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Brian Friel, who was born and raised in Northern Ireland, is called the best living Irish dramatist dealing with subjects focused on Ireland and its people in his plays.
In Faith Healer(1979), one of his best plays, Friel dramatizes a faith healer's experiences. The three characters, Frank(faith healer), Grace(Frank's wife), Teddy(Frank's manager) recollect the experiences they shared while travelling to cure the sick in Scotland and Wales. Their monologues detail the same experiences but are very different, according to Friel, because each recalls their memories according to their own desires and needs. Memory is not always accurate and can be a fiction.
Frank has the compulsion to transform all things around him into fiction. This ability is analogous to a writer's creative writing ability. Therefore, Frank is, in a sense, an artist.
Frank performs his faith healing shows in front of the sick with anxiety as he is not sure whether a miracle will occur or not. Like a faith healer, a dramatist as an artist writes dramas with anxiety because he is not sure that he will be able to move his audience with a successful performance. Frank is not sure that he will be able to move his audience. Frank is not sure if he has an ability to cure with miracles or if he is a con man. Like a faith healer, an artist has the sense of being a con man because he is indebted from his predecessors' works. Only through his death can Frank stop the maddening questions such as "Am I a con man? or am I endowed with a unique gift?" Frank is like a metaphor for an artist.
Friel, a dramatist, also has suffered from the agony of an artist and has been troubled by the scarcity of his creative works. Therefore Frank is a foil to Friel's autobiographical image.