Translations

Irish Repertory Theatre will produce its debut production of Brian Friel’s Translations as the first installment of The Friel Project. The play takes place in late August 1833 at a hedge-school in the townland of Baile Beag – an Irish speaking community in County Donegal. Strangers have arrived in town in the form of a detachment of Royal Engineers engaged on behalf of the British Army and Government to “standardize” the Gaelic name places by translating them into English. There is friction in the community and there is also love and romance between the native and the strangers. The play illuminates the significance of language at scales both large and small, and questions the meaning of cultural expression and identity in an Ireland under British rule.