Dancing at Lughnasa

December 4-19, 2010

by Brian Friel

“The Gallery Players’ Lughnasa is something to dance about. The drama about a rural Irish town in the Great Depression is in good hands on 14th Street, as The Gallery Players do a great job of making the work seem fresh and lively. The Gallery Players make both the poignant story’s atmosphere and its incidents seem as vivid as one’s own memories.”
-The Brooklyn Paper

Producer – Hannah Mason/The Gallery Players
Director – Heather Siobhan Curran
Choreographer – Erin Porvaznika
Set Designer – Jared Rutherford
Costume Designer – Travis Chinick
Lighting Designer – Richard Chamblin
Props Designer – Meagan Miller-McKeever
Sound Designer – Julianne Merrill
Production Stage Manager – Ashley Nelson
Associate Producer – Krystal Roccaro
Assistant Stage Manager – Dave Sarrafian

The Cast

Kate – Susan Ferrara*
Rose – Kelsey Formost
Michael – Zac Hoogendyk*
Maggie – Amanda McCallum*
Agnes – Therese Plaehn*
Gerry – Jasper Soffer
Father Jack – Richard Vernon*
Chris – Leigh Williams*

*appears courtesy of Actors’ Equity Association


Director Heather Siobhan Curran, producer Hannah Mason, and cast members Zac Hoogendyk and Leigh Williams discuss Dancing at Lughnasa.

This extraordinary play is the story of five unmarried sisters eking out their lives in a small village in Ireland in 1936. We meet them at the time of the festival of Lughnasa, which celebrates the pagan god of the harvest with drunken revelry and dancing. Their spare existence is interrupted by brief, colorful bursts of music from the radio, their only link to the romance and hope of the world at large. The action of the play is told through the memory of the illegitimate son of one of the sisters as he remembers the five women who raised him, his mother and four maiden aunts. Widely regarded as Brian Friel’s masterpiece, this haunting play is Friel’s tribute to the spirit and valor of the past. Winner of the 1992 Tony Award for Best Play, the Outer Critics Circle Award for Best Broadway Play and the New York Drama Critics Circle Award for Best Play.

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Pictured (l to r): Leigh Williams and Susan Ferrara in The Gallery Players’ production of Dancing at Lughnasa. Photo by Bella Muccari.

“The most elegant and rueful memory play since The Glass Menagerie.” TimeOut

“…this play does exactly what theater was born to do, carrying both its characters and audience aloft on those waves of distant music and ecstatic release that, in defiance of all language and logic, let us dance and dream just before night must fall.” New York Times


Pictured (l to r): Kelsey Formost, Therese Plaehn, Amanda McCallum, and Leigh Williams in The Gallery Players’ production of Dancing at Lughnasa. Photo by Bella Muccari.

Performance Schedule:
Saturday, December 4 at 8:00 PM – Opening night
Sunday, December 5 at 3:00 PM – matinee
Thursday, December 9 at 8:00 PM
Friday, December 10 at 8:00 PM
Saturday, December 11 at 2:00 PM – matinee
Saturday, December 11 at 8:00 PM
Sunday, December 12 at 3:00 PM – matinee
Thursday, December 16 at 8:00 PM
Friday, December 17 at 8:00 PM
Saturday, December 18 at 2:00 PM – matinee
Saturday, December 18 at 8:00 PM
Sunday, December 19 at 3:00 PM – final performance

Buy tickets now.


Pictured (l to r): Jasper Soffer and Leigh Williams in The Gallery Players’ production of Dancing at Lughnasa. Photo by Bella Muccari.