Brian Friel
Brian Patrick Friel (9 January 1929 – 2 October 2015) was an Irish playwright and short story writer, and the founder of the Field Day Theatre Company. He is considered one of the greatest writers in the English language and has been called the "Irish Chekhov" for his clear, realistic dramas about Irish life.
His best-known plays include Philadelphia, Here I Come! (1964), Faith Healer (1979), Translations (1980), and Dancing at Lughnasa (1990). Dancing at Lughnasa won the Tony Award for Best Play in 1992 and was later made into a film starring Meryl Streep. Earlier works such as The Loves of Cass McGuire and Lovers were also successful in Ireland and abroad. Translations is notable for its focus on language and culture during a time of change in Ireland.
In 1980 Friel helped start Field Day, a theatre group that worked with Seamus Heaney, who later won the Nobel Prize in Literature. Friel’s plays often explore family life and history, and many are set in the imaginary Ballybeg, a small town used in many of his works.
Friel received many honors. He was nominated for several Tony Awards, won the Tony for Dancing at Lughnasa, and received other prizes including the Olivier Award and the New York Drama Critics Circle Award. In 2006 he was made a Saoi of Aosdána, a high honor in Irish arts.
Born in Knockmoyle, Northern Ireland, Friel grew up in Derry and Donegal. He studied at St Columb’s College and Maynooth University, trained as a teacher, and worked as a maths teacher before deciding to write full-time in the 1960s. He lived in Derry, Muff, and Greencastle in Donegal, where Ballybeg often appears as his fictional setting.
Politically, he served in Seanad Éireann (the Irish Senate) as an independent from 1987 to 1989, after being nominated by the Taoiseach. He died in Greencastle after a long illness, leaving a wife, Anne Morrison, and five children.
This page was last edited on 3 February 2026, at 21:10 (CET).