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Marina Carr

MARINA CARR

  (1964 - )
Nationality:    Irish
email:    n/a     Website:    n/a

Literary Agent:    The Agency (London) Ltd  represented by emily Hickman

Marina Carr was born in 1964 and grew up in County Offaly. She graduated from UCD in 1987. early plays include Low in the Dark, This Love Thing and Ullaloo. the Gallery Press publishes the Mai, Portia CougHLAn (Susan Smith Blackburn Award, 1997), By the Bog of Cats (Irish Times/ eSB Award for Best New Play, 1998), On Rafterys Hill, Ariel, Woman and Scarecrow, the Cordelia Dream, Marble and 16 Possible Glimpses (October 2011). Her awards include the Irish Times Best New Play Award, the Dublin Theatre Festival Best New Play Award 1994, a Macauley Fellowship, a Hennessey Award, the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, and an e.M. Forster Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. She has been Writer-in-Residence at Trinity College and was Heimbold Professor of Irish Studies at Villanova University in 2003. She is a member of Aosdana and lives in Kerry.

Research:    http://www.irishplayography.com/person.aspx?personid=300

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below is a list of Marina Carr's plays - click on a Play Title for more information

         16 Possible Glimpses         Ariel         Book Of Life, The         By the Bog Of Cats         Cordelia Dream, The         Giant Blue Hand, The         Hecuba         Indigo         Kreutzer Sonata         Little Ones, The         Low In the Dark         Mai, The         Map of Argentina, The         Marble         Meat And Salt         On Raftery's Hill         Phaedra Backwards         Portia Coughlan         Quartet         This Love Thing         Ullalloo         We Were Here         Woman And Scarecrow

16 Possible Glimpses

16 Possible Glimpses
In 16 Possible Glimpses, a series of dialogues and domestic scenes flash through the life of Chekhov, the master story teller, master playwright, doctor, lover, brother, son. Glimpse; oceans of champagne, coffins, snow, beautiful gardens, a black monk travelling through time, trees, vodka, women, women, women and a life in which eternity is the only thing worth talking about.

Notes:
-

1st Produced:

Organisations:
Ulster Bank Dublin Theatre Festival

1st Published:
the Gallery Press (5 Oct 2011)   978-1852355210

Music:
-

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Genre:
Play/Drama

Parts:
Male:  1            Female:  1            Other:  -

Further Reference:
-

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Ariel

Ariel
Fermoy Fitzgerald, a politician from the Irish midlands, is a man capable of anything. He has the dreams of a conqueror. In Ariel Marina Carr attends to events surrounding his daughter's sixteenth birthday and dissects the soul of a man in thrall to powerful forces. By scratching the scars of a family's ancient skirmishes she unfolds the story of Cuura Lake. While the play embraces age-old themes - power and its price, fate, the importance of remembering and of forgetting - it is also the author's most contemporary work. Gorgeously cadenced, elaborately wrought, it is a score for the grand scale of her dreadful imaginings. Marina Carr is our laureate of destructive passions. Ariel signals a leap in the trajectory of this prodigiously talented writer.

Notes:
-

1st Produced:

Organisations:

1st Published:
the Gallery Press, Ireland, 2002   978- 1 85235 332 2

Music:
-

To Buy This Play:
If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click from the Publisher, otherwise (below) are AbeBooks for secondhand, signed & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies

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Genre:
Play/Drama

Parts:
Male:  6            Female:  6            Other:  -

Further Reference:
-

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Book Of Life, The

Synopsis:
-

Notes:
-

1st Produced:

Organisations:
-

1st Published:
-   -

Music:
-

To Buy This Play:
If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click from the Publisher, otherwise (below) are AbeBooks for secondhand, signed & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies

Booksellers:

Genre:
-

Parts:
Male:  -            Female:  -            Other:  -

Further Reference:
-

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By the Bog Of Cats

By the Bog Of Cats
Set in the mysterious landscape of the bogs of rural Ireland, Carr's lyrical and timeless play tells the story of Hester Swane, an Irish traveller with a deep and unearthly connection to her land. Tormented by the memory of a mother who deserted her, Hester is once again betrayed, this time by the Father of her child, the man she loves. On the brink of despair, she embarks on a terrible journey of vengeance as the secrets of her tangled history are revealed.

Notes:
-

1st Produced:

Organisations:

1st Published:
Faber and Faber (2 Dec 2004)   978-0571227662

Music:
-

To Buy This Play:
If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click from the Publisher, otherwise (below) are AbeBooks for secondhand, signed & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies

Booksellers:

Genre:
Play/Drama

Parts:
Male:  6            Female:  5            Other:  1 g, extras

Further Reference:
http://www.Theatrerecord.org/, Theatre Record Vol XXIV (2004) Page 1625

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Cordelia Dream, The

Cordelia Dream, The
An old man, his life coming to a close, declares: Men should not have daughters. A woman, refusing to deal with his ghost, makes her 'dark pilgrimage' to his door. there they argue the language of love and loss and reply the battle between them, the 'ancient eternal' blood bond of parent and child. With its resonance of King Lear Marina Carr's tense, impassioned Drama uncoils a torrent of confessions, accusations, contritions and blame, as her garrulous protagonists compete, if not for the grail of reconciliation, for the consolation of understanding. the Cordelia Dream, a Royal Shakespeare Company commission, lays out another urgent installment of this unflinching playwright's exploration of families, their needs, their shortcomings and of the darkness in the human heart.

Notes:
-

1st Produced:

Organisations:
RSC

1st Published:
the Gallery Press (2008)   978- 1 85235 456 5

Music:
-

To Buy This Play:
If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click from the Publisher, otherwise (below) are AbeBooks for secondhand, signed & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies

Booksellers:

Genre:
Play/Drama

Parts:
Male:  1            Female:  1            Other:  -

Further Reference:
http://www.Theatrerecord.org/, Theatre Record Vol XXVIII (2008) Page 1422

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Giant Blue Hand, The

Synopsis:
Two boys, a giant blue hand and an aunt in pink wellingtons

Notes:
-

1st Produced:
The Ark, A Cultural Centre For Children     12 Feb 2009

Organisations:
the Ark, A Cultural Centre for Children

1st Published:
-   -

Music:
-

To Buy This Play:
If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click from the Publisher, otherwise (below) are AbeBooks for secondhand, signed & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies

Booksellers:

Genre:
Childrens play

Parts:
Male:  7            Female:  5            Other:  -

Further Reference:
-

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Hecuba

Hecuba
Troy has fallen. It's the end of war and the beginning of something else. Something worse. As the cries die down after the final battle, there are reckonings to be made. Humiliated by her defeat and imprisoned by the charismatic victor Agamemnon, the great queen Hecuba must wash the blood of her buried sons from her hands and lead her daughters forward into a world they no longer recognise. Agamemnon has slaughtered his own daughter to win this war. But now another sacrifice is demanded. . . In a world where human instinct has been ravaged by violence, is everything as it seems in the hearts of the winners and those they have defeated?

Notes:
Original Playwright - Euripides. Marina Carr's reimagining of the legend of Hecuba in a visceral new play. A searing vision of war, womanhood and courage, inventively told.

1st Produced:

Organisations:
RSC

1st Published:
in Marina Carr: Plays 3, Faber and Faber Ltd, London (2015) >>>
Dramatists Play Service, Inc. NY (2016)   978-0571328819

Music:
-

To Buy This Play:
If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click from the Publisher, otherwise (below) are AbeBooks for secondhand, signed & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies

Booksellers:

Genre:
adaptation

Parts:
Male:  4            Female:  4            Other:  extras

Further Reference:
-

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Indigo

Indigo
-

Notes:
Indigo came about through a series of workshops led by mikel Murfi under the auspices of the Royal Shakespeare Company. The play was written by marina Carr in response to those workshops and is intended to be directed by Mikel Murfi. The RSC currently hold the licence for the stage rights.

1st Produced:
-    

Organisations:
RSC

1st Published:

Music:
-

To Buy This Play:
If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click from the Publisher, otherwise (below) are AbeBooks for secondhand, signed & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies

Booksellers:

Genre:
adaptation

Parts:
Male:  -            Female:  -            Other:  -

Further Reference:
-

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Kreutzer Sonata

Synopsis:
-

Notes:
-

1st Produced:
-    

Organisations:
Siren Productions

1st Published:
-   -

Music:
-

To Buy This Play:
If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click from the Publisher, otherwise (below) are AbeBooks for secondhand, signed & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies

Booksellers:

Genre:
thriller

Parts:
Male:  -            Female:  -            Other:  -

Further Reference:
-

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Little Ones, The

Synopsis:
-

Notes:
-

1st Produced:
The Ark, A Cultural Centre For Children    

Organisations:
-

1st Published:
-   -

Music:
-

To Buy This Play:
If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click from the Publisher, otherwise (below) are AbeBooks for secondhand, signed & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies

Booksellers:

Genre:
Childrens play

Parts:
Male:  -            Female:  -            Other:  -

Further Reference:
-

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Low In the Dark

Low In the Dark
Low in the Dark explores the myths and misconceptions between the sexes. In Bender and Binder's world, men are a necessary irritant. their time is spent reliving their relationships, for the most part unsuccessful events. Baxter and Bone, ignorant and innocent of women, spend their time imagining the Ideal Woman. Orchestrating this furore is Curtains, who has her own version of the story of Man and Woman.

Notes:
-

1st Produced:

Organisations:

1st Published:
in the Crack In the emerald, Nick Hern Books, London, 1990   -

Music:
-

To Buy This Play:
If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click from the Publisher, otherwise (below) are AbeBooks for secondhand, signed & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies

Booksellers:

Genre:
Play/Drama

Parts:
Male:  3            Female:  2            Other:  -

Further Reference:
http://www.Theatrerecord.org/, Theatre Record Vol XIII (1993) Page 0501

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Mai, The

Mai, The
an accomplished, beautiful forty-year-old woman, the Mai has always sought an exceptional life. Robert, her cellist husband, has always felt stifled by the Mai's ideals of perfection. after seventeen years he leaves her, whereupon she sets about building a dream house in the hope that he will one day return to her. From her fairytale castle, the Mai waits by the window for her dark-haired prince to return. Set in the inspiring surrounds of the West of Ireland, on the banks of the legendary Owl Lake, we enter this world on the day of Robert's return after an absence of four years. In the midst of Mai's and Robert's troubled reunion are the idiosyncratic characters that comprise the family. Irreverent and unapologetic, the opium-smoking one-hundred-year-old matriarch, Grandma Fraochlan, presides over all. the "Spanish Beauty," as she is known, with her "ancient and fantastical memory" and mythical presence, reminds us that the past is looming ever present. Her daughters, agnes and Julie, meddle in the affairs o

Notes:
-

1st Produced:

Organisations:

1st Published:
the Gallery Press, Ireland, 1995   978- 1 85235 161 8

Music:
-

To Buy This Play:
If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click from the Publisher, otherwise (below) are AbeBooks for secondhand, signed & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies

Booksellers:

Genre:
Play/Drama

Parts:
Male:  1            Female:  7            Other:  -

Further Reference:
http://www.Theatrerecord.org/, Theatre Record Vol XV (1995) Page 0629; http://www.Theatrerecord.org/, Theatre Record Vol XVII (1997) Page 0536

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Map of Argentina, The

Map of Argentina, The
offers a meditation on love and what happens when it is denied, or pursued and hunted down

Notes:
-

1st Produced:
-    

Organisations:
-

1st Published:

Music:
-

To Buy This Play:
If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click from the Publisher, otherwise (below) are AbeBooks for secondhand, signed & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies

Booksellers:

Genre:
Play/Drama

Parts:
Male:  -            Female:  -            Other:  -

Further Reference:
-

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Marble

Marble
a premonition of impending disaster precedes a collision between the conscious and subconscious lives of two married couples. Hidden fantasies and passions conflict with the calls of friendship and fidelity. the characters' everyday existences and their struggles to accept mortality provide the backdrop to MaRBLe's exploration of the tragedy of dying of an empty heart.

Notes:
-

1st Produced:

Organisations:
-

1st Published:
the Gallery Press (2009)   978- 1 85235 468 8

Music:
-

To Buy This Play:
If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click from the Publisher, otherwise (below) are AbeBooks for secondhand, signed & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies

Booksellers:

Genre:
Play/Drama

Parts:
Male:  2            Female:  2            Other:  -

Further Reference:
-

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Meat And Salt

Synopsis:
When the scrupulously honest Little Daughter tells the tyrannical Big Daddy she loves him as meat loves salt he banishes her from his Kingdom. She falls onto the Mountains of the Moon Hounds and after many adventures, she meets the Young King who falls in love with her honesty. they agree to marry and her Father is invited to the feast only to find a surprise waiting for him.

Notes:
-

1st Produced:

Organisations:

1st Published:
-   -

Music:
-

To Buy This Play:
If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click from the Publisher, otherwise (below) are AbeBooks for secondhand, signed & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies

Booksellers:

Genre:
play for 8-12 year olds One act

Parts:
Male:  5            Female:  8            Other:  -

Further Reference:
-

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On Raftery's Hill

On Raftery's Hill
In Marina Carr's epic tragedy of rural life, three generations of the Rafterys live together in the midlands of Ireland. It's a closely knit farming community where hatred and rumours of incest, stillborn children, and abused families seem more common than love and affection.

Notes:
-

1st Produced:

Organisations:

1st Published:
the Gallery Press, Ireland, 2000   978- 1 85235 268 4

Music:
-

To Buy This Play:
If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click from the Publisher, otherwise (below) are AbeBooks for secondhand, signed & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies

Booksellers:

Genre:
Tragedy of epic proportions Tragedy

Parts:
Male:  4            Female:  3            Other:  -

Further Reference:
http://www.Theatrerecord.org/, Theatre Record Vol XX (2000) Page 0865; http://www.Theatrerecord.org/, Theatre Record Vol XXVII (2007) Page 0200

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Phaedra Backwards

Phaedra Backwards
A new re-imagining of the classic myth of Phaedra doomed love for her stepson. 'Phaedra Backwards' subverts the established chronology of previous versions of the myth, moving fluidly between the past, present and future.

Notes:
-

1st Produced:
McCarter Theatre Centre At Princeton University, New Jersey     18 Oct 2011

Organisations:
-

1st Published:

Music:
-

To Buy This Play:
If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click from the Publisher, otherwise (below) are AbeBooks for secondhand, signed & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies

Booksellers:

Genre:
adaptation

Parts:
Male:  5            Female:  5            Other:  -

Further Reference:
-

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Portia Coughlan

Portia Coughlan
Portia Coughlan lives life in monstrous limbo, haunted by a yearning for her spectral twin brother lying at the bottom of the Belmont river, unable to find any love for her wealthy husband and children, seeking solace in soulless affairs, deeply afraid of what she might do . . .

Notes:
-

1st Produced:

Organisations:

1st Published:
in the Dazzling Dark: New Irish Plays, Faber and Faber, London, 1996   978-0571177707

Music:
-

To Buy This Play:
If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click from the Publisher, otherwise (below) are AbeBooks for secondhand, signed & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies

Booksellers:

Genre:
Play/Drama

Parts:
Male:  5            Female:  6            Other:  -

Further Reference:
http://www.Theatrerecord.org/, Theatre Record Vol XVI (1996) Page 0608; http://www.Theatrerecord.org/, Theatre Record Vol XXII (2002) Page 0011

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Quartet

Synopsis:
about an international diplomat's romantic encounters throughout the 1950s and 1960s.
Neil Cooper, Herald

Notes:
part of Impossible Things Before Breakfast

1st Produced:

Organisations:
Traverse Theatre Company

1st Published:
-   -

Music:
-

To Buy This Play:
If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click from the Publisher, otherwise (below) are AbeBooks for secondhand, signed & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies

Booksellers:

Genre:
30 min reading

Parts:
Male:  1            Female:  3            Other:  -

Further Reference:
-

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This Love Thing

Synopsis:
a lighthearted analysis of love as seen through the eyes of Renaissance artists and some of the characters they depicted. Michelangelo, Da Vinci, Jesus and the Mona Lisa herself struggle with the big questions of love and art.

Notes:
-

1st Produced:
Belfast: Old Museum Arts Centre, 7 College Square N, Belfast Bt1 6Ar     12 Feb 1991

Organisations:
Pigsback Theatre Company (fishamble)

1st Published:
-   -

Music:
-

To Buy This Play:
If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click from the Publisher, otherwise (below) are AbeBooks for secondhand, signed & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies

Booksellers:

Genre:
Play/Drama

Parts:
Male:  4            Female:  3            Other:  -

Further Reference:
-

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Ullalloo

Synopsis:
-

Notes:
-

1st Produced:

Organisations:

1st Published:
-   -

Music:
-

To Buy This Play:
If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click from the Publisher, otherwise (below) are AbeBooks for secondhand, signed & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies

Booksellers:

Genre:
Play/Drama

Parts:
Male:  1            Female:  1            Other:  -

Further Reference:
-

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We Were Here

Synopsis:
a multi-sensory and multi-media perfomrance made up of a series of short plays on the theme of poverty

Notes:
part of 1 in 5. the title of the project is taken from official statistics estimating one in five people in Northern Ireland to be living in poverty.

1st Produced:
Site-Specific Piece At Roe Valley Hospital, Site Of The Former Limavady Workhouse, Limavady, County Derry.     24 Nov 2011

Organisations:
Kabosh

1st Published:
-   -

Music:
-

To Buy This Play:
If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click from the Publisher, otherwise (below) are AbeBooks for secondhand, signed & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies

Booksellers:

Genre:
short play

Parts:
Male:  -            Female:  -            Other:  -

Further Reference:
-

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Woman And Scarecrow

Woman And Scarecrow
In Woman and Scarecrow the title characters, 'in exile from the best of themselves', trade litanies of recriminations as they mourn their capacity to love. This deathbed Drama pitches old friends and battle-weary foes against each other in a sustained howl against the first law. This world's job is to take everything from you. Yours is not to let it.' It hinges on the Woman's last request, to return west where she might find 'some kind of miracle', that moment of grace in which 'anything can happen'.

Notes:
-

1st Produced:

Organisations:
-

1st Published:
the Gallery Press (15 Jun 2006)   978-1852354060

Music:
-

To Buy This Play:
If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click from the Publisher, otherwise (below) are AbeBooks for secondhand, signed & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies

Booksellers:

Genre:
Play/Drama

Parts:
Male:  2            Female:  2            Other:  -

Further Reference:
http://www.Theatrerecord.org/, Theatre Record Vol XXVI (2006) Page 0749

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