Translations

 By Brian Friel
Director TBA
Longstreet Theatre

In Translations, playwright Brian Friel (Dancing at Lughnasa) explores the troubled lives of those caught in a profoundly complicated, shifting political and cultural landscape — a world where the very foundations of language and society are shifting to something unknown and troubling. While that may seem like a description of our world today, the dramatic events of this story take place in the mid-nineteenth century, as England attempts to end generations of bloodshed with Ireland by forcing standardized English as the official language. Widely considered one of Friel’s greatest works, Translations is at once a haunting and heartfelt look at how the lives, loves and traditions of a people are irreversibly altered by a collision of cultures.

“A basic fluency in the workings of the human heart is all that’s necessary to absorb the beauties of Mr. Friel’s tender, sad and funny play about the difficulty of finding a home in the world, a person to share it with, and a name to call it by.” — The New York Times