Marina Carr [electronic resource] : Pastures of the Unknown /
Sihra, Melissa.author.
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.
1. Towards a Matriarchal Lineage -- 2. Seeking a Landscape: Early Pastures -- 3. Lakes of the Night: The Mai -- 4. Topographies of the Mind: Portia Coughlan -- 5. Writ in the Sky: By the Bog of Cats… -- 6. The Haunted Kitchen: On Raftery’s Hill -- 7. Psychic Terrains: Ariel and Woman and Scarecrow -- 8. Playing the Field: The Cordelia Dream and Meat and Salt -- 9. Landscapes of the Mind’s Eye: The Giant Blue Hand and Marble -- 10. The Nature of Playwriting: Sixteen Possible Glimpses, Phaedra Backwards and Hecuba -- 11.Beyond the Gauze.
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.
Theater.
British literature.
Contemporary Theatre.
British and Irish Literature.
National/Regional Theatre and Performance.