no. 4; pp. 451 - 474
• Main Author: Russell, Richard Rankin
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Kalamazoo, Mich Comparative Drama, Department of English, Western Michigan University 01.12.2012; Western Michigan University; Comparative Drama; Western Michigan University, Department of English
• Subjects: Audiences; Authors; Biography; British & Irish literature; Drama; Dramatists; Essays; Fiction; Friel, Brian; Friel, Brian (British playwright); Heaney, Seamus; Influences; Irish drama; Irish literature; Irish politics; Playwriting; Politics; Radio; Radio plays; Short stories; Theater; Theater companies; Theater history; Theatrical genres; Transitions; Writers; Writing; United Kingdom; United Kingdom > UK; Northern Ireland
• ISSN: 0010-4078; 1936-1637; 1936-1637
• DOI: 10.1353/cdr.2012.0038

The author examines reasons for Irish writer Brian Friel's transition from short fiction and drama to solely writing drama by the end of the 1960s. Reasons for Friel's commitment to drama include Friel's experimentation with other genres such as radio drama and journalism, which may have helped him realize that he was better suited for a more fluid, experimental genre than short fiction, and his realization-expressed in his major essays on theater-that only drama, with its ability to enchant audiences, would allow him to depict his consistent theme of flux while also appealing to a potential community within the theater. Finally, Friel's interest in politics almost ineluctably kept him in the dramatic arena as the conflict in Northern Ireland lengthened and deepened through the 1970s and 1980s. Russell concludes with an assessment of the role of the Field Day Theatre Company, which enabled Friel to offer an exciting, fluid alternative on the stage to the hidebound, binary politics of Northern Ireland that provided both a model of communal interrogation and tentative articulation of deep-seated political, religious, and cultural problems that might augur a less divided society in the future.