Buffalo Theatre Ensemble
Presents
Faith Healer
By Brian Friel
Directed by Brad Armacost
July 7 (preview) – July 24, 2011
MAC, Theatre 2
Characters
Frank
Grace
Teddy
Scenes:
Part 1 – Frank
Part 2 – Grace
10 minute intermission
Part 3 – Teddy
Part 4 – Frank
Director’s Note
The demands of a deadline require that the Director’s Notes be submitted well before the
rehearsal process is complete. This is a necessary but somewhat annoying conundrum.
Look down the road and around the corner; describe a journey not yet complete.
I can tell you that at this point we (the actors, designers and myself) are still in the
honeymoon stage; drunk on the love of the words and the glorious fantasy of the play.
The process of discovery and decision are, happily ongoing. From my standpoint as
director it sure would be nice to have a roadmap assuring us that we are heading down
the right road. Mr. Friel has blessed us with a roadmap both detailed and malleable.
Increasingly, ours is a GPS society, grown accustomed to having a synthesized voice
instructing us to “Turn left in 100 yards.” It works out quite well for those of us
geographically challenged behind the wheel. It’s a comfort to know that there is an
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“authority,” an all-knowing voice guiding our journey. We rely upon (insist upon)
accuracy. We have a very human desire for certainty.
And then there is Brian Friel.
And then there is FAITH HEALER.
And we find we are being asked to consider if there can truly be such a thing as certainty
when we recall our lives and the lives of those we love. The need to understand is turned
upside down in this play of shifting memories. Doubt, ambiguity and fiction work against
our desire for control and therein we find the beauty of the story. While the path is
unknowable, the journey intractable, we are treated to a transforming story courtesy of
Brian Friel and his mastery of illusion.
I hope you will allow yourself to embrace the story, it’s fact and fiction, based perhaps on
faith.
P.B. Armacost
Brief Background on Brian Friel
Excerpted in its entirety from BTE’s SuBTExt, written by Amelia Barrett,
6/11.
For more than four decades, Brian Friel has become one of Ireland's best-known
playwrights. Following the example of William Yeats, John Synge, and Sean O'Casey
who were all part of the flourishing literary movement at the turn of the twentieth
century, “Friel has produced drama that is clearly indigenous to Ireland,” according to
June Schlueter, in British Dramatists Since World War II. Schlueter further stated “In
each of Friel's stage plays, Ireland not only provides the canvas upon which his largely
rural characters are portrayed but also acts as a character itself. Friel's canon characterizes
not only individuals but an entire people, whose hopes and disappointments play
themselves out against a menacing undercurrent of violence and death. In nearly all his
plays, there is an interplay of reality, memory, and dream [which] suggests the spiritual
flux of a people whose sense of tradition and place is frequently at war with
contemporary realities.”
A Catholic native of Northern Ireland, Friel was born outside the town of Omagh,
Country Tyrone, to Patrick and Christina MacLooneFriel. The family moved to
Londonderry when he was ten so his father could take the principalship at Long Tower
School. Friel attended St. Patrick's College, a seminary in Maynooth, in 1946 and
received a B.A. in 1948. He soon abandoned plans for the priesthood, and instead studied
at St. Joseph's Teacher Training School in Belfast in 1949-1950. In 1954 he married
Anne Morrison, with whom he has five children. For the ten years following his
graduation from St. Joseph's, Friel taught school in Londonderry, but in 1960,
encouraged by the New Yorker 's regular publication of his stories, he left teaching to
write full time. These stories were later collected into the volumes The Saucer of Larks
(1962) and The Gold in the Sea (1969).
G.H. Timmermans, wrote in British and Irish Short-Fiction Writers, 1945-2000, “These
stories, exploring the rituals and parochial ambitions of small-town Irish life, offer a view
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of a particular period and place in Ireland's history, and Friel further develops this world
in his most successful dramatic works...In both his stories and his plays Friel has created
his own fictional landscape--later called Ballybeg, literally "small town" (from the Irish
BaileBeag)--and that imaginative territory of his boyhood lies in the geographical
borderlands between County Derry and County Tyrone in Northern Ireland and County
Donegal in the Republic of Ireland. All of the area is part of the historical province of
Ulster; Friel describes and analyzes this rural country and its people, seemingly
indifferent to political division, in his stories. As a writer of short fiction, Friel is now
relatively neglected, but the short stories are an important part of his literary
development, and they also provide useful insights into a way of life before the
resurgence of political violence in Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland's entry
into the European Community.”
Philadelphia, Here I Come! (1964) became Friel's first major success. A group of
dramatic works followed, increasing his popularity with both critics and audiences. In
1969 Friel moved his family to Donegal, Northern Ireland. Over the following ten years
he wrote a series of plays in which Faith Healer (1979) fell, exploring the life of the
artist.
In 1980 Friel and Stephen Rea founded Field Day Theatre, the site of the premiere of
Translations (1980), considered by many to be Friel's best work. Friel has earned
membership in the Irish Academy of Letters (1972), an Ewart-Biggs Peace Prize for
Translations (1981), election to Aosdana (1982) which later led to his nomination to a
Saoi in 2006, election to the Irish Senate in 1987 (the first since Yeats), the Olivier
Award in 1991, three Tony Awards in 1992 for Dancing at Lughnasa (1990), a Lifetime
Achievement Award from the Irish Times in 1999, and honorary doctorates from several
academic institutions.
Kieran Flanagan wrote for the Contemporary Review in 1995, “There is a paradox in
Friel, of writing on a sense of place, from a location which is itself fractured. He writes
from Ulster, a Province with nine countries, three of which are in the Republic, including
Donegal, which is his place of production. His own marginality exemplifies the
ambiguity of the boundaries that are given dramatic form in his plays. Like the
sociologist, Friel seeks to find in the detail of the ordinary lives of his tribe something of
enduring significance in the accounting the inhabitants of his fields make to themselves
and to others, for their sense of place is more precarious than it might seem on initial
inspection.”
June Schlueter, in British Dramatists Since World War II, wrote, “Throughout his work,
Friel handles his characters with affection and compassion, reflecting an extraordinary
sensitivity to human nature. Outwardly simple, the characters are inwardly complex, and
the emotional battle of each is kept free of sentimentality by Friel's skillful use of
language. The combination of intelligence and emotion in Friel's characters succeeds in
conveying a strong sense of the inadequacies of human nature while affirming the
continuum of life.
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Friel has been notoriously shy of the spotlight that surrounds his success. "He has refused
interviews many times and seldom poses for photographs, preferring anonymity to
publicity," wrote William Pratt in World Literature Today.Brian Friel in Conversation,
edited by Paul Delany, "removes some of the veil that has shrouded Friel up to now and
presents him in his own words apart from his works," Pratt observed. Delany assembles a
collection of works that portrays Friel as "a lively personality who enjoys frank discourse
and witty remarks that could easily make him into a public figure if he chose that role,"
Pratt commented. Friel, however, reserves the spotlight for the actors in his
plays..."Overhearing his conversations, conveniently provided by this book, is a way of
understanding better what he means," Pratt concluded.
Background on Faith Healer
Excerpted in its entirety from BTE’s SuBTExt, written by Amelia Barrett,
6/11.
David Barrett, wrote in Staging the Indeterminate, “Faith Healer is a dramatic text: it
represents three characters and their versions of events from their lives. Although the
events are not presented chronologically, this new ordering of the four monologues is the
way in which Friel successively undermines reliability. Friel's play seemingly sits
somewhere between drama and non-drama.”
Bruse Wyse wrote in Traumatizing Romanticism in Brian Friel's Faith Healer, “Faith
Healer is a cumulative and dialectical sequence of four monologues by three characters-an itinerant faith healer, Frank Hardy; his wife, Grace; and his manager, Teddy-providing variously inflected, divergent, and, at times, discrepant reports on their life on
the road in rural Wales and Scotland. As such, it throws into relief the life projects of the
three, demonstrating how events are subjectively incorporated or put to use in narrative
self-constitution, while also disclosing the bad faith and blind spots of the characters,
their defensive fantasies, self-delusions, and self-objectifications. In turn, Frank, Grace,
and Teddy narratively rehearse their versions of their shared or at least overlapping pasts,
at the same time disclosing their present circumstances, their orientation towards the
events of the past, and their former and present dispositions towards one other. Each
ensuing account does not merely contribute another layering to the representation of the
elusive past, but significantly qualifies, corrects, or contests the preceding version or
versions of events.”
Bruse Wyse continued, “Friel's audience is challenged to reflect on the credibility of each
witness to the past, to consider the motives and interests of each narrator, to detect
distortions, to attend to omissions, and to reconstruct, tentatively at least, certain events
of the past. As several key incidents are revisited and reshaped, the conjectural past
begins to acquire a certain density. This composite of the past, however, remains
heterogeneous and, in some respects, open and indeterminate. As a remarkable
demonstration and exploitation of the dialogical capacities of monologue, the play makes
several claims on our interest. It is, among other things, a case study in perspectivism, an
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exploration of the ethics of memory, and, for the audience, something of a Socratic
exercise in historiography.”
Karen DeVinney wrote in Monologue as dramatic action in Brian Friel’s Faith Healer
and Molly Sweeney, Friel’s writing “demonstrate(s) his tightly controlled yet innovative
ability to embody his ideas onstage. His first gift from the form is the way that the
monologues in both plays isolate the characters, thus making physical for the audience
their emotional and, indeed, experiential isolation from each other. In Faith Healer, what
emerges from this isolation is the play's absolute insistence on the subjectivity, and
concomitant fluidity, of personal identity.”
"Talk," remarks Richard Tillinghast's in his 1991 New Criterion article about Friel, "is
the national [Irish] pastime.” Tillinghast reminds us that often for the stage Irishman, to
speak is to act, a "pastime" as all-encompassing as any hobby. Karen DeVinney wrote,
“Faith Healer and Molly Sweeney are united both by their monologic form and by their
contention that truth is subjective, a matter of perception and recall. Sight becomes a
metaphor in both Faith Healer and Molly Sweeney for knowledge. Yet the easy equation
of sight and insight is troubled by the unreliability of perception and memory. The
sighted characters in Molly are the least insightful, and in Faith Healer, faith in the
impalpable is more valuable than knowledge of the necessarily palpable. ‘Seeing’ is not
necessarily ‘believing,’ because authentic faith depends on trust in the unseeable. The
unreliability of sight extends to the audience as well; both plays admit of a truth beyond
the physically realized world that we see onstage.”
Ian Shuttleworth wrote for the February 2011 issue of the London Financial Times, “Is
Frank, the faith healer who works a succession of out-of-the-way village halls in Wales
and Scotland, destined to a particular end, or can he muster enough belief in himself to
choose his own fate? The answer we take from the play depends on how much credence
we give to the often contradictory accounts by Frank, his (probably) wife Grace and his
manager Teddy.”
Margaret M. Strain wrote in Renouncing change': salvation and the sacred in Brian
Friel's Faith Healer. “The reality of doubt, fragmentation, and ambiguity characteristic of
the postmodern world does not obviate the human desire for certainty and ultimate peace.
It is this desire to explain the inexplicable which lies at the heart of Brian Friel'sFaith
Healer. Arguably his most poetic and impressive work, critical responses have ranged
along a number of lines. It is at once a commentary about the artist and process of artistic
creation--a production whose reliance on monologic structure and the shifting memories
of its characters evokes Kurosawa's Rashomonand Tennessee Williams's The Glass
Menagerie--and a drama that poignantly enacts the possibility for transcendence which
lies at the heart of aesthetic and religious experience.”
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Friel’s Canon
Excerpted in its entirety from BTE’s SuBTExt, written by Amelia Barrett,
6/11.
This Doubtful Paradise (1959)
The Enemy Within (1962)
Philadelphia, Here I Come! (1963)
The Loves of Cass McGuire (1966)
Lovers (1967)
Crystal and Fox (1968)
The Mundy Scheme (1969)
The Freedom of the City (1973)
Volunteers (1975)
Living Quarters (1977)
Aristocrats (1979)
Faith Healer (1979)
Translations (1980)
The Communication Cord (1982)
Making History (1988)
Dancing at Lughnasa (1990)
Wonderful Tennessee (1993)
Molly Sweeney (1995)
Give Me Your Answer, Do! (1997)
The Home Place (2004)
Awards
1998 Evening Standard Award for Best Play: Aristocrats
1989 New York Drama Critics Circle Award for Best Foreign Play:
Aristocrats
1991 Laurence Olivier Award for Best Play: Dancing at Lughnasa
1992 New York Drama Critics Circle Award for Best Foreign Play: Dancing
at Lughnasa
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1992 Tony Award, Dancing at Lughnasa
1996 New York Drama Critics Circle Award for Best Foreign Play: Molly
Sweeney
2010 Donegal Person of the Year
Things to think about/discuss before seeing the play:
 What do you remember? Are they vivid moments or ordinary
moments? Do you remember in color or with ‘sound?’ Why do you
think your memory ‘works’ the way that it does.
 Have you told a story more than once? Why? Is it re-told the same
way each time you tell it?
Things to think about while seeing the play:
 How does the setting effect the character in each monologue?
 How does being alone, telling the story, affect how you perceive the
character, as opposed to the story being re-told through conversation?
Things to think about/discuss after having seen the play:
 Faith Healer is one of Friel’s most often produced scripts. Why, do
you think, it is so popular?
Other Analysis “Tools”:
 What happens in the very last moments of the play? Certainly, the
last few minutes, but, more importantly, the last thirty seconds? In
that time, what happens or is said, and what does that say about what
the play is ‘about?’ In a nutshell, how does Friel drive his point(s)
home?
 And what is the significance of the title? Why did Friel decide that
this was the most quintessential title for his work?
Bibliography
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"Brian Friel." Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit: Gale, 2005. Literature Resource
Center. Web. 5 June 2011.
Barnett, David. "Staging the indeterminate: Brian Friel's Faith Healer as a postdramatic
theatre-text". Irish University Review: a journal of Irish Studies. FindArticles.com. 01
Jun, 2011.
Delaney, Paul, ed. Brian Friel in Conversation. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan
Press, 2000, 289 p.Collection of rare interviews and personal commentary.
DeVinney, Karen. "Monoogue as dramatic action in Brian Friel's 'Faith Healer' and
'Molly Sweeney.'". Twentieth Century Literature. FindArticles.com. 01 Jun, 2011.
Fitzgerald-Hoyt, Mary. "Brian Friel: Overview." Reference Guide to English Literature.
Ed. D. L. Kirkpatrick. 2nd ed. Chicago: St. James Press, 1991. Literature Resource
Center. Web. 5 June 2011.
Flanagan, Kieran. "Brian Friel: a sociological appreciation of an Irish playwright."
Contemporary Review 266.1551 (1995): 199+. Literature Resource Center. Web. 5 June
2011.
Strain, Margaret M. "'Renouncing change': salvation and the sacred in Brian Friel's Faith
Healer." Renascence: Essays on Values in Literature 57.1 (2004): 63+. Literature
Resource Center. Web. 5 June 2011.
http://www.nndb.com/people/446/000116098
Schlueter, June. "Brian Friel." British Dramatists Since World War II. Ed. Stanley
Weintraub. Detroit: Gale Research, 1982. Dictionary of Literary Biography Vol. 13.
Literature Resource Center. Web. 5 June 2011.
Timmermans, G. H. "Brian Friel." British and Irish Short-Fiction Writers, 1945-2000.
Ed. Cheryl Alexander Malcolm and David Malcolm. Detroit: Gale, 2005. Dictionary of
Literary Biography Vol. 319. Literature Resource Center. Web. 5 June 2011.
Wyse, Bruce. "Traumatizing Romanticism in Brian Friel's Faith Healer." Modern Drama
47.3 (Fall 2004): 446-463. Rpt. in Contemporary Literary Criticism. Vol. 253. Detroit:
Gale, 2008. Literature Resource Center. Web. 5 June 2011.
Due to the production schedule in the MAC during the summer, we do
not hold pre-show and post-show discussions.
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We cordially invite you and your classes to attend these informative and
spirited dialogues with our resident theatre artists.
The running time for the show is approximately __ hours, with a ten
minute intermission.
We hope that you will join us for this provocative and moving theatrical
experience.
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