Remembering Brian Friel - An evening of tribute in the Embassy, 28 January 2016.

On 28 January, the Embassy hosted an evening of tribute to the acclaimed playwright Brian Friel who sadly passed away on 2 October 2015. Ambassador Collins was joined by Marcel Kohler of the Deutsches Theater in Berlin and Maurice Fitzpatrick, filmmaker and lecturer at the University of Köln. Marcel is playing Arkady in the Deutsches Theater’s highly successful production of “Väter und Söhne”, Friel’s interpretation for the stage of Turgenev’s “Fathers and Sons”. Marcel outlined the steps which actors and directors take when performing Friel’s play, including its silence, distance, humour and sadness. Maurice spoke about “Translations”, Friel’s work with the Field Day Theatre Company and the cultural space which he helped to create in Derry. Warm tributes were also read out from Professor Dermot McElholm of the Beuth University of Applied Sciences and Per H. Lauke of the Per H. Lauke Verlag publishing house. Professor McElholm, a former pupil of Brian Friel’s at St. Patrick’s primary school in Derry, remembered that the dramatist made a “profound impression, not just as a teacher but as a person”. Per H. Lauke represents the rights for Friel’s plays in the German-speaking world. Noting that we have lost a “world-class author and a fantastic human being”, Per H. Lauke added that Friel “decisively influenced the international theatrical landscape with his poetic, and partly, surreal style and his ingenuity in linking word and meaning intelligently”.

Brian Friel has left us with a unique literary legacy including a vast contribution to the “theatre of memory”. His plays have been performed all over Germany where he is best known for “Dancing at Lughnasa” (“Leben ein Tanz”); “Philadelphia, Here I Come!” (“Ich komme, Philadelphia”) and “Translations” (“Sprachstörungen”). In addition to his writing, Friel co-founded the Field Day Theatre Company in 1980 in Derry. He served in the Seanad from 1987 to 1989, and was a golden torc recipient. The torc represents election as Saoi, or ‘wise one’, the highest honour bestowed to members of Aosdána, the peer-nominated, affiliation of creative artists in Ireland. Ní bheidh a leithéid ann arís (we shall not see his like again).

Image courtesy of the Bobbie Hanvey Photographic Archives, John J. Burns Library, Boston College.