Marina Carr: Pastures of the Unknown

Description

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. Front Matter ....Pages i-xiv Introduction: Towards a Matriarchal Lineage (Melissa Sihra)....Pages 1-38 Seeking a Landscape: Early Pastures (Melissa Sihra)....Pages 39-72 Lakes of the Night: The Mai (Melissa Sihra)....Pages 73-91 Topographies of the Mind: Portia Coughlan (Melissa Sihra)....Pages 93-115 Writ in the Sky: By the Bog of Cats… (Melissa Sihra)....Pages 117-147 The Haunted Kitchen: On Raftery’s Hill (Melissa Sihra)....Pages 149-176 Psychic Terrains: Ariel and Woman and Scarecrow (Melissa Sihra)....Pages 177-204 Playing the Field: The Cordelia Dream and Meat and Salt (Melissa Sihra)....Pages 205-222 Landscapes of the Mind’s Eye: The Giant Blue Hand and Marble (Melissa Sihra)....Pages 223-248 The Nature of Playwriting: Sixteen Possible Glimpses, Phaedra Backwards and Hecuba (Melissa Sihra)....Pages 249-276 Conclusion: Through the Gauze (Melissa Sihra)....Pages 277-291 Back Matter ....Pages 293-303