Lake City High School Theatre Department will present Brian Friel's "Dancing at Lughnasa," winner of three Tony Awards.

Performances will be held at 7 p.m. on Feb. 19, 20, 21, 26, 27 and 28. All performances will be held in the Lake City High School Auditorium.

Tickets are $5 to $8 and can be purchased in the Lake City High School activities office or at the door one hour before the performance. Group discounts are available.

Set in the 1930s, "Dancing at Lughnasa" focuses on five unmarried sisters living together in the Irish countryside. The household consists of the imperious teacher Kate, the irreverent Maggie, the serene and steady Agnes, the sweetly eccentric Rose, and the romantic Chris, who has given birth to an illegitimate son, Michael. The women cling to their knitting needles and the radio, from which music enters the house to distract them from the inevitable change that has begun to overwhelm the simple pleasures and traditions of their village life. Young Michael cleaves to his kite, as his absentee father, Gerry, unexpectedly arrives on his motorcycle to stir the sisters' fires of passion. Meanwhile, the sisters' older brother, Jack, returns home from 25 years of missionary work, ill and disoriented, forgetting his sisters' names and further layering the play's themes of memory and forgetting.

The Lughnasa festival of light and rebirth provides the play's offstage backdrop and stirs the conflict of pagan and Christian cultures. One by one, the sisters submit to the lure of the Earth, dancing like dervishes, remembering pilgrimages to past dances and their lost innocence. Michael is the silent witness who will tell their story in its context of personal, cultural, emotional and economic change.

"Dancing at Lughnasa" achieved critical acclaim and commercial success on Broadway in 1992. Friel has also authored "Philadelphia, Here I Come!" and "Translations." In his plays, Friel examines the issue of memory on both a cultural and personal level. Another common theme in Friel's writing is that of language and the loss of language, as Gaelic culture was eventually lost through the colonization by the British.

The director of "Dancing at Lughnasa" is Sandra Seaton, Lake City High School theatre teacher and director. The stage manager is Brittney Ellenbecker. The sisters are played by Grace Warnick (Kate), Sydney Bell (Maggie), Rachel Kircher (Agnes), Cassidy Tidwell (Rose) and Piper Glover (Chris). The male members of the cast are Apollo Rose as Gerry, Oskar Owens as Michael and Daniel Bell as Jack.

The design team includes scenic designers Ryan Hamm and Riley Hess; costume designer Grace Warnick; light designer Brandon Miller; sound designer Quang Ngo and assistant stage manager Kyto Katori.