Each year hours of effort go into the drama club’s performances at LHS, and this year’s fall play is no different. Brian Hardie, who organizes and directs the club, has spent several months preparing for this play, including casting the characters and designing and building a model for the set. 

“I love enabling students to find the value in storytelling. Theater is an experience, it’s an art form that only exists in the moments that it’s right there in front of you,” said Hardie.

 Hardie studied Irish drama in college, and this particular play came recommended to him by a colleague. 

“Dancing At Lughnasa” takes place in the 1930s in County Donegal, a northern county in Ireland. In the play five sisters, Kate, Maggie, Rose, Christina and Agnes Mundy, raise a child born out of wedlock. Other characters include Jack, who has recently returned home to Ireland, Gerry, the father of Christina’s child and Michael, the son of Gerry and Christina. According to Hardie, the story takes place during the introduction of modernity to Ireland, when older ways of thinking are starting to make way for modern ideas about religion, gender expectations and marriage. These themes are present throughout the story alongside the play’s more obvious plot about the Mundy family. 

“It’s a play of subtleties… it is very subtextual in its dealing with all of this,” said Hardie. 

One of the play’s characters, Gerry Evans, is played by Sam McConnell, a member of the LHS drama club. Gerry Evans is a man in his 30s and the father of Christina Mundy’s child. Gerry was absent for part of his son’s life but has now returned to renew the relationship. 

“My character, [Gerry], kind of represents the toxic masculinity of the time,” said McConnell. “During [the 1930s] there was a very patriarchal society, women weren’t as respected… [The play] follows the story of how these five women are able to break society’s constraints on them and be themselves.” 

Students who watch the play will also experience a variety of other complex characters in addition to Gerry. 

“No one’s in the right, no one’s in the wrong, everyone is human, a lot of these characters have done bad things but they’ve also done good things,” said McConnell. 

“Dancing at Lughnasa” will be shown at LHS in the little theater on Nov. 17, 18 and 19 at 7 p.m. The price is $5 per ticket and there will be additional matinees on Nov. 19 at 1 p.m. and Nov. 16 at 12:30 p.m. Seating for this show will be limited, so make sure to get there right away and enjoy the show!