Landscapes, voices and corporealities of excess in the theatre of Marina Carr

Abstract

This Ph. D. thesis concerns the plays of contemporary Irish dramatist Marina Carr from 1989-1998. In the first section of this introduction I will contextualise the background, career and plays of Marina Carr within the frameworks of Irish theatre and contemporary society. In so doing, I will consider the defining characteristics of what is known as ‘Irish theatre’ and the problematic position of women within that tradition. The introduction will consider the ways in which Carr’s plays operate within, and contest dominant representation in Irish drama. Finally, I will outline the structure of my thesis, and introduce and contextualise my primary sources and chosen critical methodology, providing a chapter by chapter break-down of my critical approach to the plays. Central to this thesis are the ways in which Carr’s dramas renegotiate conventional representations of female subjectivity, landscape, and language through imaginative reconfigurations of corporeality, spatio-temporality and theatrical from, considering ultimately, Carr’s political recalcitrance to patriarchal ideologies in an Irish context.