Dancing At Lughnasa

Brian Friehl’s Tony Award Winning Play
Directed and Produced by Felicia Pfluger
Set in the fictional Irish village of Ballybeg, Ireland, in 1936, Dancing at Lughnasa is a comedrama, told from the perspective of an adult Michael with vibrant flashbacks to the animated life in his aunts’ home when he was seven. The five Mundy sisters, all unmarried, live in a cottage just outside of the small village. 
Listening to their first radio, they transform from proper, Catholic women to wild, dancing, stomping, shrieking banshees in their own kitchen. These five close-knit, fiercely loyal single aunts, band together amidst the challenges of life, and fight through the hardships of changing times. As the summer ends, Brian Friel’s multi-award-winning masterpiece, portrays the strength and bravery of five sisters who dance wildly in a final celebration of their lives, before all changes forever.
Winner of the 1992 Tony Award for Best Play

Gallery of Images from the show

Notes from the Director

Dancing at Lughnasa has more layers than an Irish onion! It has been a gift to the cast as we create for you. Brian Friel’s Tony Award masterpiece holds true to Irish dramas with the honesty of his
characters. These “common-folk”, based on his real-life aunts, create a lyrical humor in the face of life’s adversity and direst circumstance seen, in retrospect through the eyes of a child.

We find, through the forthright innocence and honest insight into each character, plagued by poor choices and heaps of obligations. They are a real and unorthodox family where inner alliances can shift as swiftly as the Irish winds… or the signal coming from Marconi, the wireless radio. We meet the family struggling while every anchor of their lives is shifting… fiercely loyal as the harshness of the changing times is descending upon them.

The five unmarried Mundy sisters are our strong and flawed protagonists… filled with grit, determination, and abundant love. We meet them scrapping out a frugal life in poverty, living in the humble family dwelling, taking care of little Michael, and now their ailing brother, “Father Jack” back from 25 years of missionary work in Uganda. And Rose always in need of constant care, herself , wanting to be married and a mother. Add the stress of Michael’s father coming back, and these strong “salt of the earth” women are put to the test, choosing to “laugh through the tears”… and DANCE! For they are not done living yet. For they chose to dance rather than submit to the ravages of despair and grief. And they love. Fiercely. Flawed. And unconditionally. And all of us who chose to dance in our own kitchens, wildly and courageously, we know this honest truth… and those that look-on in surprise – well… maybe we can learn something from them!

~ Felicia Pfluger, Producer and Artistic Director, LATTE Theater