Opening on April 20th at the Lyric Theatre, Belfast, Give Me Your Answer Do will be the first production in Noel Pearson's forthcoming Friel Festival. Celebrating the playwright's 70th birthday, the festival spans the early months of the summer and involves the Abbey and Peacock, the Gate, and Lyric theatres, as well as UCD and the National Library.

The Lyric opening will be followed a week later by The Freedom Of The City at the Abbey (April 28th), then Aristocrats at the Gate (May 4th), Living Quarters at the Peacock (May 19th), Big Telly's production of Lovers: Winners and Losers at Andrews Lane (May 31st), an RSC production of A Month in the Country at the Gaiety (June 8th), Dancing at Lughnasa at the Abbey (June 9th) and Making History at the Peacock (June 30th, running until August 7th).

A two-day academic conference on Friel's work (Newman House on May 15th and 16th), will be co-ordinated by Anthony Roche of UCD, with lectures by Declan Kiberd, Katherine Worth and Richard Pine, and contributions from Cathy Leeney, Redmond O'Hanlon and Christopher Murray. On Friday May 14th, a special Friel issue of the Irish University Review will be launched in the Abbey by Seamus Deane. Contributors will include Seamus Deane, Thomas Kilroy, Frank McGuinness, Anna McMullen, Seamus Heaney and Nicholas Grene. There will also be a series of pre- and post-show discussions and readings at the Abbey during May, June and July.

On Thursday May 6th an exhibition at the National Library of letters, play-scripts, posters, photographs and programmes from the National Theatre's archive will be opened by Seamus Heaney.