Dance At Lughnasa Act 1 Summary

DANCING AT LUGHNASA - ACT ONE

STAGING

P1 – chiaroscuro lighting state establishes atmosphere and non-realism from the start. A stylised tableau allows the audience to see the cast in its entirety. Michael, as an adult narrator, is a Brechtian device

P2 – lighting is used for mood – probably straw and pink state to connote Summer. Props and set is organised to allow for cast to break from tableau into small-scale action representational of character eg ‘AGNES knits gloves’.

P7 – the key convention of the play – that Michael the adult narrator is also the child – is established. When the child speaks – referred to as BOY – the actors address an imaginary child while adult Michael speaks his lines. No interaction occurs between
Chris exclaims ‘I could dance non-stop all night-all week-all month!’ and wants to recapture her youthful passions. Agnes asserts ‘I want to dance’, meaning she want to have more in life. Kate is tempted but then objects – ‘Dancing at our time of day? That’s for young people with no duties and no responsibilities and nothing in their heads but pleasure.’

P20 – Maggie remembers a dance competition she went to with her friend Bernie when she secretly loved Brian McGuinness who danced with Bernie. He left after the dance and she has clearly never forgotten him. Friel cleverly creates memories within memories through these monologues

P21 – 22 – the sisters’ wild dance is a crucial and symbolic moment in Act One. Chris puts the radio on and gradually all five sisters participate. Maggie uses flour to ‘pattern her face with an instant mask’’ and dances ‘a white-faced frantic dervish’. Rose dances her ‘own erratic rhythm’. Agnes ‘moves most gracefully, most sensuously’. Chris puts on Jack’s priest robe despite Kate’s protest, but then Kate finally joins in. ‘Kate dances alone, totally concentrated, totally private; a movement that is simultaneously controlled and frantic’. When the music stops, their total loss of control leaves them looking ‘slightly ashamed and slightly
Devils? Ghosts?’. They are pagan rather than religious symbols P16-17 – Rose describes the Lughnasa tradition of driving cattle through flames ‘to banish the devil out of them’. On page 35 Kate confirms that in the same ritual people were ‘doing some devilish thing with a goat’. On pages 38 – 39 Jack describes the ceremonies and rituals back in Ryangan ‘to please the spirits – or to appease them’. There are clear links established between the pagan / superstitious rituals of Ballybeg and Ryangan. The two communities are not so different. It is only a religious judgement that makes them alien.

P35 ‘- it could be argued that the strong presence of the radio and the non-religious music in the household - those aul pagan songs’ – symbolises the strength of human nature to be free of religious shackles and rules.

INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION
1 – 1936 is established as the year that the play takes place in. the audience will use foreknowledge of history to understand cultural/social/political forces at work at that time. The reference to De Valera on page 4 will also remind the audience that he was the Irish leader who introduced the industrial revolution (factories and mechanisation) to Southern Ireland in the 1930’s – decades later than in mainland