Calendar of Events
Sunday, January 12, 2025
Theatre Knoxville Downtown: Dancing at Lughnasa
Category: Theatre
By Brian Friel
Directed by Barry Wallace
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. He is only seven in 1936, the year his elderly uncle, a priest, returns after serving for twenty-five years as a missionary in a Ugandan leper colony. For the young boy, two other disturbances occur that summer. The sisters acquire their first radio, whose music transforms them from correct Catholic women to shrieking, stomping banshees in their own kitchen. And he meets his father for the first time, a charming Welsh drifter who strolls up the lane and sweeps his mother away in an elegant dance across the fields. From these small events spring the cracks that destroy the foundation of the family forever. Widely regarded as Brian Friel’s masterpiece, this haunting play is Friel’s tribute to the spirit and valor of the past.
Performances are Thu-Sat 7:30 PM and Sun 3 PM
Theatre Knoxville Downtown, 800 S. Central Street, Knoxville, TN 37902. Information & tickets: 865-544-1999, www.theatreknoxville.com
Tennessee Stage Company: New Play Festival
Category: Literature, spoken word, writing and Theatre
NEW YEAR. NEW PLAYS. Celebrate the new year with an exciting series of groundbreaking new plays! Not only will you experience the performances, but you’ll also have the opportunity to engage with the playwrights about their creative process, share your insights with the creative team, and contribute to building these new works from the script up.
Staged readings will be held at the Clarence Brown Lab Theatre.
Table readings will be held at South Press.
All-Access Passes grant entry to all events. Seating is limited.
STAGED READINGS
ICED by Steve Sherman
Dramaturgy by Alex Drinnen
Facilitated by David Ratliff
SANDBAGS by Katie Myers
Dramaturgy by Emily Pope
Facilitated by Madison Mansouri
SNALLYGASTER by Barry Wallace
Dramaturgy by Harrison Young
Facilitated by H. Caitlin Corbitt
SWEETHEART DARLING HONEY BOO by Celeste Pelletier
Dramaturgy by Brady Craddock
Facilitated by Savannah Smith
TABLE READINGS
DECORATION DAY by Linda Parsons
RED, WHITE, AND BLACK by Greg Congleton
Phone: 865.546.4280
https://tennesseestage.com/newplayfest/
