Translations 2022 Programme

Image credit: Christopher Heaney

CREDITS

Owen Leonard Buckley

Maire Zara Devlin

Doalty

Andy Doherty

Hugh Brian Doherty

Bridget

Holly Hannaway

Jimmy Jack Ronan Leahy

Lieutenant Yolland

Aidan Moriarty

Manus Marty Rea

Sarah Suzie Seweify

Captain Lancey Howard Teale

Writer Brian Friel

Director

Set Design

Costume Design

Caitríona McLaughlin

Joanna Parker

Catherine Fay

Lighting Design Paul Keogan

Sound Design

Movement Director

Carl Kennedy

Sue Mythen

Voice Director (Abbey) Andrea Ainsworth

Casting Director (Abbey) Sarah Jones

Casting Director (Lyric)

Assistant Director

Design Associate

Musical Direction

Clare Gault

Laura Sheeran

Rebecca Looring Van Beeck

Carl Kennedy and Laura Sheeran

Voice Zara Devlin

Suzie Seweify

Holly Hannaway

Violin/Viola

Voice, Harmonium, Musical Saw

Flute

Cora Venus Lunny

Laura Sheeran

Ellen Cranitch

Uilleann Pipes Éamonn Galldubh

Cello

Jane Hughes

Bodhrán and Percussion Robbie Harris

Piano, Mandolin

Carl Kennedy

Producer (Abbey) Jen Coppinger

Producer (Lyric) Morag Keating

Production Manager (Abbey) Andy Keogh

Production Manager (Lyric) Siobhán Barbour

Head of Production (Lyric) Adrian Mullan

Company Stage Manager Bronagh Doherty

Deputy Stage Manager (Lyric) Louise Graham

Deputy Stage Manager (Abbey) Roxzan Bowes

Assistant Stage Manager Jennifer Aust

Costume Supervisor Eimear Farrell

Costume Supervisor (Lyric) Gillian Lennox

Deputy Costume Supervisor (Lyric) Erin Charteris

THANK YOU

Farah Elle, Conor Hanratty, Diarmuid de Faoite and Bríd Treasa Wyndham

Costume Makers Denise Assas, Molly Brown, Cora Fashions, Sandra Gibney, Marian Kelly, Laura Kinsella Jim Wallace

Company Manager (Abbey) Danny Erskine

Company Manager (Lyric) Aimee Yates

Hair & Make Up (Abbey) Leonard Daly

Hair & Make Up (Lyric) Nuala Campbell, Connie McGrath, Sophie Watson

Chief LX Jonathan Daley

LX programmer Conal Clapper

Set Construction Druid Theatre Company

Scenic Carpenters Richard Curwood, Gus Dewar, Courtenay Drakos, Michael Edgar, Shannon Light, Keith Newman, Tony Reid

Lead Scenic Artist Rachel Towey

Scenic Artists Bev Craig, Rohnwyn Hayes, Stuart Marshall

Stage Technicians (Abbey) TJ Lynn and Martin Reid

Stage Technicians (Lyric) Debbie Branson, Patrick Freeman, Annmarie Langan, Gerard McCorry, Ian Vennard, Adrian Wall, Corentin West

Properties Eimer Murphy, Marykerin Naughton and Adam O’Connell

Artwork Photography Christopher Heaney

Production Photography Ros Kavanagh

Irish Sign Language Interpreter Amanda Coogan

British Sign Language Interpreter Kristina Laverty

Audio Description Kate Ingram

Captioning Michael Poyner

Co-Directors (Abbey) Caitríona McLaughlin

Mark O’Brien

Executive Producer (Lyric) Jimmy Fay

ABBEY THEATRE LYRIC THEATRE

Great plays have space in them for everyone because not only are they about our shared humanity, they are also about a specific lived experience. Arguably Friel’s greatest play, Translations contains within its capacious yet precise contours the space to feel and therefore to see and hear ourselves in the interior lives of his characters. He invites us into a hallowed world that is alive with possibility, a world on the cusp of momentous change. As Joyce said: In the particular is contained the universal.

Translations couldn’t be more particular in its setting, and through the characters we experience love, fear, pain, desire, ownership, powerlessness, rage, isolation, loneliness, joy and confusion; a dizzying spectrum of human emotions. It is the richness of the internal lives of these characters that make this play such a gift to actors. As a director it is what has haunted me since I first came across it 25 years ago. It is in the layering of understanding, the specificity of languages – both spoken and sublimated - and in the profundity of what is being communicated, moment by moment, not only between the characters within the story but also between the playwright and his audience. This complexity inside the text has been the locus of my approach as director. It has been our starting point, our lodestar, and our compass in the rehearsal room.

2022 marks the centenary of partition on this island. Politically and socially, we are in the process of reframing our relationship with Europe and the UK, negotiating self-determination within a framework of collaborative cooperation. However, even as I write, oppressed peoples across the globe are being invaded, eroded and erased by neighbouring states with imperial imperatives, keen on regime change and on the removal of national and cultural identity. The importance of our language, of representation and identity, so central to how we see ourselves in the world, is again both urgent and necessary. Great plays constantly find fresh resonances.

My relationship to the play, and my desire to direct it as part of my first season stems from both of these places; its wider socio-political context and the space it creates for reflection and interpretation inside each of us. Of course, as a Donegal native I also feel that the play is about me. I see myself as of these people Friel is exploring, and recognise the external world as much as I identify with the internal world. But again, perhaps this is part of Friel’s mastery; he makes one feel he is writing about each of us individually and specifically, and each of us find versions of ourselves within that hedge school. So, to be making this work in collaboration with the Lyric Theatre in Belfast, and with Jimmy Fay and his team, is very significant. Artists have always led the way in helping us understand the world we live in and our place in it. Every time we revisit a great work like this we have an opportunity to check in, adjust our thinking, and to question our assumptions. We think we know these plays, and yet they continue to surprise us. The questions and provocations within Translations are particularly live and current in 2022. As in 1833, when the play is set, it feels as if once again we are on the cusp of change, perhaps even the early stages of a new world order, both on this island and beyond it. If this is true we have choices to make; do we adapt or resist? The experience of engaging with this play right now is an opportunity for each of us to reflect on that choice.

“Urbs antiqua fuit-there was an ancient city …”

Caitríona McLaughlin Director, Translations / Artistic Director Abbey Theatre

I am delighted we are again in partnership with the Abbey Theatre on our co-production of Brian Friel’s Translations.

Brian Friel created unforgettable and vivid theatre, and his work transcends our entire cultural landscape. Translations is an essential theatrical work and one of Brian’s masterpieces. Its original Field Day production is one of legend, starring as it did Stephen Rea and Liam Neeson.

Just as he had with the Abbey in Dublin, Brian had a long and warm relationship with the Lyric Theatre here in Belfast over the decades. There have been about 25 different productions of a Friel play on the Lyric stage over the past fifty-odd years. One of Liam Neeson’s first acting jobs was in the Lyric production of Friel’s The Loves of Cass Maguire In recent history, we produced Molly Sweeney (2014), Dancing at Lughnasa (2015) and Lovers (2018), and we are delighted to continue this journey with our partners, the Abbey Theatre.

When Brian Friel opened the new Lyric Theatre in April 2011, he said building it was an act of faith in our community. That the playhouse was for our community and that if they also kept faith with us, the theatre would lead them to the land of mystery and spirit.

Translations is a play that explores that complex terrain of our history and the contours of our language with the unflinching detail of a cartographer. In this mountainous landscape of peaty, acidic soil cut raw by the Atlantic gales and dire and inflicted poverty, an attempt is made to map the desolation with military precision aided by theodolites, chains and plain facts. But this mapping ignores that mysterious fourth dimension where the landscape enters our soul, fragmented and populated by the ancient tales of our imaginations, the conflicts and loves of our desires and aspirations. This mysterious landscape extends deep into our spirits, mapping us in a more authentic way than the outwardly measurable. It is why we need theatre and art. So we can constantly re-imagine, question, create. Ourselves, our identity, our surroundings. It makes us who we are, everchanging.

Translations is a play that I have been hoping to stage here ever since I was appointed as Executive Producer at the Lyric eight years ago. It feels fitting that we are presenting it now in the significant year of 2022, 100 years after partition, with the shadow of Brexit creating new boundaries and forcing us to examine our cultural landscape and identity.

In the supremely talented hands of Donegal native and Abbey artistic director Caitríona McLaughlin, the director and her team and cast, this feels like a very special show.

I hope you enjoy it. Thank you,

Jimmy Fay Executive Producer Lyric Theatre

STEPHEN REA (CO-FOUNDER OF FIELD DAY THEATRE COMPANY)

TALKS TO DR MARK PHELAN (QUB DRAMA, LYRIC BOARD) ABOUT THE FIRST PRODUCTION OF TRANSLATIONS IN 1980 AT THE GUILDHALL IN DERRY.

Dr. Mark Phelan (MP) Translations was the inaugural production of Field Day in 1980, by which time, the North seemed mired in a military stalemate and an overwhelming sense of political paralysis. Against this backdrop, what role did you and Brian - and Field Day as a whole - believe theatre could play in this period of crisis?

Stephen Rea (SR) Everything starts with instinct rather than intellectual purpose. Eventually, the purpose emerges. Simply, I knew that I could get some money from the Arts Council and I phoned Brian and went to Muff in Donegal where he lived at the time, and asked would he write a play and we could put it on, hopefully in Derry. He was immediately very positive and said he was working on a play. It turned out to be Translations – perhaps his greatest play – and certainly the most pertinent to the situation that we were in, in terms of language and its destruction. The people in Derry – especially a guy called Kevin McCall – were passionate that we would come and do it in Derry. That’s how the shape of it emerged, and it became clear that what we were calling Field Day would become more than just the one production which is all we had reckoned on. But then we gathered up Seamus Heaney and Seamus Deane, Davy Hammond and Tom Paulin and Kilroywe had a group of intellects that you couldn’t ignore. So we ended up with a whole programme for Field Day, and we ended up doing three plays in a row – including Brian’s translation of Three Sisters and The Communication Cord, which was a comment on the response to Translations. We very quickly took on an identity. We opened in Derry, but we toured all over Ireland, and that gave us our identity as much as anything. Although the response was often very different in places, we were determined that people would hear the same things everywhere in the country.

MP It was a conscious decision to be situated in Derry, rather than mere convenience of Brian being over the border- from the outset you had a clear political commitment to the city, but also for the play - and Field Day - to have something to say. But why did you believe theatre was the best forum for this type of debate and challenge?

SR Theatre is more often a saner forum for political debate because theatre asks questions – it doesn’t necessarily always answer them – but it provokes questions for audiences. The discrimination against Catholics in Derry at the time had not quite come to an end, but there was now a nationalist majority in the Council,

so after years of Catholics not being allowed anywhere near the Guildhall, they were now in charge of it and that was where we were asked to stage the play: to perform it in the Guildhall, and that was a statement. I will say, and I always mention this, that the Mayor of Derry at that time was Marlene Jefferson, a Unionist. She initiated a standing ovation for us at the end of the opening night. I loved Marlene Jefferson, she was a lovely person. I went and thanked her, she did so much for us at that time. And she said, ‘Stephen, all I care about is Derry.’ She was the perfect Mayor. And the audience is the context for the play. You’re not doing it for a nice middle-class audience, you’re doing it for people, some of whom have probably never been in a theatre before…

MP Or into the Guildhall even…

SR Exactly. And it was a defiance of the traditional identity of the Guildhall that we were there. I don’t mean that we were attempting to be offensive, but those stained glass windows were depicting a different culture – a culture that had replaced Gaelic culture – and the play deals with these historical identities, and

Field Day Theatre Company (L-R):

Back Row: Ray McAnally, Stephen Rea, Magdalena Rubalcava, Liam Neeson, Bo Barton, Jonathan Tait, Shaun Scott. Middle Row: Brian Friel, Mary Friel, Ann Hasson, Roy Hanlon, Margo Harkin, Finola O’Doherty, Brenda Scallon.

Front Row: Art O Briain, Mick Lally, Nuala Hayes, Paddy Woodworth, David Heap.

so there were a lot of questions for anyone who wanted to see them answered. To be honest, I have never since seen a play that had such a perfect context. I saw the production in the National Theatre London a couple of years ago. Ciarán Hinds was superb in it, and Judith Roddy, they were all fantastic. But nothing will ever better the context of the Guildhall on that opening night.

MP It was such a serendipitously symbolic setting in so many ways. Didn’t you first meet Brian with Freedom of the City (1973) which is set in the Guildhall, and here you are several years later actually inside the Guildhall, staging a play in a city that was a crucible of the civil rights movement and cut off from its natural hinterland of Donegal outside those stained glass windows where the play was notionally set, with a mayor who was in post because of a powersharing agreement with the nationalist majority of the council- a precursor to what we have now, politically speaking. It seemed an extraordinary convergence of politics and place and theatre.

SR Derry is a very particular place, and I must say I love working there any time that I have. When I worked there with Sam Shepherd, in the last play he wrote, A Particle of Dread, he loved it and he walked the walls all the time. It infiltrated his view of the play. The historical reality of Derry always impacted on the theatre that you did in it.

MP Going back to your remembrance of rehearsing the play, did you have a sense of the significance of the production – that you were ‘making history’ so to speak?

SR I was in London when Brian was writing the play, and he sent it to me act by act. I got the first act, and I knew that it was a great play – of course I did. Sometimes you can tell immediately. I just wrote back, Bloody wonderful. Or I tried phoning him – It was the times when you couldn’t get through to Donegal. It was a glorious time to be working on a play that was unquestionably great. Every line of it was absolutely superb, and it opened up a glorious dialogue with ourselves…

MP And this dialogue wasn’t just limited to this play but was key to the work of Field Day with other productions, pamphlets and publications over the next decade which transformed critical and cultural debates and politics, history, and identity here.

SR Well, we had this unique constellation of people; we were committed; we wanted to challenge entrenched establishment views, and, invariably, this led to a reaction. I mean when Translations opened it was greeted as a landmark production, but later all sorts of attacks evolved as to the play being some kind of republican stalking horse. Some of these questioned the historical accuracy of the play in terms of the Ordnance Survey or the classical education of English officers, and others outrageously suggested that the Irish gave up the Irish language willingly. But the truth is, they didn’t give it up willingly. And as Maire in the play says, I need to learn English because I’m going to America. I can’t get work here, I have to go to America. Plain, social analysis. That was what people were forced to do.

Translations -Friel below stage

MP From the perspective of the present day, the vitriol of these criticisms as part of the debates in the 1980s is worth recalling even if it is hard to comprehend how vicious these critical and literary “canon-balls” were. It still shocks me today to read how Colm Tóibín said, “it was hard not to feel that Field Day had become the literary wing of the IRA.”

SR The outrageousness of that claim should have been obvious to everyone, especially looking back at that body of work Field Day produced for the stagestarting with Translations, which has most recently been produced twice by the National Theatre London, and which has played all over world precisely because its reflections on language and identity resonate in so many societies dealing with the consequence of colonialism and conflict. And to counter that, especially as the terrible scenes are unfolding in Palestine over Easter as we speak, I can’t but help remember how the late, great scholar Edward Said expressed how he wished the Palestinians had their own Field Day, because he knew that what we were about was the working through of ideas rather than violence as the way forward.

MP Field Day were fundamentally always about language and place, and those roles and relations between them. What kind of political charge do you think Translations has in post-Brexit Ireland for audiences in Dublin, Belfast, and Donegal?

SR Well, Big Hugh says, we tend to overlook your country. And that is absolutely true. Before the conquest, Ireland didn’t bother with England, and this is what has happened now – Ireland has chosen to overlook England. They are quite happy to do a deal with them about things but, the truth is, we’re Europeans. I feel ok about that, I do not feel locked into a provincial mindset looking towards London.

MP The play is written in English and so there is an ambiguity and a complexity to the play that doesn’t allow for any simple green/orange reading of the play or to see this Irish-speaking Ireland as some utopian idyll. It’s a play with a society on the cusp of catastrophe, in the shadow of the Famine, with characters who are maimed or mute, or senile or stocious throughout the play. Even when Yolland rhapsodizes about the place being like a paradise, he is castigated –‘The first hot summer in 50 years and you think it’s Eden”. It seems a profoundly anti-romantic play?

SR What you also have to realize is that this is post-Conquest period, whether you like it or not. This is after the Plantation, with Hugh O’Neill and O’Donnell all skedaddled; they had to, and with them, the absolute certainty of the Gaelic civilization. This was done so the Elizabethans could have ownership. This was when the forests were cut down, forcing everybody to look towards London, and that was what ‘surrender and re-grant’ was all about. They left a people who had been farm dwellers and who were Gaelic speakers in a state of confusion. Jimmy Jack is in a state of confusion – he doesn’t know where he is. Maire knows she is going to America to rediscover a life, because she cannot eke out a life here. It is deliberately blind to not see these elements in the play. I have recently finished a series last year called The English about the destruction of the native Americans. It’s the same story. Those white Europeans treated the indigenous people the same wherever they went. And what we have here is a very beautiful play about the end of something.

MP It’s an ending surely, but it’s also the beginning of something too? Here we are, all looking and listening to the legacy of this history - in English - and reflecting on who we are and how we got here.

SR Yes – but this is important. In terms of Irish culture, it has never been more healthy than it is at the moment. That’s what I see – the music, the language, the poetry. In both languages, absolutely sensational. It’s a very smart play. This isn’t a history play about the past, it’s about today, here and now.

PHOTOS IN INTERVIEW © FIELDDAY.IE

Nuala Hayes and Liam Neeson Translations by Brian Friel, Field Day, 1980.

BRIAN FRIEL

(9 January 1929 – 2 October 2015) Writer

Brian Friel is widely regarded as one of Ireland’s greatest dramatists, having written over 30 plays across six decades. He was a member of Aosdana, the society of Irish artists, the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Irish Academy of Letters, and the Royal Society of Literature where he was made a Companion of Literature. He was awarded the Ulysses Medal by University College, Dublin.

Plays include Hedda Gabler (after Ibsen), The Home Place, Performances, Three Plays After (Afterplay, The Bear, The Yalta Game), Uncle Vanya (after Chekhov), Give Me Your Answer Do!, Molly Sweeney (Winner of the New York Drama Critics Circle Award for Best Foreign Play), Wonderful Tennessee, A Month in the Country (after Turgenev), The London Vertigo (after Charles Macklin), Dancing at Lughnasa (Winner of 3 Tony Awards including Best Play, New York Drama Critics Circle Award for Best Play, Olivier Award for Best Play), Making History, The Communication Cord, American Welcome, Three Sisters (after Chekhov), Translations, Aristocrats (Winner of the Evening Standard Award for Best Play and New York Drama Critics Circle Award for Best Foreign Play), Faith Healer, Fathers and Sons, Living Quarters, Volunteers, The Freedom of the City, The Gentle Island, The Mundy Scheme, Crystal and Fox, Lovers: Winners and Losers, The Loves of Cass Maguire, Philadelphia Here I Come!

Image by Bobbie Hanvey

ABBEY THEATRE ARCHIVE

1997 Give Me your answer, do!

Poster for the world premiere.

Raymond Hardie, Eamon Morrissey and Angela Newman in a scene from The Freedom of the City by Brian Friel, Abbey Theatre, 1973.

Photo: Fergus Bourke

Volunteers by Brian Friel, Abbey Theatre, 1975.

Photo: Fergus Bourke

Niall O Brien, Stephen Rea and Kate Flynn in the world premiere of Aristocrats by Brian Friel, Abbey Theatre, 1979.

Photo: Fergus Bourke

LYRIC THEATRE ARCHIVE

This production of Translations marks 25 Brian Friel Productions being staged at the Lyric Theatre in Belfast spanning 5 decades. Here is a snapshot of some of those productions across the years.

Lovers was the first Brian Friel play in the ‘new’ Lyric Theatre on Ridgeway Street in 1970.

Crystal and Fox by Brian Friel with Louis Rolston as Fox Melarkey, 1980

Lovers by Brian Friel was produced again in 2018 in our 50th anniversary year, directed to great acclaim by Emma Jordan, who was nominated for a UK Theatre Award for the production. [pictured: Ruby Campbell]

A young Liam Neeson and Doreen Hepburn in The Loves of Cass McGuire by Brian Friel, 1976

Philadelphia Here I Come by Brian Friel, Directed by Andrew Flynn, 2014 [pictured Peter Coonan and Susan Davey]

Dancing at Lughnasa by Brian Friel directed by Conall Morrison, 1996

CAITRÍONA MCLAUGHLIN Director

Caitríona is the Artistic Director of the Abbey Theatre. She was born in Donegal and studied science at the University of Ulster before moving into theatre. She was Associate Director at the Abbey Theatre from 2017-2020, where her productions included: The Great Hunger by Patrick Kavanagh (with Conall Morrison); Citysong by Dylan Coburn Gray (ITTA nomination Best New Play); On Raftery’s Hill by Marina Carr, (for which she won Best Director at the 2019 ITTA); and Two Pints by Roddy Doyle, which toured widely in Ireland and the USA. She also worked with theatre and opera companies on both sides of the border, including Wexford Opera, HotForTheatre, INO, The Local Group, and Landmark, and she was the director on O’Casey in the Estate, a TV documentary shown on RTÉ. Prior to moving into directing, with Patrick McCabe’s Frank Pig Says Hello at the Finborough Theatre in London in 2003, Caitríona worked as a drama facilitator in Northern Ireland, working with young people and in conflict resolution. In London, she directed numerous productions, focusing primarily on new writing, and collaborated with the Royal Court in sourcing and developing a new theatre space. She was awarded a Clore Fellowship in 2007 and subsequently spent six summers with LAByrinth Theatre Company in New York developing new plays for Artistic Directors John Ortiz and the late Philip Seymour Hoffman, at their Summer Intensive. During this time

Caitríona also directed a number of plays in New York including Killers and other Family (part of the OBIE awardwinning Hilltown Plays) and plays at Atlantic Theatre, Rattlestick, and Bard Summerscape.

JOANNA PARKER Set Design

Joanna designs sets and costumes for theatre, opera and dance. Based in London, she works nationally and internationally. Theatre designs: Zoe’s Peculiar Journey Through Time (Burgtheater/ Theatre Rites); Much Ado About Nothing (Globe); iGirl, Walls and Windows, On Rafferty’s Hill (Abbey Theatre); The Noise of Time (Complicité, Lincoln Center New York and world tour); Le Misanthrope, American Buffalo (Young Vic); After Darwin (Hampstead); The Sarajevo Story (Lyric Hammersmith); Off Camera (West Yorkshire Playhouse); The Robbers (Gate).

Opera designs: Il barbiere di Siviglia (Glyndebourne); Aida, Turandot, Andrea Chenier (ON); Carmen (Grange Festival); The Commission, Café Kafka (ROH, Aldeburgh Music); Giulio Cesare (ROH); The Two Widows (Angers-Nantes Opéra); Flavio, Eugene Onegin, Falstaff, Alcina, Le nozze di Figaro, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, The Cunning Little Vixen (ETO).

CATHERINE FAY

Costume Design

Catherine Fay designs for Theatre, Opera and Dance. Catherine’s work at The Abbey includes Portia Coughlan, iGirl, Walls and Windows and 14 Voices from the Bloodied Field, The Plough and the Stars (ITTA nomination 2017), Our Few and Evil Days (ITTA nomination 2015), Henry IV Part I (ITTA/ESB Theatre Award nomination 2007). She has recently designed Outrage, The Treaty and Embargo (Fishamble Theatre Company). Elektra (Irish National Opera) Transmission (Little Wolf); GLUE (Rough Magic Theatre Company); Näher . . . nearer, closer, sooner (Liz Roche Dance Company); The Return of Ulysses (Opera Collective Ireland); Orfeo ed Euridice (Irish National Opera). She designed Girl Song (United Fall); 12 Minute Dances, Totems (Liz Roche Dance Company); Owen Wingrave (Opera Collective Ireland); Acis and Galatea (Opera Theatre Company); The Importance of Nothing (Pan Theatre Company); and Owen Wingrave (Opera Bastille, Paris, 2016). to Romeo and Juliet (ITTA nomination 2016) and The Threepenny Opera (The Gate Theatre). Other work includes Breaking Dad (Landmark Productions, ITTA nomination 2015); and Dogs (Emma Martin Dance, Winner Best Production and Best Design for ABSOLUT Fringe Festival 2012).

PAUL KEOGAN

Lighting Design

Paul designs lighting and set for theatre, opera & dance. He works nationally and internationally. Recent lighting designs include: Portia Coughlan, Walls And Windows, Citysong, Last Orders At The Dockside, Katie Roche (Abbey Theatre); Scandaltown, Love Love Love, The Plough And The Stars (Lyric Hammersmith); Doubt (Chichester Festival Theatre); The Naked Hand, Double Cross, Here Comes The Night (Lyric Theatre Belfast); Happy Days, Blood In The Dirt, Postcards From The Ledge (Landmark Productions); The Visiting Hour, Hamlet, The Snapper (Gate Theatre Dublin); I Think We Are Alone (Frantic Assembly tour); Cyprus Avenue (Abbey Theatre, MAC Belfast, Public Theater NY, Royal Court); The Caretaker (Bristol Old Vic); The Gaul, A Short History Of Tractors In Ukrainian (Hull Truck); Far Away (Corcadorca Theatre Company).

Set and Lighting designs include: The Treaty, Duck Duck Goose (Fishamble, Dublin), Return of Ulysses (Opera Collective Ireland); Elektra (Irish National Opera); Shirley Valentine (Lyric Theatre Belfast).

Lighting designs for opera include: Fidelo, 20 Shots Of Opera (film), Aida, The Marriage of Figaro (Irish National Opera); The Gondoliers, Utopia Ltd (Scottish Opera, D’Oyly Carte Opera, State Opera South Australia).

Lighting designs for dance include: Dyad (Justine Doswell); Sama, Flight (Rambert); Lost, Giselle (Ballet Ireland); No Man’s Land (English National Ballet and Queensland Ballet)

CARL KENNEDY Sound Design

Carl Kennedy is a composer and sound designer for theatre. He trained at Academy of Sound in Dublin. He has worked on numerous theatre productions, working with venues and companies including The Abbey, Lyric Theatre, The Gate, The Gaiety, Landmark, ANU Productions, Fishamble: The New Play Company, Rough Magic, Decadent, Theatre Lovett, HOME Manchester, Prime Cut Productions, HotForTheatre, Speckintime and Graffiti. Recent productions include The Lonesome West at The Gaiety Theatre and Outrage with Fishamble: The New Play Company. He has been nominated three times for the Irish Times Theatre Award for Best Sound Design. He has made a number of audio pieces for installation and radio, working with ANU, Upstate Theatre Project, various museums in Dublin City and many others. He recently created Cloud Assembly, a piece for voices and music about life during the pandemic. He also composes music and sound design for radio, TV and video games. He was composer and sound designer for Mr Wall on RTÉJr which was shortlisted for an IMRO Radio Award in the 2018 drama category. Game titles include Curious George, Curious about Shapes and Colors, Jelly Jumble, Too Many Teddies, Dino Dog and Leonardo and His Cat. TV credits include sound design for 16 Letters (Independent Pictures/RTÉ) and SFX editing and foley recording for Centenary (RTÉ).

SUE MYTHEN Movement Director

Sue’s work as a Movement Director at the Abbey Theatre includes: iGirl, Citysong, On Raftery’s Hill, Crestfall (Druid), Oedipus, Shadow of a Gunman (with The Lyric), RUR, Hedda Gabler, Twelfth Night, Plough & the Stars, Heartbreak House, 16 Possible Glimpses, The House, The Rivals, Pygmalion and Major Barbara. Other work includes To the Lighthouse (Everyman Theatre), Conversations after Sex, (Project/Mermaid), Our New Girl (Gate Theatre), Asking For It (Everyman/Gaiety/Birmingham Rep.), Flights (Project Arts Centre), Private Peaceful (Pavilion/US Tour), The White Devil (Shakespeare’s Globe) and The Heiress (Project Arts Centre). Sue has worked in Canada, Italy, Denmark and UK and she has a long collaboration with ANU which includes The Lost O’Casey, Sin Eaters, On Corporation Street, Sunder, Pals and Angel Meadow. Movement for opera includes: Elektra (Canadian Opera Company), Radamisto (NI Opera), Semele (RIAM), Il Ballo delle Ingrate (RIAM/Abbey) and Dead Man Walking (Gaiety).

On film Sue worked on Northanger Abbey (ITV Drama), History’s Future (CineArtNederland), Normal People (Element/BBC), Fate: The Winx Saga (Netflix), Modern Love (Amazon), Kin (Bron/RTÉ) and Smother (RTÉ/BBC).

Sue is Head of Movement at The Lir Academy, Trinity College Dublin.

ANDREA AINSWORTH Voice Director

Andrea Ainsworth is one of the leading voice specialists in Ireland. She has been the Voice Director of the Abbey Theatre since 1995, working closely with both Irish and international directors on all productions in the Abbey and Peacock theatres including premiers of plays by: Seamus Heaney, Tom Murphy, Frank McGuinness, Marina Carr, Conor McPherson and Tom Kilroy. She has taught in drama schools in London and on the professional actor training programme in the School of Drama, Trinity College Dublin from 1995 until 2008. She has worked with most of the independent theatre companies in Ireland, most recently on Hamlet with Ruth Negga in The Gate theatre and in New York in 2020. She also coaches actors for film and TV roles.

As part of the Abbey’s Theatre Skills for Business, she offers coaching and bespoke voice and communication workshops for a variety of business clients.

Recent directing work includes: Every Brilliant Thing staring Amy Conroy in the Peacock followed by a national tour.

LAURA SHEERAN Assistant Director

Laura Sheeran is a multidisciplinary artist and director from Galway, currently living in Dublin. Laura has a background in music and works frequently as a video artist with musicians and performers. Laura began composing music for theatre in 2004 before moving into sound design, AV design and finally directing. In 2016 Laura began directing dance and now regularly incorporates dance in her work, both for stage and film. Laura is the performance director of Ireland’s leading contemporary music group, Crash Ensemble, and is one of the Abbey Theatre’s resident directors for 2022.

Owen

Based in Dublin, Leonard is a graduate of RADA London. Since graduating, his credits have included the world premiere of Andrea Levy’s The Long Song at Chichester Festival Theatre (dir. Charlotte Gwinner); Kenneth Branagh’s Belfast; The Great Season 2; and the BBC Sounds docudrama Touchdown.

Whilst at RADA, Leonard’s roles included Jack Worthing in The Importance of Being Earnest (dir. Neil Bartlett); Various in The Laramie Project (dir. Kristine Landon-Smith); and Oliver in As You Like It (dir. Nancy Meckler). Prior to training, he performed in Sugarglass Theatre’s production of Outlying Islands (dir. Marc Atkinson Borrull); The David Fragments: After Brecht (dir. Nicholas Johnson); Gays Against the Free State! and Love À La Mode: After Macklin (dir. Colm Summers).

Maire

Zara is an actress from County Tyrone. She graduated from the Lir Academy, Trinity College Dublin in 2018 and on the same year made her debut performance as Sorrel in Marina Carr’s On Raftery’s Hill at the Abbey Theatre. She was nominated for an Irish Times Theatre award for Best Supporting Actress for this role.

Other Theatre - Richard III (Druid Theatre Company), The Glass Menagerie (Gate Theatre), Hecuba (Rough Magic), Sing Street (New York Theatre Workshop), Dear Ireland (Abbey Theatre), There Are Little Kingdoms, The Lonesome West (Decadent).

TV and Film: A Bump Along The Way, The Other Lamb, Ann, Modern Love, and most recently NIGHTMAN.

ANDY DOHERTY

Doalty

Andy is from Derry and is delighted to be a part of such a fantastic production. Verging on 30 and doesn’t want to talk about it. He is excited to be back in Belfast and where he trained at the Lyric Drama Studio.

Most recent theatre work includes, The White Handkerchief (The Guildhall) Albino Parts (The Playhouse). Recent film work includes, Can’t Cry and Bump Along The Way.

BRIAN DOHERTY

Hugh

Theatre work includes The Wake, Three Sisters, Down the Line and Tarry Flynn at the Abbey Theatre; All The Angels, Hecuba, Pentecost & Improbable Frequency with Rough Magic; The Seagull, Sive and Famine with Druid, Common and Aristocrats at the Royal National Theatre; Antony and Cleopatra, The Winter’s Tale, Little Eagles, The Drunks, Macbeth, God in Ruins and Great Expectations for the Royal Shakespeare Company, The Father, From Here To Eternity, Stones in his Pockets (West End); Tomcat for Papatango at Southwark Playhouse; A Steady Rain at Theatre Royal Bath; Narratives at the Royal Court; The Red Iron, Happy Birthday Dear Alice, The Crucible for Red Kettle; Evening Train at The Everyman Theatre, Cork.

TV includes Resistance, Trigonometry, Witless, Raw, Pure Mule, Fair City, Casualty and Glenroe

Film includes Dreamhorse, A Street Cat Named Bob, Perrier’s Bounty and Garage.

LEONARD BUCKLEY

ZARA DEVLIN

HOLLY HANNAWAY

Bridget

Holly is an actor and comedian from Newry, based between Belfast and London. Holly trained at the Lyric Theatre Drama Studio and was an artist in residence with Amadan (a Belfast based clown and bouffon theatre company).

Theatre credits include: The Grimm Hotel (Cahoots NI); The Playboy of the Western World (Gaiety Theatre/ Lyric Theatre Belfast); Windows 21 (Abbey Theatre); The Heresy of Love (Lyric Theatre Belfast); Lessons in Love and Violence (Royal Opera House); Tactics for Time Travel in a Toilet (Theatre of Pluck).

Other credits include: I Believe Her (Three’s Theatre Company); Mimi’s World (Channel 5); Eat The Rich (RTÉ); Slippery When Wet (No Touching Festival); The Secret Life of Balloons (BBC); School for Good and Evil (Netflix) and their own one woman comedy cabaret Jingle Belle (Belfast Comedy Festival).

RONAN LEAHY

Jimmy Jack

Work at the Abbey includes Oedipus, King Lear, Drum Belly, Curse of the Starving Class, Macbeth, The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui, Romeo and Juliet, Henry IV, Da, Living Quarters, Observatory, Observe the Sons of Ulster, At Swim-Two-Birds, The Passion of Jerome, Monkey, By the Bog of Cats, The Man Who Became a Legend, Sé Mouse, The Well of the Saints, Philadelphia Here I Come, The Doctor’s Dilemma and The Corsican Brothers. Other theatre includes Blackbird (Four Rivers). Least Like the Other (INO). Signatories, Borstal Boy (Verdant). Wuthering Heights, An Enemy of the People, Festen, All My Sons (Gate Theatre). Hecuba, The Effect, The Critic, Travesties, Life is a Dream, Solemn Mass for a Full Moon in Summer (Rough Magic). The Colleen Bawn, Gentrification (Druid). The Winter’s Tale, The Hairy Ape (Corcadorca). Medea, Titus Andronicus and La Musica (Siren). Moment (Tall Tales). Gagarin Way (Island). Pyrenees (Hatch). Invitation to a Journey (CoisCéim ). Tiny plays for Ireland and America, Inside the GPO, End of the Road, Whereabouts, The Flesh Addict (Fishamble). Roberto Zucco, Pale Angel, Wideboy Gospel and Melon Farmer (Bedrock). Mister Staines (Pan Pan). The Chairs (Tinderbox).

AIDAN MORIARTY

Lieutenant Yolland

Aidan is a graduate of Lir Academy, Trinity College Dublin. He recently played Oswald in The Enemy Within at An Grianán which was directed by Caitríona McLaughlin. He played Chris in Fishamble’s production of Duck Duck Goose which was directed by Jim Cuttleton and presented at the 2021 Dublin Theatre Festival. Since graduating, he has worked on developments of What The Telly Saw and The Tempest, both directed by Lynne Parker.

Whilst at The Lir, Aidan performed in productions of Blood Wedding (Dir. Caitríona McLaughlin), The Merchant of Venice (Dir. Lynne Parker) Anatomy of a Suicide (Dir. Tom Creed) and Comedy of Errors (Dir. Mikel Murfi). He also performed in Hostel 16 ( Dir. Raymond Keane) at the Dublin Fringe Festival in 2016.

MARTY REA Manus

Marty graduated from RADA in 2002 with a BA degree in acting. He has won ITTA Best Actor for Hamlet (2011) and DruidShakespeare (2016), Best Supporting Actor for King of the Castle and The Great Gatsby (2018) and a Herald Angel Award in the Edinburgh Festival for Waiting for Godot (2018). Theatre includes: Portia Coughlan, 14 Voices From the Bloodied Field, Dear Ireland (an unreliable ex-lover suddenly writes), Thirst (and other bits of Flann), Richard III, Othello, She Stoops To Conquer, The Hanging Gardens, Major Barbara, John Gabriel Borkman, The Rivals, Only An Apple, The Big House, Saved, The Importance of Being Earnest (Abbey Theatre), End of the Beginning, The Seagull, DruidGregory, The Cherry Orchard, The Beacon, Epiphany, Richard III, King of the Castle, The Beauty Queen of Leenane, Waiting For Godot, DruidShakespeare, Brigit, Be Infants in Evil, The Colleen Bawn, DruidMurphy (Druid Theatre).

SUZIE SEWEIFY

Sarah

Suzie is an actor and writer based in Dublin. She is originally Irish Egyptian, born in Bahrain and reared in Abu Dhabi. She received her training at the Gaiety School of Acting and is one of Dublin Fringe’s WEFT studio artists. She is delighted to be returning to the Lyric stage!

Theatre credits include: Rough Girls (Lyric Theatre Belfast), YARA (Smock Alley Theatre), Aladdin (Gaiety Theatre Panto).

Other credits include: Storytellers (RTÉ).

HOWARD TEALE

Captain Lancey Howard trained at Mountview Theatre School and at the Science of Acting. He is delighted to be a part of Translations which will be his first production at both the Lyric Theatre and the Abbey Theatre.

Theatre includes: Clandestine Marriage (Queen’s Theatre); A Doll’s House (Playhouse Theatre); The Seagull (UK Tour, Thelma Holt); The Merchant of Venice (Birmingham Rep.); The Robbers; The Relapse (Glasgow Citizens); Miss Julie (Theatre Royal, Haymarket); Irish Blood, English Heart (Trafalgar Studios), Mariluise (The Gate); The Gentleman’s Tea Drinking Society (Ransom Productions, Belfast); On the Subject of Love (Derry Playhouse); The Factory Girls (Millennium Forum, Derry & Irish Tour); Bunny’s Vendetta (Blue Eagle Productions, Derry); Anniversary Sweet; Push; Eight Foot Leap; Confusions (Union Theatre).

Television includes: East Enders; Holby City; Doctors; Waking the Dead; The Bill; Spooks; The Good Citizen; Aircraft Investigations (Discovery).

On 30th April 2011 the Lyric Theatre, Belfast reopened its doors in the new theatre we stand in today.

Brian Friel reopned our theatre with these words:

‘A new theatre can be the most exciting building in any city . It can be the home of miracles and epiphanies and revelations and renovations. And building a new theatre – especially in times like these – is both an act of fortitude and a gesture of faith in your community.

Because what you are saying to that community is this: this is your playhouse – come and play with us here; give us your trust and in return we will entertain you and enlighten you and lead you into that secret land of mystery and of the spirit , that we tend to overlook in the course of our lives.’

Liam Neeson Patron of The Lyric Theatre

“Back in 1980, I played the part of Doalty in Brian Friel’s new play Translations for Field Day Theatre Company which opened at the Guildhall in Derry. It was a vital work of theatre then and remains so today. It depicts with compassion and ingenious stage-craft the vibrancy of language, the complexity of love and the destruction of colonial expansion. It shows how the echoes of our shared history have shaped us. It is, in its perfectly compact way, a true Irish epic.

Later this month, a major new production of Translations opens at the Lyric Theatre, and then plays at the Abbey Theatre. It’s a partnership that has been forged between the main theatre in the north and the main theatre in the south, and will then go on to tour venues throughout Ireland during the summer.

I would like to send on my hearty congratulations and best wishes to the entire company of Translations, in safe hands with Caitriona and Jimmy, and the whole team at the Lyric.”

Portraits of Brian Friel and Liam Neeson by Colin Davidson currently on display at the Lyric Theatre as part of a permanent exhibition of Davidson’s art.

Robinson (Chairman)

Stephen Douds (Vice Chairman)

Nuala Donnelly

Patricia McBride

Mike Mullan

Dr Mark Phelan

PATRON

Liam Neeson OBE

EXECUTIVE PRODUCER

Jimmy Fay

SENIOR PRODUCER

Morag Keating

CASTING DIRECTOR

Clare Gault

LITERARY MANAGER

Rebecca Mairs

PRODUCTION ASSISTANT

Kerry Fitzsimmons

HEAD OF FINANCE & HR

Micheál Meegan

FINANCE OFFICER

Toni Harris Patton

FINANCE ASSISTANT

Sinéad Glymond

FINANCE & HR ASSISTANT

Barry Leonard

FINANCE & ADMIN ASSISTANT

Shireen Azarmi

HEAD OF DEVELOPMENT & MARKETING

Claire Murray

MARKETING MANAGER

Rachel Leitch

MARKETING OFFICERS

Katie Armstrong

Emma Brennan

Lucy Brownlie

DEVELOPMENT OFFICER

Éimear O’Neill

HEAD OF PRODUCTION

Adrian Mullan

PRODUCTION MANAGER

Siobhán Barbour

COMPANY STAGE MANAGER

Aimee Yates

STAGE MANAGERS

Louise Graham

Stephen Dix

TECHNICAL MANAGER

Arthur Oliver-Brown

SENIOR TECHNICIAN (LIGHTING & SOUND)

Ian Vennard

ABBEY THEATRE SUPPORTERS

GOLD AMBASSADORS

Behaviour and Attitudes

SILVER AMBASSADORS

Trocadero

DIRECTORS’ CIRCLE

Tony Ahearne

Richard and Sherril Burrows

PRINCIPAL PARTNER

LYRIC THEATRE SUPPORTERS

PRINCIPAL SPONSOR

ALSO FUNDED BY

PROGRAMME PARTNERS

Pat Butler

The Cielinski Family

Deirdre Finan

Donal Moore

Sheelagh O’Neill

Dr. Frances Ruane

Susan and Denis Tinsley

SILVER PATRONS

Frances Britton

Catherine Byrne

Tommy Gibbons

Dr. John Keane

Andrew Mackey

Eugenie Mackey

Eugene Magee

Gerard and Liv McNaughton

CORPORATE GUARDIANS

The Kathleen Murphy Foundation

GENEROUSLY SUPPORTED BY

TRANSLATIONS

Written by Brian Friel

Directed by Caitríona McLaughlin

23 APRIL - 29 MAY LYRIC THEATRE, BELFAST

13 JUNE – 13 AUGUST ABBEY THEATRE, DUBLIN

16 – 20 AUGUST LIME TREE THEATRE, LIMERICK

23 – 27 AUGUST TOWN HALL THEATRE, GALWAY

30 AUGUST – 3 SEPTEMBER AN GRIANÁN, DONEGAL