Marina Carr

Life
1964- ; b. Dublin, raised Gortnamona, nr. Banagher, Co. Offaly; ed. Sacred Heart Convent, Tullamore, and UCD, BA, 1987 (English and Philosophy); lived for a year in New York, teaching and writing; commenced PhD on Beckett at TCD; plays incl. Low in the Dark (Project 1989), played by Crooked Sixpence Company; The Deers Surrender (Andrew’s Lane Th. 1990), for and by Gaiety School of Acting, June 1990; Ullaloo (Peacock 1991), following a rehearsed reading with Derek Chapman, Olwen Foere, and Tom Hickey during 1989 Theatre Festival; This Love Thing (1991); The Mai (1994), winner of Dublin Theatre Festival Best New Play Award, 1994; appt. writer in residence at the Abbey Theatre in 1995; The Mai revived, Abbey, Summer 1995; transferred to Paris as part of l’Imaginaire Irlande; also Portia Coughlan (Peacock 30 March 1996), three-act play commissioned by the National Maternity Hospital, Dublin, set in the Irish midlands, in which family secrets of incest drive the title-character to drown herself in the same river as her brother and alter-ego Gabriel; remarked for violence of language, it went on to make a hit at Royal Court, London (May 1996), with Derbhle [sic] Crotty in the lead role, winning her the Susan Smith Blackburn Award for women playwrights ($5,000); On Raftery’s Hill (Druid 1996); Ansbacher writer in residence at the Abbey theatre, 1996; By the The Bog of Cats (Abbey, 7 Oct. 1998), with Olwen Fouéré as Hester Swane, opp. Conor MacDermottroe; elected to Aosdána, 1995; TCD writer in residence, 1999; Portia Coughlan premiered in Toronto, Dec. 2001; new a play, Ariel (Abbey, Oct. 2002), dir. Conall Morrison, based on Euripides’ Iphigenia at Aulis; a play for children, Meat and Salt (Peacock Feb. 2003), adapted from King Lear-like fairy tale.

Works
Plays, The Mai (Oldcastle: Gallery Press 1995), 72[90]pp.; Low in the Dark, in David Grant, ed., A Crack in the Emerald (London: Nick Hern Books 1990, 1994); Portia Coughlan, ‘ded. for Dermot [Bolger]’, in Frank McGuinness sel. and ed., The Dazzling Dark: New Irish Plays (London: Faber & Faber 1996) [with three other plays by Gina Moxley, Jimmy Murphy, and Tom McIntyre] pp.235-311, with author’s ‘Afterword’; Portia Coughlan [rev. edn.] (Oldcastle: Gallery Press 1998), 67pp.; By the The Bog of Cats (Oldcastle: Gallery Press 1998), 81pp.; Marina Carr: Plays 1: Low in the Dark; The Mai; Portia Coughllan; By the Bog of Cats [Contemporary Classics] (London: Faber & Faber 1999), 341pp.; On Raftery’s Hill (Oldcastle: Gallery Press 2000), 55pp.; Ariel (Oldcastle: Gallery Press 2002), 72pp. See also Judy Friel & Sanford Sternlicht eds., New Plays from the Abbey Theatre Vol 2: 1996-1998 [Irish Studies] (Syracuse UP 2001), xviii, 245pp.

Fiction incl. Dermot Bolger, ed. [with Ciaran Carty], The Hennessy Book of Irish Fiction (New Islands 1995). Miscellaneous, ‘Dealing with the Dead’, in The Irish University Review, 28, 1 (1998), pp.190-96.

Reprints, “By the Bog of Cats”, in Judy Friel & Sanford Sternlicht, ed. & intro., New Plays from the Abbey Theatre, Vol 2: 1996-1998 (Syracuse UP 2001).

Criticism
Cathy Leeney & Anna McMullan, The Theatre of Marina Carr: “before rules was made” (Carysfort Press 2003), 255pp. [infra].

Eileen Battersby, ‘Marina of the Midlands’, in The Irish Times, 4 May 2000). For this and further reviews, &c., see Commentary, infra.

Bruce Stewart, ‘“A fatal Excess” at the Heart of Irish Atavism’, in IASIL Newsletter, 5, 1 (1999), p.1.

Victor Merriman, ‘Decolonisation Postponed: The Theatre of Tiger Trash’, in Irish University Review, 29, 2 (1999), pp.305-07.

Eamonn Jordan [on Carr], in Marianne McDonald, & J. Michael Walton, eds., Amid Our Troubles: Irish Versions of Greek Tragedy, intro. by Declan Kiberd (London: Methuen 2002).

Cathy Leeney & Anna McMullan, The Theatre of Marina Carr: “before rules was made” (Carysfort Press 2003), 255pp.

Frank McGuinness, sel. & ed., The Dazzling Dark: New Irish Plays (London: Faber & Faber 1996).

Vic Merriman, ‘Decolonisation: The Theatre of Tiger Trash’, Irish University Review, Autumn/Winter 1999, pp.305-17.

John Devitt, ‘Brief Notes’, in Irish Literary Supplement (Fall 1995), reviews The Mai (Oldcastle: Gallery 1995)

Joan Bakewell [diary column], in Spectator (1 June, 1996).

Phoenix [satirical magazine] (23 Oct. 1998), p.20.

Fintan O’Toole, ‘Arts at the Crossroads’, The Irish Times, 9 June 2001, Weekend, Feature, p.1.

Stephen Brown, review of Marina Carr, On Raftery’s Hill (Royal Court, London), in Times Literary Supplement (21 July 2000).

Eileen Battersby, ‘Marina of the Midlands’, interview-article, The Irish Times, [Thurs.] 4 May 2000.

Sean Doran, review Marina Carr, On Raftery’s Hill (2000), in Books Ireland (Sept. 2001)

Eleanor Margolies, ‘Violent Measures’, review of Conversations from a Homecoming (Gaiety Th., Dublin) and Marina Carr, Ariel (Abbey Th., Dublin), in Times Literary Supplement (8 Nov. 2002)

‘Afterword’ to Portia Coughlan, in The Dazzling Dark: New Irish Plays, 1999: ‘Now I think it’s no accident it’s [Co. Offaly] called Midlands. For me at least it has become a metaphor for the cross-roads between worlds.’ (Quoted in Clare Wallace, ‘Desire, Destiny and Dystopia in Marina Carr’s drama’, paper, IASIL 1999).

‘Midland Accent. I’ve given a slight flavour in the text, but the real midland accent is a lot flatter and rougher and more guttural than the written word allows.’ (Stage directions, By the Bog of Cats, 1998 [p.8]).

Ghosts, &c. : ‘The culture believes in ghosts, certainly in the country. The banshee was a huge thing [...] In the city everything is forgotten now, everything is homogenised, and all of this seems so remote, but to me it’s not remote, it’s entirely natural. I’m a great believer in the whole angel thing, I don’t known what I believe in, but I do believe in something.’ (Reading the Future: Irish Writers in Conversation with Mike Murphy, RTE [www.rte.ie/radio/ .. &c.; quoted in Clare Wallace, ‘Authentic Reproductions’, in Cathy Leeney, ed., The Theatre of Marina Carr, 2003, p.55).

Bad Choice?: Christina Hunt Mahony (Funds, faculties and a nostalgia gap’, The Irish Times, Sat. 12 April 2003, Weekend), writes: ‘The choice of Marina Carr’s On Raftery’s Hill for a major Irish arts festival at the Kennedy Centre in Washington is a case in point. The festival was a considerable success, but the play caused a furore, resulting in many empty seats after the interval and the incestuous rape which closed the first half. Cases of such abuse as Carr portrayed make the pages of Irish newspapers regularly, but the Irish abroad were unwilling or unable to accept this as a modern reality. For most emigrants the clock stops when they leave the country, and a degree of reverence for Irish institutions - family, religion, political probity and oul’ decency - is essential to the maintenance of Irish identity abroad.’

John Devitt (‘Brief Notes’, Irish Literary Supplement, Fall 1995, p.36), notes essay by Anthony Roche tracing Synge’s Shadow, Deevy’s Katie Roche, and Marina Carr’s The Mai with the intention of bringing women dramatists in from the margins of neglected literary history [see Roche, Modern Irish Theatre, 1995, and Leeney and MacMullan, 2003, as supra.]

Melissa Sihra (Lecturer in Drama, Queen’s University Belfast), completed a PhD thesis at Marina Carr at TCD, and most worked with Carr and Conall Morrison (Ass. Dir., Abbey Th.) on Carr’s Ariel.