This book locates the theatre of Marina Carr within a female genealogy that revises the patriarchal origins of modern Irish drama. The creative vision of Lady Augusta Gregory underpins the analysis of Carr’s dramatic vision throughout the volume in order to re-situate the woman artist as central to Irish theatre. For Carr, ‘writing is more about the things you cannot understand than the things you can’, and her evocation of ‘pastures of the unknown’ forms the thematic through-line of this work. Lady Gregory’s plays offer an intuitive lineage with Carr which can be identified in their use of language, myth, landscape, women, the transformative power of storytelling and infinite energies of nature and the Otherworld. This book reconnects the severed bridge between Carr and Gregory in order to acknowledge a foundational status for all women in Irish theatre.

Marina Carr and Greek Tragedy examines the feminist transposition of Greek tragedy in the theatre of the contemporary Irish dramatist Marina Carr. Through a comparison of the plays based on classical drama with their ancient models, it investigates Carr’s transformation not only of the narrative but also of the form of Greek tragedy. As a religious and political institution of the 5th-century Athenian democracy, tragedy endorsed the sexist oppression of women. Indeed, the construction of female characters in Greek tragedy was entirely disconnected from the experience of womanhood lived by real women in order to embody the patriarchal values of Athenian democracy. Whether praised for their passivity or demonized for showing unnatural agency and subjectivity, women in Greek tragedy were conceived to (re)assert the supremacy of men. Carr’s theatre stands in stark opposition to such a purpose. Focusing on women’s struggle to achieve agency and subjectivity in a male-dominated world, her plays show the diversity of experiencing womanhood and sexist oppression in the Republic of Ireland, and the Western societies more generally. Yet, Carr’s enduring conversation with the classics in her theatre demonstrates the feminist willingness to alter the founding myths of Western civilisation to advocate for gender equality.

"This is the first collection of articles to be published on the theatre of Marina Carr, a major contemporary Irish playwright whose work is highly acclaimed in Ireland and internationally for its poetic energy and its remarkable theatrical imagination." "These essays examine Carr's highly original voice, and place her plays in the context of current theatre in Ireland and abroad. They raise lively debate on contemporary representation of 'Irishness' on the stage, on the current state of Irish theatre, on the impact of female authorship on the canon of Irish theatre, and on Carr's portrayal of characters who are fundamentally at odds with the world around them."--BOOK JACKET.

This third richly varied collection of plays by Marina Carr was published to coincide with the Royal Shakespeare Company's premiere of Hecuba at the Swan Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon, in September 2015. Sixteen Possible Glimpses imagines sixteen fleeting moments in Anton Chekhov's short life and work. Phaedra Backwards retells the Phaedra myth to discover what shaped her. The Map of Argentina offers a meditation on love and what happens when it is denied, or pursued and hunted down. Hecuba was written in reaction to the bad press this Trojan queen receives, and reimagines how she may have suffered and reacted. Indigo is a dark and passionate romance amongst fairies, demons, ghouls and every sort of fantastic creature out of folklore and myth.

The first collection of plays by Marina Carr introduces the work of a major new voice in playwriting. Low in the Dark 'One of the most exciting, new and absolutely original aspects of Carr's writing is the manner in which the sexism of the language and religious imagery is exposed... Marina Carr is a playwright to be watched.' Sunday Tribune The Mai 'The writing is at once gentle and raucous... capable of articulating deep-seated woes and resentments in a manner you rarely find outside Eugene O'Neill.' Observer Portia Coughlan 'A play of precocious maturity and accomplishment.' Irish Times ' Portia Coughlan packs a hell of a punch. It hurts to look at it. But it has to be seen.' Irish Independent By the Bog of Cats... 'A poetic realism steeped in the past... Carr has an extraordinary ability to move between the mythic and the real.' Guardian 'A great play... a great work of poetry... the word should soon carry across both sides of the Atlantic.' Independent

On Raftery's Hill 'This is a play that howls to be seen; its courage is matched only by its dramatic power.' Sunday Independent Ariel 'An astonishing piece of theatre. Interweaving themes drawn from Irish, Greek and biblical myth, she spins a tale of power that is honest, emotional, dark and true . . . Die to see it.' Irish Examiner Woman and Scarecrow 'Drama doesn't come much richer or stranger than this death-bed lament. Ravishing in its dense, literary language, it is as visceral as it is intellectual. It lingers not only in the ear and brain, but in the imagination and the gut. An extraordinary brew, bittersweet and totally intoxicating.' The Times The Cordelia Dream 'A brave piece and clearly charged with deep feeling. . . This is certainly unsettling territory and Carr boldly goes for it.' Financial Times Marble 'An extraordinary play that lures us in with a promise of the recognisable only to drag us screaming into the soaring, magnificent possibilities of love and the destruction that it wreaks.' Irish Independent

Essays on contemporary Irish theatre

Medea - simply to mention her name conjures up echoes and cross-connections from Antiquity to the present. The vengeful wife, the murderess of her own children, the frail, suicidal heroine, the archetypal Bad Mother, the smitten maiden, the barbarian, the sorceress, the abused victim, the case study for a pathology. For more than two thousand years, she has arrested the eye in paintings, reverberated in opera, called to us from the stage. She demands the most interdisciplinary of study, from ancient art to contemporary law and medicine; she is no more to be bound by any single field of study than by any single take on her character. The contributors to this wide-ranging volume are Brian Arkins, Angela J. Burns, Anthony Bushell, Richard Buxton, Peter A. Campbell, Margherita Carucci, Daniela Cavallaro, Robert Cowan, Hilary Emmett, Edith Hall, Laurence D. Hurst, Ekaterini Kepetzis, Ivar Kvistad, Catherine Leglu, Yixu Lue, Edward Phillips, Elizabeth Prettejohn, Paula Straile-Costa, John Thorburn, Isabelle Torrance, Terence Stephenson, and Amy Wygant.

The Methuen Drama Guide to Contemporary Irish Playwrights is an authoritative guide to the work of twenty-five playwrights from the last 50 years whose work has helped to shape and define Irish theatre. Written by a team of international scholars, it provides an illuminating survey and analysis of each writer's plays and will be invaluable to anyone interested in, studying or teaching contemporary Irish drama. The playwrights examined range from John B. Keane, Brian Friel and Tom Murphy, to the crop of writers who emerged in the 1990s and who include Martin McDonagh, Marina Carr, Emma Donoghue and Mark O'Rowe. Each essay features: a biographical sketch and introduction to the playwright a discussion of their most important plays an analysis of their stylistic and thematic traits, the critical reception and their place in the discourses of Irish theatre a bibliography of texts and critical material With a total of 190 plays discussed in detail, over half of which were written during the 1990s and 2000s, The Methuen Drama Guide to Contemporary Irish Playwrights is unrivalled in its study of recent plays and playwrights.

Irish women writers have a large following, and their works are attracting large amounts of scholarly and critical attention. Through roughly 75 alphabetically arranged entries written by more than 35 expert contributors, this reference overviews the lives and works of Irish women writers active in a range of genres and periods. Each entry includes a brief biography, a discussion of major works and themes, a survey of the writer's critical reception, and a list of works by and about the author. The volume closes with a selected, general bibliography. Ireland has an especially lively literary tradition, and works by Irish writers have long been recognized as interesting and influential. While male writers have received the bulk of the critical attention given to Irish literature, contemporary women writers are among the most widely read Irish authors. This reference overviews the lives and works of Irish women writers active in a range of periods and genres. Included are roughly 75 alphabetically arranged entries written by more than 35 expert contributors. Among the writers discussed are: ; Elizabeth Bowen ; Mary Dorcey ; Lady Isabella Augusta Gregory ; Anne Hartigan ; Norah Hoult ; Paula Meehan ; Iris Murdoch ; Edna O'Brien ; Katharine Tynan ; Sheila Wingfield ; And many more. Each entry includes a brief biography, a discussion of major works and themes, a review of the writer's critical reception, and a list of works by and about the writer. The volume closes with a selected, general bibliography.