Between the premiere of Brian Friel's stage play "Dancing at Lughnasa" in 1990 and Pat O'Connor's cinematic adaptation in 1998, Ireland experienced seismic economic and social changes, as well as Riverdance, Angela's Ashes and an international vogue for all things Irish. Set in 1936, "Dancing at Lughnasa", as both film and play, imagines an anachronistic past in which the loss of joyous communal ritual is symptomatic of the cultural malaise so often associated with Ireland in the 1930s. Drawing upon unpublished material from the Friel archive at the National Library of Ireland, Joan FitzPatrick Dean contrasts the expressly theatrical elements of Friel's play and their cinematic counterparts.