The TCAN Players present Dancing at Lughnasa
The Center for Arts in Natick, 14 Summer Street
September 29 - October 8, 2006

Directed by Rosann Santorelli
Co-directed by Sandy Clifford

Synopsis:

Set in the Irish countryside in 1936, Dancing at Lughnasa explores the lives of five unmarried sisters -- a school teacher, housekeeper, two knitters and an unmarried mother -- during the summer harvest festival, called Lughnasa (pronounced Loonasa) in the Celtic language. It is a memory play, told as a flashback, and is a sometimes humorous, sometimes tragic look at a family and the challenges they face. Friel also tells the story of his country, Ireland, by weaving pieces of history into the on-stage event.

The action of the play is told through the memory of the illegitimate son 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. Secondly, the young boy 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 could destroy the foundation of the family forever.

Character Information:

Kate Mundy - Julie Dapper
Maggie Mundy - Karen Dervin
Agnes Mundy - Donna Spurlock
Rose Mundy - Cherry Lynn Zinger
Christina Mundy - Gina Cuneo
Michael Mundy - Webb Tilney
Uncle Jack - Fred Marden
Gerry Evans - Patrick Boyd