Papers by María Gaviña Costero
Brian Friel es un dramaturgo nacido en 1929 en Omagh, irlanda del norte. Su madre procede de done... more Brian Friel es un dramaturgo nacido en 1929 en Omagh, irlanda del norte. Su madre procede de donegal, en la república, pero él crece en la parte británica de la isla. Sus abuelos hablaban gaélico, en cambio él ya sólo domina el inglés, el idioma impuesto. Como otros autores que le precedieron, lucha por hacer suya una forma de expresión, la única que ahora tienen, y que no es la de sus raíces.
La obra dramática del norirlandés Brian Friel (Omagh, 1929) ha sido inevitablemente determinada p... more La obra dramática del norirlandés Brian Friel (Omagh, 1929) ha sido inevitablemente determinada por la cruenta historia de su comunidad durante las últimas cinco décadas. Desde su primer gran éxito, "Philadelphia, Here I Come!" (1964), hasta su última obra del siglo XX, "Give Me Your Answer, Do!" (1997), acompañaremos al dramaturgo en su búsqueda incesante de los orígenes de la violencia, de los límites entre realidad y ficción y del proceso de formación de la memoria. A lo largo de cuatro etapas veremos la evolución de un autor pionero en su voluntad de romper con los viejos mitos que fosilizaban una sociedad escindida, y estimado por los actores por la complejidad de sus personajes y la belleza y verdad que caracterizan sus diálogos. Friel ha sido representado en España desde 1988, aunque sigue siendo un gran desconocido en ámbitos académicos y teatrales en lengua española. Analizamos aquí desde la primera traducción de Josep Mª Balanya, "Traduccions"...
Irish studies review, Apr 1, 2024
Estudios irlandeses, Mar 13, 2024
Laughter in the midst of tragedy can be one of life's most disturbing, cathartic and enlightening... more Laughter in the midst of tragedy can be one of life's most disturbing, cathartic and enlightening experiences, a maxim experienced in Northern Ireland during the Troubles, one of the most painful periods of Irish history. Northern Irish playwrights were acutely aware of this when dealing with violence in their plays and so, however grim the events they depicted, the comic element was very much present. After the Good Friday Agreement, along with the change in the political situation in Northern Ireland, there was a generational change in the theatre. What seems to characterise this new wave is the ironic distance taken towards the sectarian divide and the consequences of the conflict on Northern Irish society, which is revealed above all in their use of humour. Lisa McGee, one of the most important representatives of the new generation thanks to the popularity of her television series Derry Girls, had already shown her maturity in her 2006 play Girls and Dolls, performed by Tinderbox the same year. McGee mixes the tragic and the comic to present the terrible consequences of childhood trauma alongside the violence of the late Troubles, while raising questions about guilt, the meaning of friendship and the subtle ways in which violence affects us. This article aims to analyse the different uses of humour employed by McGee to deal with tragic episodes and their theatrical effect, drawing on the existing research on humour in literature and McGee's own observations given in an interview with the author on 3 March 2023.
Estudios Irlandeses, 2024
Laughter in the midst of tragedy can be one of life's most disturbing, cathartic and enlightening... more Laughter in the midst of tragedy can be one of life's most disturbing, cathartic and enlightening experiences, a maxim experienced in Northern Ireland during the Troubles, one of the most painful periods of Irish history. Northern Irish playwrights were acutely aware of this when dealing with violence in their plays and so, however grim the events they depicted, the comic element was very much present. After the Good Friday Agreement, along with the change in the political situation in Northern Ireland, there was a generational change in the theatre. What seems to characterise this new wave is the ironic distance taken towards the sectarian divide and the consequences of the conflict on Northern Irish society, which is revealed above all in their use of humour. Lisa McGee, one of the most important representatives of the new generation thanks to the popularity of her television series Derry Girls, had already shown her maturity in her 2006 play Girls and Dolls, performed by Tinderbox the same year. McGee mixes the tragic and the comic to present the terrible consequences of childhood trauma alongside the violence of the late Troubles, while raising questions about guilt, the meaning of friendship and the subtle ways in which violence affects us. This article aims to analyse the different uses of humour employed by McGee to deal with tragic episodes and their theatrical effect, drawing on the existing research on humour in literature and McGee's own observations given in an interview with the author on 3 March 2023.
Irish Studies Review, 2024
Brian Friel’s play Translations (1980), set in a 19th-century hedge school on the west coast of I... more Brian Friel’s play Translations (1980), set in a 19th-century hedge school on the west coast of Ireland, chronicles the beginning of the decline of the Irish language. Since its premiere in Derry with the Field Day Company, it has become a classic of Irish theatre, one of the most performed plays on Irish stages, and one of Friel’s most popular plays abroad. Surprisingly, however, it had never been performed in Belfast’s best-loved playhouse, the Lyric Theatre, and had never been staged by a female director in Friel’s own country. This play by the Lyric Theatre Belfast and the Abbey Theatre Dublin is pioneering as the first co-production between these two major companies, the first time a woman, Caitriona McLaughlin, Artistic Director of the Abbey Theatre, has directed Translations in Ireland, and the first time a woman has held this position at the Abbey in the last 30 years. Through observations of the play premiered at the Lyric in April 2022 and of criticism in the media, and drawing on ideas that McLaughlin developed in an interview granted to me in September 2022, I will analyse the ways in which her proposal subverts received interpretations of this modern classic.
Quaderns de filologia. Estudis literaris, 2010
Brian Friel (omagh, 1929) es un dramaturgo norirlandés condicionado como pocos por su lugar de or... more Brian Friel (omagh, 1929) es un dramaturgo norirlandés condicionado como pocos por su lugar de origen. Su obra dramática está íntimamente enraizada en su comunidad, y desde allí disecciona el comportamiento humano tanto en sus facetas más personales como las más abiertamente sociales. Utilizando el inexistente pueblo de Ballybeg, en la costa de donegal, como su ecosistema particular, el autor reflexiona sobre aspectos tan universales como la lengua y su poder de comunicación e incomunicación, su utilización como estrategia de dominio, y su indisoluble ligazón con la cultura y la personalidad de un pueblo. La obra de la que nos ocuparemos, Translations, fue estrenada en derry por la compañía Field day en 1980, y trata de la confrontación cultural y lingüística que trajo a irlanda la colonización británica. La importancia que esta obra ha ido adquiriendo con el paso de los años la ha convertido en objeto de numerosos estudios académicos, e incluso la ha llevado a formar parte de la lista de obras occidentales más influyentes del siglo XX. En España se han podido ver ya varias obras de Friel, pero fue Translations, estrenada como Agur, Eire... agur la que cosechó el primer éxito, que se contagió a las compañías que la montaron. 1. TranslaTions Translations nos lleva a la irlanda de 1833, cuando aún el idioma mayoritario era el gaélico, y el pueblo se llamaba Baile Beg. La ordnance Survey enviada desde la metropoli va a elaborar un mapa preciso del país con los topónimos "estandarizados", o sea, traducidos al inglés, para evitar confusiones tanto al ejército como a los terratenientes. Los encargados de este trabajo son los zapadores ingleses, a las órdenes del capitán Lancey, que llegan al pueblo acompañados por el teniente Yolland, y un oriundo de Baile Beg, owen, reclutado en dublín, y que será quien cumpla la función de traductor.
TDX (Tesis Doctorals en Xarxa), May 6, 2011
Quaderns de filologia. Estudis literaris, Dec 28, 2007
Routledge eBooks, Jan 11, 2023
In Brian Friel's Making History (1988), the author presents the process by which minority dis... more In Brian Friel's Making History (1988), the author presents the process by which minority discourses are obviated and advocates the need for silenced narratives to be given a voice in retrospect. This play, based on O'Faolain's The Great O'Neill (1942), presents the events which resulted in the infamous Flight of the Earls with a dismantling of O'Neill's myth. Friel brings awareness to the erasure of the role of women in Irish history while enacting its recovery by means of the stage. Consequently, Mabel Bagenal, O'Neill's third wife, moves from a backward position to centre stage, becoming the Earl's main counsellor. Furthermore, this character, together with that of her sister, exhibits a different perspective on the colonisation of Ireland from that of the rest of the characters, due to her Protestant ascendency. History is thus disintegrated in as many histories as characters populate the play. In this manner, the writer also succeeds in mirro...
In Brian Friel's Making History (1988), the author presents the process by which minority dis... more In Brian Friel's Making History (1988), the author presents the process by which minority discourses are obviated and advocates the need for silenced narratives to be given a voice in retrospect. This play, based on O'Faolain's The Great O'Neill (1942), presents the events which resulted in the infamous Flight of the Earls with a dismantling of O'Neill's myth. Friel brings awareness to the erasure of the role of women in Irish history while enacting its recovery by means of the stage. Consequently, Mabel Bagenal, O'Neill's third wife, moves from a backward position to centre stage, becoming the Earl's main counsellor. Furthermore, this character, together with that of her sister, exhibits a different perspective on the colonisation of Ireland from that of the rest of the characters, due to her Protestant ascendency. History is thus disintegrated in as many histories as characters populate the play. In this manner, the writer also succeeds in mirro...
Brian Friel (Omagh, 1929) escribio la obra teatral Translations en 1980. Friel comparte con otros... more Brian Friel (Omagh, 1929) escribio la obra teatral Translations en 1980. Friel comparte con otros escritores postcoloniales la neurosis de tener que utilizar un idioma que no es el de sus antepasados. Con sus obras intenta encontrar una forma de expresion propia aceptando la naturaleza hibrida de la nueva cultura. En esta hace uso de una metafora topografica: la elaboracion de un mapa de Irlanda a cargo del ejercito britanico en 1833. Nos encontramos aqui con una forma de vida que desaparece, y la dificultad de adaptarse a la impuesta. Las reacciones varian: algunos aprenderan a vivir en esta nueva tierra, otros desearan una imposible vuelta atras, muchos otros quedaran vagando en tierra de nadie.
Ireland and Dysfunction: Critical Explorations in Literature and Film, 2017
Give Me Your Answer, Do! is Friel's last play in the 20th century, and also the last one ... more Give Me Your Answer, Do! is Friel's last play in the 20th century, and also the last one he wrote before receiving his country's homage on his seventieth birthday in 1999. It appeared after the much-praised Molly Sweeney, and it quickly came to be considered one of Friel's minor works. The fact that he himself directed it on its opening in the Abbey Theatre, in March 1997, with what reviewers considered a failed and amateurish direction of the actors, did not help the play to fly as high and as beautifully in the academic world as others have done in Friel's very long and prolific career. Bearing this in mind, we can appreciate the paradox of the main topic here: a writer on the verge of his sixties is suffering from a very long writer's block, and is in need of some kind of assessment, or so he believes, to recover his inspiration. Nonetheless, Friel had to wait for the abovementioned Friel Festival to obtain that assessment, considering how poorly Give Me Your Answer, Do! had done. Mc Grath, one of the most severe among the academics, deplored its lack of appeal: Give Me your Answer, Do! is a theme play too-about the necessity for uncertainty in life-but whereas the characterization is improved over Wonderful Tennessee, plot, theme, and characterization in this recent play are not well integrated. A number of possibilities are raised but most are left hanging and the tendentious speech toward the end about the necessity of uncertainty in life falls flat and fails to provide any resonance for the plot [...] As with Wonderful Tennessee in Give Me your Answer, Do! Friel fails to make us care about either the issues or the characters (McGrath 1999, 248-249).
Quaderns De Filologia Estudis Literaris, 2010
ABSTRACT La obra de la que nos ocuparemos, Translations, fue estrenada en Derry por la compañía F... more ABSTRACT La obra de la que nos ocuparemos, Translations, fue estrenada en Derry por la compañía Field Day en 1980, y trata de la confrontación cultural y lingüística que trajo a Irlanda la colonización británica. La importancia que esta obra ha ido adquiriendo con el paso de los años la ha convertido en objeto de numerosos estudios académicos, e incluso la ha llevado a formar parte de la lista de obras occidentales más influyentes del siglo XX.
Nordic Irish Studies , 2016
In Brian Friel's Making History (1988), the author presents the process by which minority discour... more In Brian Friel's Making History (1988), the author presents the process by which minority discourses are obviated and advocates the need for silenced narratives to be given a voice in retrospect. This play, based on O'Faolain's The Great O'Neill (1942), presents the events which resulted in the infamous Flight of the Earls with a dismantling of O'Neill's myth. Friel brings awareness to the erasure of the role of women in Irish history while enacting its recovery by means of the stage. Consequently, Mabel Bagenal, O'Neill's third wife, moves from a backward position to centre stage, becoming the Earl's main counsellor. Furthermore, this character, together with that of her sister, exhibits a different perspective on the colonisation of Ireland from that of the rest of the characters, due to her Protestant ascendency. History is thus disintegrated in as many histories as characters populate the play. In this manner, the writer also succeeds in mirroring the society of the twentieth century's Troubles. With this essay, I intend to reflect the new light in which Friel pictures the character of Mabel and his scrutiny of the different myths which have nourished the collective memory of the opposing factions in the North.
ADE Teatro, 2012
en día como el dramaturgo vivo más importante de Irlanda. Renovador del panorama cultural y teatr... more en día como el dramaturgo vivo más importante de Irlanda. Renovador del panorama cultural y teatral irlandés, bebe, no obstante, de la tradición dramática de sus predecesores: William Butler Yeats, John Millington Synge, Sean O'Casey y Samuel Beckett. Ha mostrado a lo largo de su prolífica carrera como autor dramático-con más de treinta obras teatrales estrenadas-su espíritu inquieto e innovador, cuya evolución corre paralela a la de esta sociedad, la irlandesa, y especialmente su comunidad, Irlanda del Norte, que ha experimentado cambios espectaculares, un país que a principios del
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Papers by María Gaviña Costero